US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. Photos / AP
US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris. Photos / AP
Editorial
EDITORIAL
Nearly six months into the Biden administration, one key player is in the deep end and facing a career-defining challenge of sinking or swimming.
Vice-President Kamala Harris is a history-making figure as the first woman to hold the title and the first black American - of Jamaican and Indianparentage - in the role.
Now President Joe Biden has handed her a couple of difficult assignments - pushing through legislation on voting rights and sorting out a long-term solution to the causes of illegal immigration to the United States.
On immigration, Harris has focused on encouraging economic investments in central America and is due to visit Guatemala and Mexico.
Voting reform shapes as an important election issue for the 2022 midterms.
At present, with Biden as president, Harris' tie-breaking vote in the Senate and a narrow advantage in the House of Representatives, the Democrats can push through economic-based measures by simple majority through a process called reconciliation.
That's how the administration's coronavirus relief package was passed. Infrastructure legislation will likely follow.
But there are also Democratic reform priorities that require the support of two party conservatives - senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema - and at least 10 Senate Republicans to get through under existing filibuster rules.
Former US President Donald Trump.
That is a big ask given the political polarisation in the country and the ongoing Trumpist flavour of the Republican Party.
The man himself is arguably declining in influence even as the party battle over his legacy intensifies and talk of another presidential tilt surfaces.
Donald Trump's website closed a month after its launch, his legal jeopardy is increasing and many of his presidential actions have been overturned.
Yet the Republican Party is consumed by the approach Trump took and the loyalty he inspired among millions of voters last year. To most current Republican officials, he is like the original movie in a blockbuster franchise that struck gold once and now repeats a formula guaranteed to bring fans back. Trump is more likely to become the warm-up act for someone in his image than to himself run for president again.
The debate over voting rights was given fresh urgency after Trump's discredited claims of voter fraud. Republicans at state level used those claims to introduce restrictions which Democrats say are aimed at dissuading their voters from actually voting.
Republican-controlled legislatures in 14 states have passed more than 250 laws to make it harder to vote - for example by limiting mail and early voting and the hours polling places can stay open.
Under the US political system, small, normally conservative-voting, states give the Republican party outsized clout. The Democratic half of the Senate represents 41.5 million more people than the Republican half. Biden got seven million more votes than Trump.
Two bills on voting rights are languishing in the Senate. Getting movement on them and immigration will be tough for Harris. But that goes with the territory of high office and while both the risk is great, so is the potential reward.
Both tasks will give her a chance to show what she can do, build her profile, and essentially campaign on those priorities. It will also provide Republicans with more of a chance to try to define her as a divisive figure.
Harris, 56, is widely expected to be Biden's successor as Democratic Party flagbearer in either 2024 or 2028.
If she succeeds, that standing as heir apparent becomes solidified. Should she disappoint, the party's net will be cast wider.
