New Delhi: Amidst significant strategic and domestic challenges haunting the Biden administration, there are now serious talks of "complex reality" inside the White House.
Some of it relates to the tenure of the first woman Vice President of America – Kamala Harris.
It could be usual that global media debates the US politics and presidential powers because of the geopolitical and economic influence that Capitol Hill exerts on the world, but regarding Indians, Kamala Harris always stirred up unusual headlines and curiosity.
In the social media, Harris' nomination as Joe Biden's running mate before elections, 2020 was also seen as the "blossoming of the American lotus". Well, now the debate is different.
Sample this statement – "Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically."
This quote is from a CNN report adding unhesitatingly: "She (Kamala Harris) could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own."
The report has provoked reactions even from the White House. Spokesperson Jen Psaki says Biden always wanted to have Ms Harris as his Vice President, and those were on merits.
"She is a key partner, she is a bold leader and she is somebody who was taken on important assignments," the spokesperson said.
Of course, some of the controversies would be linked to US politics as there would be other Democrat aspiration candidates for the battle of 2024.
"Other politicians with their own presidential ambitions have started privately acknowledging that they are trying to figure out how to quietly lay the groundwork to run if and when Harris falters, as they think she might," CNN says.
In India and Indians, including those who matter in US politics, Kamala in Sanskrit means Lotus. The electoral symbol of Prime Minister Narendra Modi BJP is also Lotus. Kamala Harris does not have an Indian connection in that sense, but it is also true that she is the daughter of cancer biologist Shyamala Gopalan, who migrated from Chennai. Kamala's father is, of course, a Jamaican.
The India-US relations have blossomed during the Trump stint, and of course, the chemistry has survived the Democrats' rule in Washington. Modi's US visit recently has been an important strategic plan of the year, and so has been the two separate meetings he held with Joe Biden and Vice President Ms Harris.
There are obvious challenges for Ms Harris. One refrain is that Americans expect their historic vice president to make history, perhaps every day. Politics always has dirtier faces, too and hence implicit racism and sexism are in the air.
The Republicans could be again set for trying Donald Trump. Like politics, now journalism should also have the other side. Chief spokesperson for the Vice President, Symone Sanders, put it acidly: "….some in the media are focused on gossip – not on the results that the President and the Vice President have delivered."
The references were to a productive trip to France in which the US reaffirmed a strong relationship with its 'oldest ally' passage of a historic, bipartisan infrastructure bill that will create jobs.
On the infrastructure legislation itself, Joe Biden himself had said: "A lot of this has to do with this lady right here, the vice president."
The circa 2024 may not be far off, and the American internal political battle has also just begun.
