Kamala Harris was frustrated. The text of a speech she was due to give in Chicago to the largest teachers’ union in the country was just another boring lecture that said little of importance.
As Air Force Two headed to the Midwest for the summer, the US vice president told her team that she wanted to say something more meaningful. She brandished a Rolling Stone magazine article about the backlash against Florida education officials following new legislation banning debating gender identity in the classroom.
The teachers she would soon speak to were on the front lines of the country’s culture wars, Kamala told her staff. They were the same ones who were on the front lines of school shootings. It would not be enough to check federal funding for education. The plane was only an hour from Chicago, but she said they had to start over.
When she landed, Kamala had a livelier version of the speech in hand, accusing so-called “extremist leaders” in the Republican Party of canceling civil rights and liberties.
Kamala’s little rebellion that day summed up the trap she finds herself in. She made history as the first woman, first African-American and first Asian-American to serve as Vice President of the United States, but she still struggles to define her role far beyond that legacy.
Her team notes that she has made progress, emerging as a strong voice in government on abortion rights. She has positioned herself as the government’s most visible supporter, giving a speech last week at the funeral of Tire Nichols, the 29-year-old who was beaten by police in Memphis. And her critics and detractors recognize that the Vice Presidency should be a supporting role, and many of her predecessors also struggled to be relevant.
But the painful reality for Kamala is that, in private conversations over the past few months, dozens of Democrats at the White House, on Capitol Hill and across the country — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — have said she doesn’t. he had faced the challenge of asserting himself as the future leader of the party, let alone the country. Even some Democrats to whom her own aides referred reporters to hear statements of support privately confided that they had lost hope in her.
A quiet panic had set in among mainstream Democrats over what would happen if President Joe Biden chose not to run for a second term. Most of the Democrats polled, who insisted on anonymity, said they didn’t think Kamala could win the presidency in 2024. Some said the party’s biggest challenge would be finding a way to oust her without inflaming key Democratic voters who would be offended.
Now, with Biden looking almost certain to run again, the concern for Kamala has shifted to whether she will be a political liability to the ticket. Given that Biden, at 80, is the oldest president in American history, Republicans would likely make Kamala, 58, a main line of attack, arguing that a vote for Biden may in fact be a vote to put her in the Hall. Oval.
“That will, in my opinion, be one of the strongest arguments against Biden,” says John Morgan, a key fundraiser for Democrats including Biden and a former Florida finance chief for President Bill Clinton. “It doesn’t take a genius to say, ‘Look, at his age, we have to really think about this.’
So far it hasn’t stood out, he says. “I can’t think of anything she did except stay out of the way and be by his side at certain ceremonies.”
About 39% of Americans approve of Kamala’s performance in office, according to a recent aggregate of polls compiled by the website FiveThirtyEight. That puts her below Biden’s approval rating, which hovered around 42% last month.
Kamala’s allies said she was trapped in a “damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t” quandary – she is expected to do nothing to outshine Biden as he navigates intractable issues the president has assigned him, such as voting rights and illegal immigration. And some see a double standard applied to a prominent black woman.
No one feels the frustration of being underappreciated more acutely than Kamala, but she is keen not to show it publicly. In an interview with The New York Times while in Japan, she tried to explain her own political identity. “You have to know what you stand for, and when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” she said.
How this translates into concrete terms is less clear. After her disastrous interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt in June 2021, in which she tried to articulate the administration’s strategy for securing the border, White House officials — including some in her own cabinet — noted that she had virtually fallen into a rut. bunker for about a year, avoiding many interviews for what, according to aides, would be the fear of making mistakes and disappointing Biden.
Congressmen, Democratic strategists and other senior party figures say she has not become a formidable leader. Two Democrats recalled private conversations in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented that Kamala couldn’t win because she lacked the political instincts to make it through the primaries. Nick Merrill, Clinton’s spokesman, said she was a strong supporter of Kamala and often spoke to her about experiences of being “a woman in power”. “They built and maintained a strong bond. Any other characterization is patently false.”
Advisers and allies track Kamala’s challenges as she transitions from the attorney she used to be as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general to a position where symbolism and politics are top priority.
Aides urged her to break free of the teleprompter and show the nation the Kamala they say they see when the cameras are off, someone who can quiz policymakers on the complexities of legislative proposals and connect with younger voters across the world. country.
Kamala acknowledged her reservations about leaning on the more symbolic aspects of her current position. “My bias has always been to speak factually, to speak precisely about issues and matters that have potentially big consequences,” she said in the Japan interview. “I find it disheartening to just engage in platitudes. I’d definitely rather deconstruct an issue and talk about it in a way that we hope will elevate public discourse and educate the public.”
Kamala often tells senior advisers that she is more comfortable receiving intelligence briefings or approaching police officers, places where she says substance is valued more than politics. She has instructed officials to ensure that she makes trips to speak about the government’s achievements, such as the Reducing Inflation Act, and not just the various crises it faces.
She also questioned her team about local access to abortion and how the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade could lead to the criminalization of medical authorities. “She’s got her prosecutor’s hat on in that regard,” says Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, who has seen the vice president try to distill complex health issues in a way that “ordinary citizens” can understand.
Months after revising her Chicago speech aboard Air Force Two, Kamala went through nine drafts before delivering a speech in Tallahassee, Florida, on the 50th anniversary of the Roe affair, in which she asked if Americans can “be truly free.” if a woman cannot make decisions about her own body.
Several attendees said they were encouraged to see a black woman speak out clearly about how threats to the Roe decision pose a broader threat to civil rights. It was “very powerful for me to see someone of my likeness in this position in this day and age,” said Sabrita Thurman, 56, who is black.
Those closest to Kamala hope she can move beyond “defensive politics,” says Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian who hosted a meeting at his residence on the legacy of the vice presidency and will participate in another session with her this week. “President Biden has to give her more freedom to be herself, and not make her overly cautious that one mistake, one rhetorical error, will cost the party dearly,” says Brinkley. “It’s better to let Kamala be Kamala.”
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