this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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While her two closest competitors John C. Calhoun (31) and John Adam’s (29) aren’t far off, it took them both two terms to reach those numbers.

The most any fellow one term VP had was 19, achieved by George M. Dallas (1845-1849).

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Bonus mildly interesting: Considering the VP has very few constitutionally-defined duties, that also makes her, officially, the hardest-working, most-effective VP in history.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Doesn't that just mean there were more ties due to an evenly divided Senate?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I bet if you sort VPs by tie-breaking votes you’ll be able to find the most evenly divided senates. I almost added this to my post but didn’t want to do any more research or compromise the mildness of the interest of the post 🙃

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I appreciate your dedication to not being too dedicated.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

a very fine line to tread indeed

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it's not a huge personal achievement in her part, just a quirk of her term.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It does. Joe Biden was VP for a lot longer than Harris, but according to the table linked in the OP, he cast 0 tie-breaking votes; if you look at Senate composition during that time, you can see that there was always a very clear majority for one party. Since 2017 it's always been fairly close to 50-50, so there needed only to be a few (if any) senators breaking from their party to create ties, so Pence and Harris got plenty of opportunities to cast tie-breaking votes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gee I wonder why.

I'm actually surprised it's that low.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Probably because the Senate GOP blocked a lot of potential legislation from even coming to a vote, and the GOP in the House spent an indecent amount of time squabbling over who was to be Speaker.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And yet, it's still legal to pay people $7 an hour in 2/3 of the US states.

It's an interesting factoid, but her record leaves a little to be desired, I think.