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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden promised after Novembers election that he and Vice President Kamala Harris would govern as a simpatico team. In their first days at the White House, the two are crafting a partnership that recalls Bidens own service as former President Barack Obamas No. 2.

FILE PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Senator and Democratic candidate for Vice President Kamala Harris celebrate after Joe Biden accepted the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination during the 4th and final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, as participants from across the country are hosted over video links from the originally planned site of the convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. August 20, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

It starts most days with a White House briefing by the national security adviser. At nearly everyone of Bidens public events, Harris stands prominently nearby. Behind closed doors, they are briefed on the coronavirus pandemic and other issues together.

Nobody knows better than President Biden how important it is and valuable it is to have a vice president who can serve as an all-around, last-person-in-the-room adviser, said Jay Carney, Bidens former communications director and later Obamas press secretary.

Harris, 56, is seen as an obvious contender for the Democratic Partys 2024 presidential nomination should Biden, 78, decide not to seek a second term. Harris has not weighed in publicly on such speculation.

As with all vice presidents, the question is whether Harris proximity translates into influence, and whether the honeymoon can last.

Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump enjoyed close alliances with their deputies, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence, before the relationships soured as they ended their terms. Obama and Biden, who were initially not very close, took pride in what became a relationship of trust as well as family ties.

Aides say Biden and Harris are both, for now, focused on the pandemic, scrambling to bring it under control by getting more people vaccinated while working on new measures to help stimulate the economy.

Harris broke away from the West Wing on Tuesday to receive her second dose of the coronavirus vaccine, bringing in cameras to record the arm jab as a way to reassure Americans that the vaccine is safe.

A former California attorney general, Harris is also using her contacts with state governors and city mayors to help speed the distribution of vaccines.

As a former U.S. senator from California and now the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate, Harris is expected to use her influence on Capitol Hill to help advance the Biden agenda.

Aides expect Harris will also help Biden push some of his other priorities, including a firmer government response to economic weakness, racial disparities and climate change.

Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of the vice presidency at the Saint Louis University School of Law, said that now that she was in office, Harris appeared to be following a model developed by Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carters vice president, as an all-around troubleshooter.

At the beginning it makes sense to be at the meetings. Shes hearing what the president is hearing, shes developing the relationship with the president, which is the most important relationship in her political life, Goldstein said.

Obama tasked Biden with overseeing the massive stimulus package passed in response to the 2007-2009 financial crisis and made him the point man on Eastern Europe and Central America, two areas that remain important today because of the threat posed by Russia and the migrant crisis.

Many of Bidens aides were initially wary of Harris - she drew sparks with Biden during the Democratic Party debates - and they picked a team to manage the running mates affairs even before she was formally chosen, including a chief of staff, Karine Jean-Pierre.

Harris opted to rely on other aides and after the inauguration did not retain Jean-Pierre, who is now principal deputy press secretary at the White House.

Harris has drawn more attention than most of her predecessors. She is the first woman vice president, the highest-ranking woman elected in U.S. history, and the first Black and Asian-American vice president.

Jill Habig, who served as an adviser to Harriss attorney generals office in California and U.S. Senate campaign, said she recognizes Harris approach to her new job.

Shes a data gatherer. She tends to immerse herself at the beginning of any project. She tends to be really visceral, being everywhere, meeting everyone she can and absorbing as much information as she can, Habig said.

Reporting by Steve Holland, Nandita Bose, and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons and Howard Goller

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A partnership: Biden-Harris model their White House on Obama-Biden - Reuters

I remember the Obama years well. There was a massive surge of national pride when Barack Obama was elected. America had done something important. It had overcome a hurdle on its path to racial inclusion. It had dealt a blow to its past.

That was the feeling. But it was just a feeling.

After a brief honeymoon period, the real work of governing set in and the opposition rallied. At times the vitriol coming at not only Obama, but at his family, was so beyond the pale that the natural impulse among many liberals was to circle the wagons around him.

Progressives felt it necessary to clip their own wings, to temper their demands and be restrained in their complaints, lest their fair critique become conflated with the unfair attacks of those opposed to any progressive achievements.

Leaning in could easily come to feel like piling on. There was a whisper in the air, an unspoken insistence, that the role of the left was to uplift a Democratic president rather than to task him.

But this is the presidency. The job is synonymous with pressure. No one who is unequipped to deal with pressure including pressure from people who helped them get elected should seek it.

I remember my own writings in the early days of Obamas presidency. I thought it fair. Much of it was praise and defense of him.

Conservatives would often respond positively to the criticism in my columns, even while making sure that I understood that they disagreed with me on almost everything else. They would say things like, Youre finally beginning to open your eyes or, Youre coming off the Democratic plantation.

Liberals, particularly other Black people, often took my criticisms as traitorous. I was called self-hating, an Uncle Tom and a handkerchief head, a pejorative for a Black person submissive to white people.

I felt that I was simply doing my job to call things as I saw them and to stand up for a set of values, liberal and progressive. But there was a brisk market at the time for Black people willing to criticize Obama. They could say things about him that would be considered racist, or racially insensitive, if coming from a white person.

I saw many Black people give in to the attraction of this check. It was a hustle.

Trying to not be grouped into that cohort became a task unto itself. Learning to turn down some TV appearances from producers who only called after my column had included a critique of the president, but never after it had praised him.

But, this burden of subconsciously modulating responses and demands of a presidency and administration is unfair to liberals and does real harm to liberalism itself.

For progressives to refrain from applying pressure is to abdicate responsibility, because it allows an unnatural imbalance in which the only pressure the president feels is from his staunchest opponents.

With the beginning of the Joe Biden administration, I sincerely hope that liberals have learned this lesson, and I believe that many have.

As Clayola Brown, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, told The Washington Post, it is important not to do what we did with Barack Obama, which is sit back and think now we have it fixed. Its not fixed. Or to sit back and think that the work has been done. Its only started.

We understand that Biden takes office during a time of multiple, major crises facing the country and that he will have to clean up behind a destructive and disastrous Trump administration.

But progress must be made on the issues that progressives care about. When Republicans held power they wielded it without regret and even tried to enshrine it. Now, they would like nothing more than to guilt and scare Democrats into not aggressively pursuing a transformative agenda, hoping to contain them to middling changes as they wait for the time the political winds once again shift in their direction, and they surely will shift.

Democratic politicians too often live under the illusion that if they moderate their aspirations and asks, they can appease the mushy middle of the electorate, often white, that sees no problem or contradiction in voting for Obama one election, Trump the next and Biden the next.

They chase the fickle at the expense of the fervent.

Progressives simply cant afford to let that happen again.

It is not apostasy to demand results from your leaders, elected by your support, on the issues that you care about. Nor is it apostasy to call them out if they are too eager to compromise away any real chance at substantive change.

Republicans are going to resist and obstruct at every turn. That is their strategy. The question is: What are Democrats going to do? What is their strategy?

They must be unflinching and bold, insistent of aggressive policy change, and the media and the public especially those who helped elect them must be similarly unflinching in their reproval.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion | Avoiding the Obama-Era Silence Trap - The New York Times

Ashwani K. Jain, a former Obama administration official who ran unsuccessfully for Montgomery County Council in 2018, announced Wednesday night that he plans to seek the Democratic nomination for governor next year.

Jain, who is 31, is making an expressly generational appeal for votes, assertingin a campaign video, In a state thats becoming younger and more diverse than ever before, voices like mine are growing in Maryland and deserve to be heard, because decisions made about us should not be made without us.

During the course of his 20-minute speech, Jain quickly acknowledged that his youth and inexperience may turn off some voters.

I understand that some will say that this overly ambitious, eager millennial with a baby face and no elected experience is not qualified or ready for this position, he said. But, he argued, elective experience is not the only kind of experience that matters.

Jain becomes the second Democrat to enter the 2022 election for governor, joining state Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot (D) as the only declared candidates. Several Democrats and Republicans are eyeing the race.

Jain held multiple roles during the Obama administration, working at the White House and in the Department of Health and Human Services. He also served as director of outreach for the administrations cancer moonshot, which was headed by then-vice president Joe Biden.

Jain was one of 33 Democrats who sought the four at-large seats on the Montgomery County Council in 2018. He finished a relatively strong eighth in the impossibly crowded field, amassing 19,367 votes and impressing political professionals with his smarts and inspiring life story.

The son of Indian immigrants who grew up in Maryland, Jain was a childhood cancer survivor, who said his illness gave him a higher purpose. He recalled recovering in a hospital and watching young children die and their parents suffer financial ruin.

I turned from survivor to advocate, he said. I found my purpose in public service.

During the 2018 campaign, Jain often told a story about being in the Make-a-Wish program, which grants children with grave illnesses a fantasy wish. Jains was to meet actor Denzel Washington a meeting that took place backstage in 2005 at a Broadway theater, where Washington was starring in a revival of Shakespeares Julius Caesar.

Jain has been a volunteer with the Make-a-Wish organization ever since and a poster of Washington as Caesar hung behind Jain during his announcement video Wednesday, along with a printed sheet of computer paper that said, plainly, Jain for Governor, taped to a whiteboard.

Jain did not participate in Montgomery Countys public financing system for political candidates in 2018, and proved to be a skillful fundraiser. He took in about $233,000 for his council race, including $47,000 from his own pocket. President Obamas Housing and Urban Development secretary, Julian Castro, headlined a fundraiser for Jain during his 2018 campaign. Earlier this year, closing out his campaign account and opening one for his gubernatorial bid, Jain forgave the $47,000 debt.

In his announcement speech, Jain said that he would be the first millennial governor in the U.S. and the first governor of color in Maryland. But he would not be the first young Obama administration veteran to run for governor of Maryland.

In 2018, Krishanti Vignarajah, who had been policy director for first lady Michelle Obama, and Alec Ross, an author and entrepreneur who had been a tech adviser to secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both sought the Democratic nomination for governor. They finished fourth and seventh, respectively, in a nine-candidate field.

Jain may not be the only Obama administration veteran in the 2022 gubernatorial scrum. Two high-profile members of Obamas cabinet former Labor secretary Tom Perez and former Education secretary John B. King Jr. are also contemplating the race.

Jain said that, if elected, he would seek to make state government policies more equitable, would promote diversity in his cabinet, and would seek to eradicate the influence of money in state government and politics.

He invoked Obama toward the end of his announcement speech.

Yes, its true that we are the underdogs in this election, Jain said, but history is shaped by underdogs and those who are told to wait in line including a former community organizer who said, Yes, we can!'

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31-Year-Old Obama Administration Official Launches Bid for Governor Maryland Matters - Josh Kurtz

Charles M. Blow| The New York Times

I remember the Obama years well. There was a massive surge of national pride when Barack Obama was elected. America had done something important. It had overcome a hurdle on its path to racial inclusion. It had dealt a blow to its past.

That was the feeling. But it was just a feeling.

After a brief honeymoon period, the real work of governing set in and the opposition rallied. At times the vitriol coming at not only Obama, but at his family, was so beyond the pale that the natural impulse among many liberals was to circle the wagons around him.

Progressives felt it necessary to clip their own wings, to temper their demands and be restrained in their complaints, lest their fair critique become conflated with the unfair attacks of those opposed to any progressive achievements.

Leaning in could easily come to feel like piling on. There was a whisper in the air, an unspoken insistence, that the role of the left was to uplift a Democratic president rather than to task him.

But this is the presidency. The job is synonymous with pressure. No one who is unequipped to deal with pressure including pressure from people who helped them get elected should seek it.

I remember my own writings in the early days of Obamas presidency. I thought it fair. Much of it was praise and defense of him.

Conservatives would often respond positively to the criticism in my columns, even while making sure that I understood that they disagreed with me on almost everything else. They would say things like, Youre finally beginning to open your eyes or, Youre coming off the Democratic plantation.

Liberals, particularly other Black people, often took my criticisms as traitorous. I was called self-hating, an Uncle Tom and a handkerchief head, a pejorative for a Black person submissive to white people.

I felt that I was simply doing my job to call things as I saw them and to stand up for a set of values, liberal and progressive. But there was a brisk market at the time for Black people willing to criticize Obama. They could say things about him that would be considered racist, or racially insensitive, if coming from a white person.

I saw many Black people give in to the attraction of this check. It was a hustle.

Trying to not be grouped into that cohort became a task unto itself. Learning to turn down some TV appearances from producers who only called after my column had included a critique of the president, but never after it had praised him.

But, this burden of subconsciously modulating responses and demands of a presidency and administration is unfair to liberals and does real harm to liberalism itself.

For progressives to refrain from applying pressure is to abdicate responsibility, because it allows an unnatural imbalance in which the only pressure the president feels is from his staunchest opponents.

With the beginning of the Joe Biden administration, I sincerely hope that liberals have learned this lesson, and I believe that many have.

As Clayola Brown, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, told The Washington Post, it is important not to do what we did with Barack Obama, which is sit back and think now we have it fixed. Its not fixed. Or to sit back and think that the work has been done. Its only started.

We understand that Biden takes office during a time of multiple, major crises facing the country and that he will have to clean up behind a destructive and disastrous Trump administration.

But progress must be made on the issues that progressives care about. When Republicans held power, they wielded it without regret and even tried to enshrine it. Now, they would like nothing more than to guilt and scare Democrats into not aggressively pursuing a transformative agenda, hoping to contain them to middling changes as they wait for the time the political winds once again shift in their direction, and they surely will shift.

Democratic politicians too often live under the illusion that if they moderate their aspirations and asks, they can appease the mushy middle of the electorate, often white, that sees no problem or contradiction in voting for Obama one election, Trump the next and Biden the next.

They chase the fickle at the expense of the fervent.

Progressives simply cant afford to let that happen again.

It is not apostasy to demand results from your leaders, elected by your support, on the issues that you care about. Nor it is apostasy to call them out if they are too eager to compromise away any real chance at substantive change.

Republicans are going to resist and obstruct at every turn. That is their strategy. The question is: What are Democrats going to do? What is their strategy?

They must be unflinching and bold, insistent of aggressive policy change, and the media and the public especially those who helped elect them must be similarly unflinching in their reproval.

Charles M. Blow writes for The New York Times.

See original here:
Blow: Avoiding the Obama-era silence trap - The Register-Guard

During this week's podcast, hosts Daniel Fienberg and Lesley Goldberg also explore HBO Max's next creative chapter and review the oddly light February TV calendar.

Welcome to episode 105 ofTV's Top 5,The Hollywood Reporter's TV podcast.

Every week, hostsLesley Goldberg(West Coast TV editor) andDaniel Fienberg(chief TV critic) break down the latest TV news with context from the business and critical sides, welcome showrunners, executive and other guests and provide a critical guide of what to watch (or skip, as the case may be).

This week's five topics are:

1. HBO Max's next creative chapter.After launching in May and undergoing an executive regime change, the streamer posted big gains in its recently wrapped fourth quarter driven by Wonder Woman 1984 and a Roku deal. This segment explores what the subscriber gains mean and how HBO Max is readying for its next creative incarnation, driven by you guessed it! high-profile IP like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter.

2. In memoriam.This segment pays tribute to the late and legendary Cicely Tyson, Cloris Leachman and Larry King and looks at the long-lasting mark they each made in the TV world.

3. February TV preview.Is it just us or does the list of February premieres seem a little lighter than usual? This segment explores if pandemic-related production delays impacted the release schedule as well as how April is slowly but surely becoming the new January.

4. Showrunner Spotlight. Ahead of third season of Showtime's late-night series Desus & Mero, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero join the podcast this week for an interview that's equal parts funny and insightful. The longtime collaborators and friends discuss their December sit-down with Obama and how that helped evolve Desus & Mero and why their show won't return to the studio anytime soon. Season three, which kicks off Sunday, will feature an interview with Stacey Abrams "a victory lap," per Mero as the hosts navigate a new political era.

5. Critic's Corner.As usual, every episode ends with Dan's guide to what to watch (or skip) in the week ahead. This week, he weighs in onThe Investigation, We Are the Brooklyn Saints and The Lady and the Dale.

Hear it all now onTV's Top 5. Be sure tosubscribeto the podcast to never miss an episode. (Reviews welcome!) You can also email us with any topics or Mailbag questions you'd like to be addressed in future episodes atTVsTop5@THR.com.

Follow this link:
'TV's Top 5': Desus and Mero on Landing Obama and Their Showtime Evolution - Hollywood Reporter