Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.

Kamala Harris was frustrated. The text of a speech she had been given to deliver in Chicago to the nation’s biggest teachers’ union was just another dreary, scripted talk that said little of any consequence.

As Air Force Two made its way to the Midwest over the summer, the vice president told her staff she wanted to say something more significant, more direct. She brandished a Rolling Stone magazine article about the backlash against Florida school officials after new legislation barring the discussion of gender identity in the classroom.

The teachers she was about to address were on the front lines of the nation’s culture wars, Ms. Harris told her staff. They were the same ones on the front lines of school shootings. Just blandly ticking through federal funding for education would not be enough. The plane was just an hour out from Chicago, but she said they needed to start over.