Why the theatrics? American politics shits me so hard
Because the name of the US public political game is keeping yourself in the 24/7 news cycle.
Harris is frankly unexpectedly doing a fantastic job of doing that so far. Unexpected given how invisible she is as Biden’s VP. (Compared to the others at least to Gore.)
The job of the VP is to be invisible. They are an understudy who steps in when the main event has a colonoscopy for a few hours, and the rest of the time just wait for the President to keel over. The job was so lame that the Founders had to give them the extra job of breaking up fights in the Senate just to give them something to do.
Harris could never have been this visible while Biden was leading the ticket, otherwise people would have wondered why she’s not leading it.
That used to be true. Speaking strictly constitutionally “invisible” is still a bit of an overstatement but not unfair. Regardless modern US VPs have some standardized additional roles (National Security Council member being the biggest one) and others assigned per administration which can and reportedly have impacted the administrations they’re party to.
I’m not sure I take your point about Harris’ invisibility in particular. She’s set a new record in her capacity as President of the Senate by casting the most tie-breaker votes in US history. On the flip side she’s drawn a lot of flak while working on the Central America Forward initiative (justified or not is a separate discussion). Her perceived invisibility isn’t because she hasn’t been getting publicly visible work done.
