![]() ![]() She made a verbal gaffe or two on the Central America trip nothing big. That’s good, but ultimately success depends on a private deal engineered by the president, ideally with her assistance. On voting rights, Harris intends to rally support from civil rights groups and the business community. They are so big that - whatever role Harris plays - ultimately the buck will stop with Biden. In voting rights and migration on the southern border, Harris has two exceedingly difficult charges. She’s cautious, giving interviews mainly to friendly journalists. Any residual resentments from a 2019 debate clash they had over school busing has been smoothed over. Her staff, headed by a veteran operative and Clintonite, Tina Flournoy, is said to be in sync with the president’s. With the COVID-19 travel limitations, they’ve probably spent more time together than usual. This is why we see Harris involved in every major decision and in the room for every important meeting.Įven given the inevitable spin, it appears the Biden-Harris relationship is going well in the first 20 weeks. Crafted by the late Walter Mondale, vice president to Jimmy Carter, this entails a genuine partnership between the president and his number two. It further depends on her ability to grow, both in policy and political ways.Īs captivating as the Kevin Siers cartoon may be, more important than any designated assignments is filling the “Mondale model” for the vice presidency. Whether in 2024 or 2028 she can ride a wave of success, or - if the administration is seen as failing - it’ll drag her down. Some Republicans and right-wing cable bloviators were in a tizzy because she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexican border.Īny future political success for the California Democrat depends chiefly on the success of the Biden administration. Only a short while earlier, there was Washington buzz of an “invisible” vice president. One television network sent its anchor to cover Vice President Harris’s trip last week to Central America, The Economist wrote that she “ already looks like her party’s prospective nominee.” However, it also meant that Harris cast deciding votes on issues like the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9-trillion pandemic relief measure, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which limited the costs of prescription drugs and created financial incentives or clean energy.A head-turning cartoon in the Raleigh News & Observer pictures President Biden in the Oval Office with a big inbox marked “Voter Rights, Immigration and Broadband Expansion.” Next to it is a sign that says: “The Bucks Stops with Kamala.” The task could prove frustrating at times, limiting her travel and keeping her tethered to unpredictable events on Capitol Hill. Before taking office, she wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that “it is my hope that rather than come to the point of a tie, the Senate will instead find common ground and do the work of the American people.”īut tiebreakers swiftly became a core part of her job. Harris did not seem eager to make history with tiebreaker votes when she became vice president. Earlier this year she helped confirm two federal judges, one in Massachusetts and the other in California.īoth Fetterman and Feinstein have returned to the Senate, but contested nominations can still require Harris’ presence, such as on Wednesday. The absences revived Harris’ string of tiebreakers. ![]() Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, contracted shingles and was hospitalized as well. John Fetterman, a newly elected Democrat from Pennsylvania, was hospitalized for clinical depression. Harris had expected to get a reprieve from that role after the midterm elections, when Democrats expanded their majority from 50 to 51 votes. Schumer described it as an “immense burden,” and he said Harris has “carried out her duties with supreme excellence” in the midst of “all the other demands she faces” in her job. Under the Constitution, presiding over the Senate and breaking ties is one of the only constitutional duties of the vice president. Harris spent only a few minutes in the chamber, reciting a brief script to record her vote, and then received congratulations from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. The occasion was hardly memorable or particularly ceremonial. “Our politics is so polarized that, even on the sort of matters that in the past would have flown through, it takes the vice president to cast a tiebreaking vote.” Goldstein, a vice presidential historian. “It really says more about our time, and our political climate, than it does about anything else,” said Joel K. ![]()
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