White House
Harris on the hot seat: Veep has critical stretch ahead as campaign heats up
The vice president has a portfolio and (finally) some stability. But she doesn’t yet have the polls.
Toward the end of last year, senior aides of Vice President Kamala Harris gathered in the vice president’s ceremonial office and sat around a table to chart out the year ahead. The group presented her with a strategy document.
It recommended that Harris get on the road as much as possible and posited that Americans weren’t seeing and hearing from their leaders enough and that they’d be wise to fix that. The plan also called for Harris to lean into issues they felt suited her skill set. The fight to try and shore up abortion rights across the country stood atop the list.
he doubts about her haven’t fully dissipated. Harris recently scored the lowest net negative rating of any vice president tested in an NBC News poll.
But her team thinks she is finally cementing her bonafides, having put in place a team she trusts, including Sheila Nix as her campaign chief of staff. They believe that in the next few months, people will reconsider her and come to appreciate her political skills.
“It’s a time to get the objective viewer to take a second look. She needs a pivot to that second look,” Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director told POLITICO. “Most of the bad news about Kamala Harris is old news.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/28/harris-critical-stretch-ahead-campaign-heats-up-00103962
Kamala Harris: supreme court rulings portend ‘attack’ on ‘hard-fought freedoms’
Vice-president decries conservative-dominated court’s decisions on LGBTQ+ rights, student debt relief and affirmative action
The US supreme court rulings which struck down the White House’s student debt relief plan, affirmative action in college admission and a Colorado law that protected LGBTQ+ rights portend “a national movement to attack hard-won and hard-fought freedoms”, Vice-President Kamala Harris has said.
Harris said she and other members of Joe Biden’s administration have a role in mounting a counteraction to the supreme court rulings, which she characterized as “moments of great consequence and … crises”.
The supreme court’s shift to the hard right became possible after the Donald Trump presidency succeeded in appointing the ultra-conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Harris predicted the week’s supreme court decisions would “have generational impact” and described herself “deeply concerned about the implications of this … to the future of our country”, Nola.com added.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/01/kamala-harris-supreme-court-rulings-attack-freedoms