![]() Harris’ apologists grimly note those are all massive issues, each of them likely impossible for one person to significantly address yet her boosters say they match Harris’ abilities to untangle knots. As a former VP himself, Biden has sought to give Harris a portfolio commensurate with her talents, including the intractable troubles at the U.S.-Mexican border, voting rights, and abortion rights. ![]() ![]() Personally, Biden has great admiration for Harris, who served as state attorney general in California concurrent to the late Beau Biden’s time in the role in Delaware. By all accounts, she served as a capable and loyal running-mate. Harris’ original bid for the presidency ended before Iowa’s lead-off caucuses. Her defenders aren’t wrong to point out that the first woman of color in her role faces the double-whammy that separately dogged Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. can easily devolve into coded conversations about race and gender, two factors that simply cannot be ignored when it comes to Harris. Then there are questions of her future ambitions-always a fraught discussion that in D.C. Kyrsten Sinema can still gum up the math.) Now less encumbered by the Senate vote schedule, Harris is looking forward to getting back on the road, helping to sell the Biden team’s record and leading the charge on goals like securing voting rights and abortion rights-neither of which are likely to advance much under a Republican House-and selling the merits of legislation passed over the last two years, such as an infrastructure package and a climate change agenda. Joe Manchin or Democrat-turned-independent Sen. As such, she spent a ton of time in her office just off the Senate floor, often doubling as a deciding vote and informal congressional liaison to her former colleagues.īut, with Republicans now stuck at 49 votes, Harris’ 101st vote won’t be needed as often. ![]() She has so far cast 26 such tied votes-or roughly 9% of all tie-breaking votes cast in the Senate since 1789. Because of her ability to break tie votes in that chamber, Harris had to often make sure she was a quick motorcade from the Capitol. Few Vice Presidents have had to contend with an evenly split Senate. Then, there was the scheduling challenge. The result was high turnover on her team, as well as a series of embarrassing stories about her treatment of aides. In fact, most of her high-profile aides from her Senate office and short-lived presidential bid scattered throughout the administration, landing perfectly admirable posts but not in her inner circle. In the administration’s early days, she largely filled her offices with veterans of the campaign-Biden’s, not hers. It seemed every quarter brought with it a new Harris Resets story in the political pages. Harris, by all accounts, didn’t exactly launch her time as President Joe Biden’s understudy with ease. And, in that, her fellow Democrats might slow their seemingly endless criticism of the first woman to hold the job, as well as the first person of Black or South Asian descent to earn it. But Harris’ remarks and the reception-including 32 applause interruptions by the White House transcript’s count-served as a reminder that, even with plenty of bumps and detours during her first two years as a history-making Vice President, she still can bring the heat. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump-would do little to move the national debate on federal abortion rights, which fell in June with a crash emanating from the Supreme Court. The scheduled speech on a sleepy Sunday far from Washington-but in the backyard of both Florida Gov.
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