Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team appeared on Monday to lower expectations of her chances to defeat former President Donald Trump in November after a week of glowing coverage after President Biden chose last week to end his reelection bid.

Harris has become the heir apparent despite never receiving a single primary vote, and now she’ll have to defend her far-left political record as well as co-owning Biden’s dismal record as part of the “Biden-Harris Administration.”

“Harris and emerging campaign brain trust share the view that shifting the fundamentals of the race will be difficult with a calcified electorate and fragmented media environment,” Politico Playbook reported Monday. And breaking through all of that in a way that positively impacts the electorate won’t be easy.

Following numerous gaffes as vice president, Harris has avoided the press and has not participated in a single one-on-one interview with the media since becoming the de facto nominee. She has yet to face scrutiny on her radical-left record, suggesting that Harris may not be the strongest candidate to replace Biden.

“We need to be very clear-eyed, and it’s going to be brutally tough,” a Democrat senator told The Hill on Monday.

The media have largely praised Harris’s candidacy amid Democratic concerns about Biden’s political viability, but she will need to persuade voters, not just the media, of her presidential qualifications.

An Economist/YouGov poll from last week found that only 39 percent of registered independents consider Harris “qualified” to be president. Additionally, among the 54 percent of registered voters who believe there was a “cover-up of Biden’s health,” 92 percent think Harris was “involved,” even if only to a small extent.

“I would call it a honeymoon phase,” former Democrat governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak told the New York Times on Monday. “We’ve got to keep the energy going. You got it started — now you’ve got to keep it going. It’s going to be a challenge for everybody.”