Kamala Harris’ New Tough New Job
Terry H. Schwadron
June 5, 2021
We’d better hope that Kamala Harris has more zip on her political ball than she has shown so far.
She just took on the job of getting the Senate to pass the two pending voter rights bills that are all that stands between the guarantee of a vote and the steamroller of Republican-majority state legislatures. According to The New York Times, Harris told Joe Biden that she wanted to take the lead on the voter rights issue, and this week he agreed, adding bluntly that: “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work.”
That’s the understatement of the week. We’re hearing daily warnings about how voter suppression bills are pushing American democracy over the cliff, about how the country is breaking over race over voter rights, and about the insistence of even two or more Democrats to shy away from challenging the Republican reliance on Senate filibuster rules to keep the two bills — the so-called John Lewis voter rights bill and the S.1 For the People Act — from becoming law.
Either these bills need 60 senate votes or they need a just-squeak-by majority vote to forgo the 60-vote rule.
Neither one is in sight right now, despite a spirited White House effort to nudge Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to even pretend to care. Manchin doubled down on his opposition to both Democratic-only bills and filibuster just this week.
It’s seen as an all-or-nothing situation, with almost no room for bipartisan negotiation, since the Republican side of this argument starts with the assumption that there must have been substantial voter fraud in the November elections because Donald Trump and company still insist so every day.
So, it’s interesting to see Kamala Harris asking for the ball at this moment when time is running short on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s promise to bring the bills to the floor later this month.
This is the same Kamala Harris that was said to be assigned or who stepped up to take on immigration policy. To date, she has been spending her time planning her first visits to Mexico and Guatemala, and mostly fending off or ignoring the obvious questions about what she actually is getting done on this assignment, including why she has not visited border facilities.
What Is She Actually Doing?
Though I recognize Harris’ limitations as any politician’s, I happen to find more to like about Kamala Harris than not.
Nevertheless, it seems a fair question: What exactly is Kamala Harris going to bring to this situation to either be seen as saving American democracy or, alternatively, to be shoving an unwanted federal muzzle on state election rules. Even if either or both of these bills pass, we’re all headed for months more contention and the inevitable court battles over election rules.
“The president’s announcement has not clearly illuminated a path forward for Harris, whose involvement in the issue stands to become her most politically delicate engagement yet,” notes The Times, again understatedly. She has talked with civil rights activists and voting rights advocates. “Her advisers say she will take a wide-ranging approach to the issue by giving speeches, convening stakeholders and using the vice-presidential bully pulpit to raise awareness of the importance of the vote,” is the best explanation.
That’s it?
It’s not as if we don’t know that there is a voting rights issue on the current political table at the moment.
“The work of voting rights has implications for not just one year down the road or four years down the road but 50 years from now,” Symone Sanders, the vice president’s senior adviser and press secretary, told The Times. “The president understands that and the vice president understands that, and that’s why we will implement a comprehensive strategy.”
The Times added, “Harris’s impact on the hand-to-hand politics of the Senate is expected to be limited, but she often drew attention to voting rights during her four years as a senator. During her last year in the Senate, Ms. Harris introduced legislation that would expand election security measures, require each state to have early in-person voting periods and allow for an expansion of mail-in absentee ballots.”
Even the announcement about Harris apparently surprised many in Congress, with no particular notice to Manchin or Sinema that more heat is coming.
Given the ability of the Republican block of the Senate to close its ears to anything resembling facts or reason over the last elections, the idea of Kamala Harris giving speeches and waking up with The Los Angeles Times sees as her emotional “KHive” of supporters, the idea of trying to turn up the temperature of the public over voting rights seems well short of effective political pressure.
Less than Reverence
As The Times noted, several Democratic aides who work closely with the two targeted Democratic senators scoffed at the idea that Harris, a liberal, would persuade either less much less liberal lawmaker to change the filibuster rule or broker a eal on the substance. In February, Manchin was publicly miffed when Harris went to his state to sell the administration’s coronavirus bill without consulting him first.
Her influence with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell obviously is far less effective.
Who knows? Maybe Manchin and Sinema will come up with a life-saving move here, with or without Kamala Harris. It sure does seem, for example, that among continuing Republican whining about the last election, Trump’s refusal to disappear into his next chapter, the traditional mid-term political trends and new rules making voting more difficult for Democrats, that personal and partisan interests will change some minds in an actual Senate vote on the legislation.
Were that to happen, Kamala Harris could wear a victory lei, and claim a victory that would befit her own political future.
There is no doubt that the legislation is important, even critical, to the administration and to the nation. States are acting now on nearly 400 bills to curtail voting under the heading of bolstering election integrity and trust in elections.
Meanwhile, Harris’ long-awaited trip to Mexico and Guatemala will happen next week, in the midst of this voting rights debate. According to her staff, Harris will focus on economic development, climate and food insecurity, and women and young people, to underscore the need to address the roots behind wide migration attempts to enter the United States.
Maybe that, too, will be a successful trip, and we’d have more faith in whatever magic Kamala Harris can weave in such an intervention.
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