Approval ratings are subject to personal biases, so I don't see her low approval ratings as helping your argument that they are low, because of poor performance and not because of rhetoric, racism or sexism. In fact, knowing how uninformed people are, rhetoric, racism and sexism perhaps has a bigger impact on approval ratings than anything else.
As I said above you can't ignore popularity and approval ratings. It is a key metric of performance for a politician.
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The fact that Kamala Harris' approval ratings have dropped steadily and significantly since 2021 suggests Independents and some Democrats have soured on her. Kamala Harris was a multiracial, woman in 2021 paired with an elderly President as well. Why would her race and gender become an issue now?
(Republicans don't like Joe Biden so thus they're not going to like Kamala Harris either race and gender aside. You're left with the Dems and Indys.)
By the way, Trump is 4 points above Kamala, and he is not even in power. Not sure how that is actually better.
It's Kamala Harris' almost 18% negative margin that's the bigger concern. You're not going to find any support for Kamala in the numbers.
So my question stands. Regardless of her approval ratings in what ways has her performance been poor, especially compared to Trump and Mike Pence earlier?
I think you're making an argument here that you favor and you perceive others favor Biden/Kamila's performance to Trump/Pence's performance. Even if this was true, it does not make a strong case for Kamila as much as it does for Biden. Interestingly, Pence was routinely more popular than Trump so one could easily make the argument that Pence did not hurt the ticket. Kamala has been less popular than Joe Biden.
In a typical year where Vice Presidential candidates are not critical in the election, Kamala is perfectly fine. Given Biden's advancing age, Biden's VP should be a stronger candidate.