Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

I'm with you, hookrider. This one i posted would be read by some as critical of Kamala, yet i saw it, on balance, as supportive

"I stand with Kamala Harris fuck you republicans:"

Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris' frustrating start as vice president

[...]

The reality is more complex and looks different to people more familiar with how any White House actually works. Harris is the first vice president in decades to come into office with less Washington experience than the president, and finding her footing was always going to be hard. Presidents and vice presidents and their staffs often clash. Barack Obama's West Wing tended to be dismissive of Biden's staffers (a number of whom are now with him in the West Wing), and Biden himself had a number of stumbles early in that job. Republicans and right-wing media turned Harris into a political target from the moment she was picked for the ticket. And implicit racism and sexism have been constant.

It's a conundrum unique to her. People are expecting their historic vice president to make history every day when in fact she's trying to carry the duties of a secondary role. Harris is being judged not just by how she's doing in the traditional duties of a vice president, said Minyon Moore, a longtime Democratic operative who has become Harris' most important outside adviser. "It's a little more subliminal, but it's real," Moore said. "'What is her playbook in history?'"

Harris has emerged as a "quiet force" in the administration, Moore said, and she focuses attention on different issues sometimes just by her very presence in the room.

Moore said Harris' approach is to be constantly asking, "Should we be doing more on an issue? Are we communicating with the people whose lives are impacted? Are we missing any key constituency groups?"

[...]

After Harris became known in the first few months for often standing by Biden's side in the frame as he made big speeches, even after she'd introduced him herself, the West Wing appears to have overcorrected so she has been with the President noticeably less.

Not just in public. A week and a half ago, as Biden and his aides and multiple outside allies rattled through calls all day trying to lock down wavering lawmakers ahead of the House infrastructure vote .. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/05/politics/house-votes-infrastructure-build-back-better/index.html , Harris spent the afternoon touring a NASA space flight center in suburban Maryland. "We weren't going to cancel her schedule just because of the House's foolishness," a Harris aide explained.

That night, Harris was part of the small group Biden invited upstairs to the White House residence for the war room making the last hours of calls. The next morning, celebrating the bill's passage, Biden singled her out, saying, "A lot of this has to do with this lady right here, the vice president."

But that's not exactly how things had played out. While she had attended some meetings Biden hosted with key lawmakers, there were many more that she didn't attend -- to the point that it was noteworthy that she made an unscheduled drop-by one session in the final stretch. Harris had only been in Washington four years, and to the White House just one time before being sworn in as vice president. Missing out on those main meetings deprived her of an important aspect of presidential apprenticeship from a self-styled master of how to actually get deals through Congress.

[...]

Harris' team was mad Biden had assigned her to handle diplomatic relations with the Northern Triangle nations, in hopes of addressing the root causes of migration to the US, but gave her no role on the southern border itself. That become the most visible crisis in the early days of Biden's presidency as unaccompanied minors overwhelmed federal government resources .. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/04/politics/biden-administration-border-crisis/ . It seemed like an all-around politically losing assignment even though Biden had seen it as a sign of respect because it was the same job Obama had given him as vice president.

[...]

Harris' aides point out that Biden was never subjected to the kind of attacks she regularly endures -- or to a toxic social media culture. In one recent example, a Republican super PAC tweeted a video inventing a claim that Harris spoke with a "fake French accent" at a stop during her trip to Paris, which was then picked up in some news outlets.

[...]

Harris loyalists themselves worry that she'll pay the price for her own loyalty to the President and her willingness to take on what they view as thankless assignments.

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