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Kamala Harris was frustrated. The text of a speech she had been given to deliver in Chicago to the nation’s biggest teachers’ union was just another dreary, scripted talk that said little of any consequence.
As Air Force Two made its way to the Midwest over the summer, the vice president told her staff she wanted to say something more significant, more direct. She brandished a Rolling Stone magazine article about the backlash against Florida school officials after new legislation barring the discussion of gender identity in the classroom
Kamala Harris, California’s former U.S. senator and attorney general, is just the latest to experience the enervating effect of the vice presidency, alternating between periods of mockery and being largely ignored.
Now it’s her turn to suffer another humiliating rite: speculation on whether Harris will be booted from the Democratic ticket in 2024.
In 2011, when President Obama was at a low ebb in popularity, the White House chief of staff ordered up research on whether it would be a good idea to replace Biden with Hillary Clinton ahead of Obama’s reelection bid. Some of those involved in the campaign later insisted it was never a serious option.
For much of the country’s history, Goldstein said, changing vice presidents was not all that unusual.Others contend Harris had been limited by having to be tethered to the Senate in the last Congress, when she cast 26 votes to break ties — more than any vice president since John C. Calhoun, who left office in 1832.
With the Democrats holding a clear Senate majority, Harris allies believe she will be able to leave Washington more frequently.
Friends and peers of Kamala Harris rushed to her defence after a report held some Democrats “lost hope” in the Vice President. After a poor Presidential campaign in 2019, Harris withdrew from the race and was later picked by Joe Biden as his running mate.
But as Biden prepares to give his State of the Union address tonight, some Democrats have begun briefing against the Vice President.
Democratic fundraiser John Morgan argued Harris’ weakness in the role will be “one of the most hard-hitting arguments against Biden”.
“I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies”, he added.
Ms. Harris’s small airborne rebellion that day encapsulated the trap that she finds herself in. She has already made history as the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American ever to serve as vice president, but she has still struggled to define her role much beyond that legacy.
Now with Mr. Biden appearing all but certain to run again, the concern over Ms. Harris has shifted to whether she will be a political liability for the ticket. Given that Mr. Biden at 80 is already the oldest president in American history, Republicans would most likely make Ms. Harris, who is 58, a prime attack line, arguing that a vote for Mr. Biden may in fact be a vote to put her in the Oval Office.
