Kamala Harris: 'Team player' accused of lacklustre first 100 days as vice-president

When Kamala Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s running mate, much was made about the former California attorney general’s ambitious streak. Would the vice-president outshine her boss? Would the progressive nudge the president to the Left?

But rather than taking the lead, critics describe her performance 100 days in as rather lacklustre.

Usually seen by Mr Biden’s side at press conferences and big announcements, Ms Harris, who made history by becoming the first woman and first black and Indian American person in the role, has made few headlines.

Last month, Mr Biden delegated Ms Harris one of the administration’s toughest tasks – combating the surge of migrants at the Mexican border. The job is something of a political grenade, a hot-button issue that riles up the Republican party.

As the numbers of migrants at the US border with Mexico has soared to record highs, Ms Harris, 56, has yet to get a real grip on the crisis.

She has faced criticism on this from both sides. While Republicans have taken aim at Ms Harris for not yet paying a visit to the border, immigration groups complain the administration has not done enough to push for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

The GOP even has a timer running on its Twitter account of the number of days “Biden’s crisis manager Kamala Harris has ignored the border”. Another prominent conservative account posted a picture of Ms Harris’s face on a milk carton under the word “missing”.

However, some of Ms Harris’s allies say the verdict is unfair, seeing the problem as so ill-defined and intractable that she will be judged harshly even if she does manage to make progress.

Unlike the 79-year-old president, who spent decades in the Senate and plenty of foreign affair experience when he became vice-president to Barack Obama, Ms Harris is learning on the job.

On criminal justice reform – one of her campaign priorities – Ms Harris has not been out front either. She has spoken alongside Mr Biden on recent mass shootings, but has made no significant public push on the issue.

Andrea James, executive director and founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls, said that “considering Ms Harris is a woman of colour, we expected to see more from her speaking out on the issue.”

Allies say it has to do with Ms Harris’s desire to show she is a team player, in part to deflect the “misconception” that she is driven by her desire to run in 2024 should Mr Biden choose not to.

Her advisers point to a number of items on Mr Biden's legislative agenda that Ms Harris pushed behind the scenes, and say she shares credit for the administration's successful delivery of more than 200 million Covid-19 vaccines, among other achievements.

“She’s in the room literally and figuratively,” Brian Brokaw, a political adviser to Harris from 2009-19, told AP.

“Is she steering the ship? Probably not. But tell me a vice-president besides Dick Cheney who was steering a ship. I think she committed to be a team player from the second she was offered a shot on the ticket.”