United States – Fat Joe, a rapper, was featured at the White House to speak about marijuana law reform. Visiting an abortion clinic invoking a ceasefire in Gaza at the ancient Selma bridge in Alabama and walking through the bloodsittered crime scene of the Parkland Florida school shooting.
Harris’s Evolving Role and Policy Advocacy
U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris has emerged recently from the shadow of President Joe Biden’s growing coalition of voters — a high-grade effort to convince the public that she and her boss deserve to be re-elected, as reported by Reuters.
However, Harris’s evolving role comes amid an ongoing progressive campaign against Biden’s pro-Israeli policies, while recent polls show Harris neck-to-neck with Trump, his Republican rival.
While Biden’s age and leadership are concerns for left-leaning voters who don’t experience the same with Trump’s core voters, the 59-year-old California native is getting a go for the heated issues, disrupting Biden’s strategy of less battling.
Biden has defended abortion rights but highlighted the women situated in danger, and he has stated that it is “deeply private and painful.”
The overstep here is that during her visit to Planned Parenthood in Minneapolis, this marks the first time a sitting vice president has ever visited an abortion clinic. To make it explicit, the former senator described abortion as a basic part of women’s healthcare in vivid terms.
“Everyone get ready for the language: uterus,” she said. “Issues like fibroids — we can handle this — breast cancer screenings, contraceptive care — that is the kind of work that happens here, in addition, of course, to abortion care.”
Harris’s Vocal Stance on Key Issues
She made the most brutal remarks about Israel’s offensive against Hamas at that time in Selma, Alabama: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.”
Her choice of the term “ceasefire,” which was in itself the only policy talisman of which some Democrats were so passionate that it had become a battle cry, was applauded by some, but some wanted more demands accompanied by policy changes, too. Harris additionally insisted on accelerations from Israel in terms of the establishment of humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, which she had referred to as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
“There is no doubt the vice-president has tried to move the conversation about Gaza to a more empathetic place, but introducing new language falls flat when there is no evidence she’s pushing for a more meaningful policy shift,” said Abbas Alawieh, a major campaign official who encourages voters to express their discontent with Biden by voting “uncommitted” during the Democratic primaries.
“She needs to push Biden harder to change U.S. policy,” he said.
However, both the current and former Harris administrators rejected that notion, explaining that their efforts were about having a different approach to the same policies. They shared the idea that Harris proposed policies out of areas where she had a potential interest based on her time as a prosecutor in some cases.
“She’s been on the leading edge of some of the most important issues facing the country, and certainly that are going to be determinative of the election,” said Dave Cavell, a former Harris speechwriter.
Biden should not highlight politically divisive cultural issues because these issues are repelling the more conservative voters we need to win, according to recent and former advisors. In the role of the Democrats’ “coalition leader,” he is expected to focus on the key economic issues that will hence help in turning the centrists.
The aides inside the White House revealed that Biden would potentially alienate the conservatives he needs for victory if he only appeals to divisive cultural issues. He should lead the Democratic Party’s “coalition leaders” toward the core economic issues that will act as centrist magnets.
In fact, on ten of his 16 trips this year, he has visited predominantly competing electoral states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where he seeks to promote kitchen-table economic policies, like bringing back the jobs sold abroad and supporting unions.
Instead, Harris—the first woman, Black, and Asian vice president—is taking on a pugilistic role, speaking on the economy and going on college tours like “Fight for Our Freedoms” and “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms.”
ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR HARRIS
Biden has assigned Harris a series of complex problems during her vice presidency, such as migration along the southern border of the USA, which has been unsolved for decades, to the ongoing effort of blocking left-leaning voters, who have been treated generously for decades.
Regaining the portions of the Democratic party, which has divided over foreign policy, economy, and immigration, is a difficult task as well.
A Reuters poll showing Biden and Trump tied equitably nationally includes a majority of women, the young, and Latinos who disapprove of Biden’s performance as president. During the 2020 elections, each group backed Biden and consequently voted for him against Trump.
Even though 56 percent of Black people like his job performance, it is still low ratings, which are atypical for the ethnic groups that vote 9-to-1 for Democrats in presidential elections.
While Biden’s approval ratings also came short of the optimum 40% in recent surveys, he remains the US most popular Democrat after Biden. However, some White House insiders have secretly fussed over her coping as the administration spokesperson as well as her possible leadership skills if she were to be at the top of the ballot.
While a third win in a row among the largest US racial group will certainly boost Trump, Biden needs to perform well in groups that typically support Democrats.
One thing shows that Harris may face hard competition.
A trip to San Juan, where there is a push to get the 5.9 million Puerto Rican Latinos who live in the mainland states, was visited by Harris yelling at her arrival at a community center where people celebrate Caribbean culture.
Others chanted “Yankee, go home” and displayed signs “belittling Harris as a war criminal” because of the support to Israel in response to Hamas’ Belgium *attack,” which started in late October, while death tolls in the Gaza Strip were rising. These protests have been witnessed at numerous Harris rallies so far, as reported by Reuters.
He has had a particularly strong advocate in Biden, though, the man who at times pondered whether to give her a choice to be his running mate in 2020. Harris has been quiet to prove that she is not doing anything contrary to her boss, stating Biden and her on March 4 as “in harmony and consistency from the very beginning” on Gaza.
“I love her,” Biden said, unprompted, of Harris on February 6. She’s “doing an incredible job,” he added on March 18.