Some of the assignments set off alarm bells among her staff and supporters, with many questioning whether the president had pawned off some of the most politically sensitive issues to his vice president and had “set her up to fail.”
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President Joe Biden invested Vice President Kamala Harris with an unprecedented degree of authority to pursue key policy initiatives for the White House, but she often was unable to leverage her spot in the driver’s seat to reach the finish line. The White House and media alike gave Harris notably higher prominence than is typical for the vice president, consistently referring to the “Biden-Harris administration” and seemingly elevating her to the status of a near equal partner. Biden himself, moreover, made her his point person on immigration, gun violence, and even tasked her with key foreign policy efforts.
