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Tal Kopan
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Tal Kopan
Co-host, Chronicled: Who is Kamala Harris?
Tal Kopan was co-host of the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2020 podcast Chronicled: Who is Kamala Harris? Kopan is currently the Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for The Boston Globe.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on August 7, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Who is Kamala Harris?
Let me just start by asking why, when you first did, you decided to report on Kamala Harris and the question of who is Kamala Harris?
Well, I was working for the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>.I was their Washington correspondent.And for the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, I had been covering her for a few years.When I started there, she was just a senator, although no one really thought that was going to be her final stop.But she had yet to declare herself as a presidential candidate.Then, of course, she did declare herself as a presidential candidate and she is not, she was not just representing California, but she is s daughter of the Bay Area and very important to our readership back in the Bay Area.
So, when she began to rise and clearly become a national figure, we at the newspaper thought, how can we, not just tell this through individual stories published in the newspaper but really approach this in a robust different way?And we came up with this idea — I say “we,” I should probably give more credit to my colleagues back in San Francisco who were working on our audio team.But they came up with this idea to do a serial podcast, really digging deep into her background.And that was how we came around to <i>Chronicle</i>.
You called it, “Who is Kamala Harris?”And that is a question people are asking at this very moment —
Oh, yeah.
— when she went to the top of the ticket.How hard a question is that to answer?
It’s such an interesting way of putting it.How hard is it?You know, I think some of it depends on who’s listening to the answer.One of the interesting things about Kamala Harris, and you see this already in the presidential race, is that she is very hard to put into a box, so to speak.And that in and of itself is part of her identity, that she is Indian-American.She is Jamaican-American.She is the daughter of immigrants.She was raised in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement as a Black woman.All of those things and more are true about her at the same time.
And so, in some ways the answer to, “Who is Kamala Harris?” is relatively simple.I mean she is all of those things and she is a politician, a savvy one who has risen over the years to where she is.At the same time, it’s a complicated answer.And there are moments where certain parts of her identity have been latched onto more than others or certain audiences who themselves, you know focus, perhaps they see themselves in one part of her, and so they focus on it.
So, in some ways it’s both an easy question to answer and a very difficult one because her self is something, and she is something that America has not necessarily seen a lot of on the national stage.But I believe she would tell you, and I have talked to her many times, she would tell you that she’s all of those things and she’s perfectly comfortable being all of those things.It doesn’t bother her that she has so many different ways you can slice her identity because she is who she is.
Harris as the Daughter of Immigrants
So, let’s go back to the beginning of that life and where that comes from.And as she tells her own story, this sort of unlikely connection between her mom and her dad.What do we take from that, from her parents, from their meeting, from how they are and who she is and who she becomes?
Well, her parents met as students at Berkeley.Her mother, an immigrant from India who had come to pursue her PhD, went on to become a scientific researcher.Her dad, coming from economics, they met, they fell in love.They were active in the Civil Rights Movement that was happening.It was sort of a roiling time in Berkeley in the sixties.They met. They got married.They had her and her sister a couple of years later.And when she was really little, she will tell you and she says on the stump all the time, they were bringing her in the stroller to Civil Rights demonstrations and protests and carrying her around.
At the same time that sort of immediate love story didn’t last.Her parents separated when the girls were relatively young.And she grew up mostly raised by her mother, spending time with her father but mostly raised with her mother as a single mother, her and her sister very tight.So, a lot of things imprinted on her at that young age.The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement was one immediate thing.Her parents, both coming from these different immigrant backgrounds, raising her in those different cultures.She would go on to visit India and Jamaica and visit family during time off from school.
Just the tumult and just explosion of culture that was happening all around her in Berkeley at the time.She was soaking it up as a child.And her mother was very intentionally exposing her to it.And then, also, watching her mother as a single mom trying to raise these two girls, working very hard.Her mother never gave up on her career and continued to contribute research throughout her career.All of those things made a very strong impression on Kamala Harris.
Shyamala Harris, Kamala’s Mother
So, let’s break down some of those things.Starting with her mom who has such an amazing story and seems to have set some example or impression on young Kamala Harris.Can you help me understand where she comes from and how unusual her story is?
It’s quite unusual.And I think it’s hard to remember how unusual her mother’s trajectory is now in sort of a modern lens.Because we have to remember that her mother was living this experience in the ‘60s.So, her mother, as a teenager, essentially, at 19, came to the United States from India to pursue her PhD in science.And this was a time when women were not working outside the home a ton.They were not breaking barriers in science quite yet.This was a difficult choice and it was one that Shyamala’s family did not necessarily endorse.And they expected her to come back and she chose not to come back.She chose to pursue her career in science in the States, ultimately, not to go back to arranged marriage or some of the other things her family might have expected of her.
At the same time, she came from a very well-educated family, obviously, their daughter went on to pursue her PhD.One of Kamala Harris’ relatives was actually a diplomat, a dignitary in India.She learned, not just from the Civil Rights Movement in the States but she learned from her experience knowing her Indian relatives and the non-violence movement that was sort of pioneered in India.All these things were influential on her.But yes, when Shyamala Gopalan came to the United States to pursue her PhD, she was breaking many barriers.
And it wasn’t just the moment she decided to come to the United States.I actually spoke, for some of the coverage I did at the <i>Chronicle</i>.I spoke with one of her contemporaries in science, another woman who was pursuing a science career at the time.And there was a belief that along the way she was passed over for promotions because she was a woman.It was certainly not easy for a single mother, raising daughters in the ‘60s and ‘70s, pursuing a career in, at the time, very much a boys club, as almost everything was.And so, Kamala Harris watched her mother not just be a pioneer but be a mom through being a pioneer.
Do you have any sense of what she gets from the family back in India from, I guess, her grandfather was a civil servant and they’re a Brahman family.Did any of that affect Kamala Harris?
Absolutely.She has talked about, not a ton but she has talked about, in interviews, how visiting her family in India did deepen to her and the culture that she learned, as I mentioned the non-violent protest movement, really was pioneered in India.I mean Gandhi was a big influence on MLK [Martin Luther King Jr.].And so it’s not two disparate things we’re talking about here, the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and traveling back to India.A lot of those things were of a piece.
And her family in India really, you know, contributed to the woman we see today, those experiences.Again, when we talk about Kamala Harris and you pick on one piece of the puzzle, those are important threads to follow.But we have to remember that, you know, each thread gets woven into a fabric.So, it is part of the fabric that was woven into her childhood.
Shyamala Raised Her Daughters to Understand Their Black Identity
I mean it’s interesting, too, because her mom seems to recognize that from a young age that her daughters are going to be identified in America as Black girls and that it’s important for them to connect to that part of America and how they are going to be identified.Can you help me understand what she did in that regard and how that would have affected her?
Absolutely.Kamala Harris wrote about this in her autobiography that was published in timing, as one does, with her first presidential campaign.But she wrote about this, that her mother recognized very early on that, yes, her daughters were multiracial but especially at that moment in America, they would be seen as Black girls.And when, even after she divorced her father, who was a Black man in America, you know, first of all, her mother was certainly not considered necessarily white in America.I mean she was an Indian woman.But they stayed in sort of the Berkeley-Oakland area.They went to the Rainbow Sign, which was just a hotbed of Black activism, of Black culture.
She was raised very intentionally with one foot in, if not both, in the culture that was springing up all around them.You know, Barbara Lee who was one of her mentors and early supporters, well back into California — she’s Barbara Lee the Congresswoman who’s represented Oakland, and herself, a Civil Rights pioneer.You know, Barbara Lee was frequenting many of the same places that Kamala Harris was being brought to as a child.Barbara Lee was going there as a young adult, as a person coming up in the Civil Rights Movement.That’s how steeped Kamala Harris was in this culture that was really springing up in Berkeley.
Growing Up in Berkeley
I mean the other interesting thing about that period, which is the 1970s and where she is, is it seems like a sort of unusual time for her to be growing up, because of the message that she would be getting as a young Black girl about what is possible.I mean, what is the environment that she’s growing up in, in Berkeley and was it unusual in America at that point?
Well, let’s take a step into the future to the 2019 primary when she’s standing on a debate stage and she has, arguably the best moment of her whole presidential campaign, which is taking Joe Biden, her eventual partner in the White House, but at the time her opponent, taking him on for comments he had made about just being friendly with segregationists when he was in the Senate during this time period.And being friendly with them and opposing the idea of desegregation, busing.And Kamala Harris has this moment where she talks about a little girl who was bused to school to desegregate a white school, and her famous line, “And that little girl was me.”
So, we shouldn’t talk about her Berkeley years without talking about that as well, that she was part of a group who was bused to desegregate schools.And she has talked about having a white friend who, you know, her family didn’t want her playing with Kamala Harris because Kamala Harris was Black and mixed race.
So, as much as we can sort of glorify Berkeley as a hotbed of social activism and Black culture and various groups of Black activists all converging on this space, it was also still itself going through a lot of the Civil Rights tumult.And she did experience racism as much as she also experienced a place where she could be herself.It was both.She was very much going through the moment that America was going through of figuring out, you know, post-Civil Rights Act, post-Civil Rights Movement, mid- Civil Rights Movement, how does America work through what was really a convulsion across the country in terms of settling some of these big picture things; they were also happening in very concrete ways in Kamala Harris’ childhood, to her specifically .
So, help me understand then what Berkeley was like at that time, because there was obviously a need for busing for integration.And there had been red lining.What was the environment that she was growing up with at that time?
Berkeley then was not what we think of as Berkeley now.And we see this on the campaign trail all the time, right?The Republicans say a “San Francisco liberal.”Berkeley is seen as perhaps one of the most progressive, Democratic parts of the country.That was not Berkeley at the time.It had been a Republican area.It had, you know—there were parts of the city, Oakland, Berkeley—there’s some fuzziness about exactly what part of the line Kamala Harris grew up on.But there were divisions.There were places that were considered the Black part of town, the white part of town, all those divisions that we saw playing out across America.
And so, Berkeley itself was in the middle of a transformation.Or perhaps Berkeley itself was that beginning of a transformation at the same time that Kamala Harris was growing up in it.So, yes, she had access to these very empowering places of Black culture.But she was also subjected to some, now we consider very backwards parts of American culture where there was if not segregation by law, de facto segregation that was happening as well.
So, we’ve talked about the sort of challenging parts.And I guess on the other side the message that she’s getting when she goes to the Rainbow Sign or the [Ms.] Shelton day care.What is the message that she is getting from that community?
You know, the Rainbow Sign, I believe it was Barbara Lee who described it in an interview with me and my colleague, it was a place you could just be yourself.And even today when I interview folks like Barbara Lee or others, there aren’t that many spaces in America where Black people say they can feel, just be themselves, just be their Black selves and not feel like they are being judged or have to put on a certain aspect of themselves to fit in.
The Rainbow Sign was a place that Black people felt they could just be themselves and have their art and their culture and their political activism.And so, for Kamala Harris to be there as a child, it’s not something, it’s not necessarily that she was able to articulate in the moment what she was experiencing.But it seeped into her, that sense of, it’s okay to be who you are in this place.And they believed in America it was okay to be who she is.
And so, at the same time she’s learning the painful lessons of segregation, she’s also soaking up that there is this community where it is perfectly acceptable to be just who you are.And today, when I talk to people about, again this idea that you can’t put Kamala Harris into a clean box.When I talk to people from Berkeley, from Oakland, one of the things they emphasize is that is a place where being sort of hard to define in one single way is okay.That Kamala Harris’ childhood, and then return to these communities, to these spaces where there was safety in the idea of being who you are is key to understanding her own comfort now and being all of the things that she is.She grew up in a place where she was encouraged and supported in being many things at once.
It’s interesting.I mean that’s, because that’s how she also cites what her mom tells her, like don’t let other people define you.Be yourself.It does seem to be a central theme for Kamala Harris.
Absolutely.And there is a reason that so much of her stump speech in 2019, so many of her interviews, so many of the times she is just speaking with others, there are so many times that she goes back to stories about her mother.Her mother was incredibly influential in her life in terms of grounding her, in terms of showing what a pioneer looks like, in terms of being, having the foresight to raise her daughter, steeped in Black culture because she knew that America would see them as Black.
So, there is sort of the lines, right?Don’t let anyone tell you who you are.You tell them who you are.There is the sort of truisms that her mother imparted on her.And then there is the bigger picture of just seeing her mother as the woman that she was just so influential in Kamala Harris having the confidence to be the woman that she would become.
There is so much talk in her story from everybody about her mom.Do we have any sense of her dad’s influence on her?
Her dad is less of a figure in her retellings.And best we can tell, their relationship is a little bit more complicated than her relationship with her mother.They do have a relationship.She did visit family in Jamaica.She did spend time with her father.So, it’s not to say that he wasn’t influential on her life.There were some comments he made when she was running for president that she did not consider necessarily helpful.But the attitude was let’s keep that in the family.So, she speaks a lot less about that.
But it’s not that her father wasn’t a part of her life, it’s that it’s a more complicated part of her life.But she did spend time with that side of the family and certainly with him.It’s also woven into who she is.But in terms of a role model, we see her mother as her role model much more than her father.
I mean and I guess it’s the absence of her father in some ways that sets and example because her mom has to have a career, has to raise these kids, has to —
That’s right.Seeing her mother struggle, grapple, deal with the realities of being a single mom at this time, seeing her mother have that experience is incredibly formative for Kamala Harris.Going to a day care, understanding that for her mother to work they needed someone to take care of them, and going to a place that was providing that service for other working moms.Watching her mother try to pay the bills, try to juggle her career, that is as formative for Kamala Harris as anything else.And yes, even though her father was in her life, the fact that he was not shouldering some of that day-to-day burden and by virtue of that her mother was dealing with the realities of being a single mother.That is a formative aspect of her childhood.
Harris’ Time in Canada
And you’ve said that maybe her childhood in Berkeley wasn’t as idyllic as we might imagine or even as she might describe it.But then, when she’s 12, they move and they go to Canada.What do you think is the impact of that?
It’s interesting.The Canada section of her life is one that she doesn’t talk about as much, almost at all.There is one story from those years that she tells a lot, which is when she discovered a friend, in her teenage years, a friend who is being molested.And she wanted to help that friend and offer her a safe space.And she mentions that story a lot in terms of why she ultimately decided to become a prosecutor and in particular, want to go after perpetrators of sexual assault, sexual abuse.
So, that comes from that time period.I think anyone who has been 12, which is all of us, knows that that’s not an easy time in anyone’s life.And so, for her to be uprooted from her community at such a sensitive moment in anyone’s upbringing, experience her teenage years in a foreign place; Canada is not the other side of the world but it was a foreign place for her.She talks about not being able to understand French that was spoken around her.Those years were complicated for her and a challenge for her.
But we understand those years now based on what she said them mostly in terms of how they ultimately influenced her decision to become a prosecutor, to go back to college at a place like Howard University, to re-steep herself, so to speak, in American culture, in America[n] Black culture, coming out of those years in Canada.And ultimately, her mother did return to the Bay Area.And so, it’s not like she was going back to Canada after that time period.It was a very sort of clear moment in her life where she lived there, and it was sort of a clean break on either side that she returned to the Bay Area, as feeling like home.
You talked about her visiting family in India and Jamaica.And here she is moving into Canada, into the class for one year at least it’s in French.I mean does having to be in those different environments shape her or give her skills that you would see for the rest of her life?
For Kamala Harris the answer is always all of it shaped her.And you do see her feel comfortable in lots of different environments.I remember writing in 2019, when she was running for president, writing about how she felt that she could go into the South, a place she has never lived and most Americans would probably consider anathema to the Bay Area, but she felt she could go into the South and have a credible presence among especially the Black community in the South because of the experiences she had, for example, at Howard.
But you also—you don’t see her—it’s not like she wasn’t also aware of the fact that she’s Indian and she felt comfortable in those communities.And one of the things about Kamala Harris that you learn pretty quickly if you follow her closely, is she’s an absolutely amazing cook.She loves to cook.She feels Sunday dinners are incredibly important to her family.And yes, she’s cooking Indian food.She’s cooking food from all over the world.These sound like trivial things but they speak to this bigger picture, which is Kamala Harris considers all of these parts of herself to be formative parts of herself.
And so, that comfort in speaking to different communities and embracing the multitudes of what she is, yes, I think that does come from the time she spent, literally, spending time with all these different parts of herself.
Because we spoke to Wanda Kagan, who was her friend in Canada, I just want to go back to that, to that story, and what you think was the impact on her as an impressionable teenager.
When Kamala Harris speaks about that moment — we do hear her bring it up, even today — it was this realization of, people need support in these moments, that she wanted to offer this friend a safe space.But she also wanted justice for this friend.And when she ultimately decided to become a prosecutor, it really surprised a lot of the people who knew her.And she turned down big law jobs or private law jobs because she was very committed to this idea of attaining justice for people.
And when anything becomes a part of a stump speech, it can sound cheesy.It can sound like a line.But Kamala Harris really did believe in this idea that she tried to make work on the campaign trail, you know, “Kamala Harris for the people.”That when she served as a prosecutor, she was serving in a role of trying to bring folks justice.And when she talks about the work that she did to hold people to account, she also talks about the victims and the families that came into her office, you know, the time she held their hand through tears and heard their stories.As a barrier breaker herself in some of these roles it wasn’t all that common to have a Black prosecutor.A lot of victims of crime are Black themselves.
And so, meeting with families who were used to not being listened to, used to not being believed, giving them that time, those are some of the less explored parts of being a prosecutor.We think about being in court and locking the bad guys up.But for her, that work that she did with the victims and with the families, that she was trying to find justice for, was very important to her.And so, that moment with her friend, I think that’s, that’s the big, formative part of that.It’s about now just getting the bad guys, right, but it’s about justice for the people that the bad guys have hurt.
Harris Attends Howard University
What brings her to Howard?
Howard is, she would probably say the best historically Black college or university, it’s a university, in the country.It’s an excellent school, so that brings her there.But it’s a place, again, where, you know, Black students can feel comfortable being themselves.It’s a place of Black excellence.So, it’s a place that she can be back in touch with that part of herself and feel fostered and supported and immersed in that culture.She joins Alpha Kappa Alpha, which is a historically Black sorority, the first to have been founded, considered very prestigious among the Divine Nine, which is the historically Black fraternities and sororities, although, all of them will tell you that theirs is the most prestigious.
But certainly, she believes hers to be.Again, when we talk about, it’s not Greek life, like a lot of Americans picture it, which is parties and football games and that kind of thing, For the Divine Nine, for the historically Black fraternities and sororities, it is about excellence.It is about being elite among these communities and serving your community.And so, her decision to go to Howard, to join AKA, to become part of this culture, it was about that feeling of excellence, of comfort in your own skin, and about serving the community around you, and really being a leader.That is what the Howard culture was about for her.
Do you think that it gives her or helps to push her into law and into the trajectory that she would go?I mean some people say it was this idea of succeeding inside the system.Is that something she gets from Howard?
She ultimately does walk away from Howard with the idea that she’s going to go to law school and transform the system from within.Another story she likes to tell from her Howard years is that she interned in the very Senate office that she would one day occupy, literally, because that office belongs to California and she interned for the California senator at the time, doing things like answering constituent mail.And she loves to tell the story of how, when she served there she literally, they call it press clips because she literally clipped out of newspapers the relevant stories of the day.And she ultimately, when she becomes a senator she likes to tell her interns about that experience.
But so, you know, the moment in Howard, being in Washington, D.C., experiencing that type of internship, all of those things then contribute to her desire to go into law and, ultimately, into politics.
And some people have talked about that, that environment as being one where you don’t have to worry about being in a box.Do you think that’s part of the experience that Kamala Harris has?
When Kamala Harris was at Howard it was a place, again, that she could feel comfortable in in her own skin, that she was around other aspiring Black leaders from all over the country.But they all came to Howard for the same experience, which is not being the Black student in the class, not being the Black kid in law school.Right? Howard was a place for them, of them.And she, the friends she made, the experiences she had, the activities she did, all of it was built around a supportive environment for the students to feel a place of their own, a place where they could be themselves and not worry about being, you know, a piece of themselves to someone else.
And so, having that experience, steeping herself in American Black culture, because again, we talk about her being multiracial, but from a very young age, she was made aware of the fact that this is how society would see her.Embracing that and feeling supported in that was a big part of what Howard did for her.
Becoming a Prosecutor
So, she goes to law school.And, as she described it, and as we look back on it, that decision to become a prosecutor seems to be a crucial one because it’s one, apparently, her mom doesn’t even agree with.And you help me understand that decision to go that right with her life?
So, she goes to law school and back in the Bay Area, back in San Francisco.And in law school, you can go into any kind of law you want.And she decides to specialize and become a prosecutor.And it really did throw her mother and her family for a loop.But for Kamala Harris it was so much about service, about justice, about recognizing that a community she cared about, a community she felt a part of, was disproportionately impacted by the decisions of prosecutors.The way she tells it, it was a decision built around, how could she help that community, how could she improve prosecution in this country.There’s been a lot of litigation about how much of a reformer she actually was as a prosecutor.But it was a current, a thread throughout her time as a prosecutor that she did look for ways to change the way prosecutions were done.And so, it may have been an act of defiance at the time, but for her it was built around this idea of wanting to serve, wanting to help and wanting to bring justice and really transform something that she saw as incredibly important.
The other thing that’s interesting is the world that she’s walking into, and it won’t be the first time that she is walking into a world that is mostly men, is mostly white.And especially walking into law enforcement at that time, she’s walking into an environment that is very different than Howard.Do you have a sense of what it was that she was walking into as she chooses to become a prosecutor?
You say it is not the last time.Pretty much every space that Kamala Harris has ever walked into, every elected office she has ever won, in some capacity, she is the first person like her to be in that space.She broke barriers every step of her career.And everywhere she went, she was a minority.When she got to the Senate, she is only the second Black woman ever to serve in the Senate.And she was the only Black woman serving in the Senate when she was there.And that’s, you know, a few years ago at this point.We’re not talking about the ‘80s anymore, decades ago.That’s practically today.It is still true today.
So, but yes, you know, decades ago when she becomes a prosecutor, when she graduates law school and starts going into those spaces, she, as a woman, as a Black person, as a multiracial person, as an Asian-American, all the facets of her, she was not surrounded by people like her.She was surrounded mostly by white men.And so, and in law enforcement they viewed her with some skepticism.
She tells a story of, and I can’t remember exactly which office, but she tells a story of being in a meeting about how to prosecute someone.And there’s a mention of the alleged perpetrator’s choice of music, listening to rap music, violent rap music.And Kamala Harris speaks up and she goes, “Well, I listen to that kind of music.Does that make me a suspect?”You know, those types of moments are so important to Kamala Harris.Being the person who can be in the room and say, “I listen to rap music.Does that mean you suspect me of committing crimes?”
That one sort of anecdote tells you a lot about why Kamala Harris fought for access to these spaces and decided to continue to put herself in these spaces where people did not come from the background she came from, because she felt it was so important for people of a background like hers to have a voice in those spaces.
I mean what’s her operating, her MO for dealing with a situation like that?
Well, we see this playing out today all the time, that her identity is attacked or maligned or misconstrued.And people ask the question, you know, how is she going to, how is she going to stomach the ugly stuff that is going to come her way in the presidential.And she will tell you, this is nothing new for her because it’s always been that way for her.She’s always had to deal with underhanded attacks, again, going back to her childhood when it was not all rosy and perfect in America.She was part of desegregation busing.She was part of an experience where, you know, there were white children in her class whose parents did want them to play with her.
This is not new to her.She always knows that it’s not going to be the first or the last time that she experiences the effects of racism or sexism or just ignorance sometimes.So, every one of those times that she dealt with it along the way made her stronger, made her more capable of paring those broadsides, made her more convicted to stay in those spaces.
And she also, you know, there are all these sort of Kamala-isms that those of us who cover her a lot hear her say all the time, but one of the things she always says is that every time she’s the first of someone to be in the room, and she tells others, “Every time you are the first of someone like you to be in the room, make sure you are not the last.”That is part of her driving philosophy as well, that it’s hard to be the first but it’s important to not be the last, to keep that door open for others behind you to help them find their way into those spaces as well.
San Francisco Politics
It sounds like it’s a tough world that she is entering in San Francisco politics.I think that in the podcast it’s described as a knife fight in a telephone booth.
Yes. That is the cliché/truism that anyone from San Francisco politics will tell you, the knife fight in a phone booth line.
So, help me understand what she’s entering when she enters into politics in San Francisco.Because I think that probably outside of San Francisco, and certainly outside of California, people don’t have a sense of what it would be like for her to enter that world.
San Francisco is a population-dense place full of very ambitious people vying for a slice of the pie, just in general.And in politics, certainly so.We have actually entered an unusual moment in California politics today where you see multiple statewide officials, or presumed-to-win-an-election, statewide officials from Southern California.For a long time Northern California has dominated politics and it’s partly because of the intensity of the Bay Area as a political hotbed.That’s where a lot of the political money is.That’s where the donors are.That’s where a lot of the ambitious people are.That’s where the voters are very attuned to politics.
When I was working at the <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, the readership often felt somewhat disinterested in Washington, even though I covered Washington for them because local politics in San Francisco is so robust, so intense.City council, mayor, that is where a lot of the action turns to.And so, when you’re running for citywide office in San Francisco, this is not some sleepy, City council race, sleepy DA race, you know, in small town America, I mean any office in San Francisco is, or the Bay Area is an intensely fought race.
And when she decides to run for district attorney, she is one of three candidates—the incumbent, who at the time she ran was getting a reputation for being too soft on crime for some of his decisions to not go after others.And then she is running against another candidate, both men of course, another candidate, you know, who has the backing of the police unions, is really running to be tough on crime.And so, she makes the decision, not saying that it is not true to herself, but she ends up running as sort of the middle-of-the-road option.
So, she has to convince voters—when she decides to seek the seat, she has to convince voters that she will be tougher on crime than the incumbent but, as she ends up putting it, smarter on crime than her opponent who is running as the tough-on-crime lane.
Harris is Hard to Place on the Ideological Spectrum
It’s so interesting because this question of her political identity follows her sort of throughout her career.And we’re talking about boxes and people go back to that and they say, was she progressive?Was she a tough-on-crime person?I mean from the beginning of her political career what’s that identity that she has?
To this day the question of whether Kamala Harris is a, you know, politically savvy but flexible person who adapts her values to the needs of the moment, is she that or is she just sort of a finger in the wind politician, morphing herself to the exigencies of the circumstance?To a certain extent that is always a question with politicians because, you know, everything evolves over time.When she runs for her first office, we see this pitch that she is going to be smart on crime.It is coming off the ‘90s.It’s the early 2000s.We’ve had a very, a moment of real tough on crime kind of activity at the national level.
There’s a question as to whether that’s backfiring.When you look at those years you have to look at them in the context of what was happening across the country.So, in some ways, when Kamala Harris runs and then wins the DA’s office, she is progressive for the moment.She is pioneering.She does pioneer approaches that end up becoming picked up nationally in terms of diverting certain kinds of criminals into programs and perhaps not punishing them in terms of tackling.
She always talks about wanting to get to the root cause of things.So, the question of, is truancy in school a contributing factor to people who ultimately end up committing crimes?She decides to tackle the issue of truancy, of threatening the idea that parents could be held criminally liable if their kids missed too many days of school.Ultimately, statistically, that program works.You do see a decrease in truancy when she pioneers that program.Others in the Bay Area pick it up.
Then some parents do actually get prosecuted on a criminal level, none by her but in other Bay Area at the time.Twenty years later when she is running for office, people look back and they say, “Oh.Were you criminalizing parents who couldn’t get their kids to school.”And it becomes a question for her in the 2019 primary.So, when you look at those years that’s some of the complicating factor that she was doing things that, at the time, were really pioneering and were progressive.She also did things at the time that were perhaps not as progressive as someone in 2019 would have wanted her to be, with the benefit of hindsight.
And so, it’s always hard to tease out the things that she was doing in the context of the moment she was doing them versus 20 years later when we look back on them, is that the approach someone today would have taken?And she struggles with that in defending her record.Arguably in a way that was much harder for her in 2019 at a time of an ascendent Black Lives Matter movement of real, raw reassessment in this country of how we approach things like criminal justice.Even just in the four years since that race, the country has moved again and the new lens through which people are looking at her time as district attorney has changed and perhaps in a way more favorable to her and her record.
So it’s kind of hard to assess those years because our orientation as a country to the question of what a prosecutor should look like is also everchanging, just as it was in the moment she was occupying that role.
Yeah. It’s interesting.I mean it’s interesting, too, just the way she writes about it, which is, she talks about data and she talks about what’s going to solve—the solution.And it’s not necessarily the way we talk about politics at a national level, which is a little more about ideology and it’s almost like a different language.
To get to know Kamala Harris is to know that a little bit of the nerdiness is not actually an act, that Kamala Harris does actually like to geek out over things like data and I still remember, you know, interviewing her and her just trying to sell me on covering her interest in quantum computing, which I never actually did.But sometimes, when you don’t actually spend time with her, when she is trying to sell herself that way on a national stage, it doesn’t always come across as authentic.But Kamala Harris actually can be a bit of a nerd over things like data.
So, yes, you see that.You know, in trying to defend her record and just talking about her record, yes, there was an interest in digging into data, to material things.Her staff now will tell you that she really demands that of her staff, too.Give her, give her concrete application of policy, not just esoteric policy.Kamala Harris is very interested in, yes, policy, but how does it relate to everyday Americans’ lives.How does it relate to someone’s life?What is the effect of that choice going to be on different kinds of people.That is something she is always very keenly aware of and was something she was thinking about at the time as a prosecutor.
The Murder of Isaac Espinoza
How searing a moment was the Officer Espinoza decision for her when she is just 100 days into—
That is probably one of the most significant moments of her career in San Francisco.And in some ways it wasn’t even about the decision not to seek the death penalty itself.She pledged not to do it and it was not likely that that sentence would have even been given if she had actually pursued it.That moment is more about her learning a perhaps hard-learned, hard-won lesson about how to approach some decisions and some mistakes she made in terms of just the empathy, the sequencing the sort of politicking of a decision like that.
You know, in hindsight she learned a lot from the impact of not discussing it with the families first, with the officers first.Just again, the empathetic steps, perhaps the politically-savvy steps that in hindsight she perhaps wishes she had gone through.It wasn’t just about not seeking the death penalty.It was the way she did it felt like a broadside to some really key constituencies.And later in her career when she is attorney general of the state, we see her really having mended the fences with the law enforcement unions in the communities of law enforcement officials.But that moment she really lost them, in a way.
So, understanding the Officer Espinoza episode is, the big picture is really that she learned a lot of lessons, that it’s not just the decisions you make but how you make them and how you make it known to others that you’ve made them.
Could you describe what happened at the funeral and what the backlash was like?
Interestingly, a key figure in the moment at the funeral and the backlash, a key figure is a woman who would ultimately become her fellow senator, Dianne Feinstein.And Dianne Feinstein who throughout her career, you know, she’s a Democrat but she was a little bit more of an old school conservative Democrat than Kamala Harris when she gets to the Senate.And Dianne Feinstein was much more plugged in with the law enforcement unions — of course, having been mayor of San Francisco herself.And she gets up at the funeral and she delivers this line that everyone perceives to be a dig at Kamala Harris as DA.And there is a standing ovation for Dianne Feinstein.
And it’s really clearly a message to Kamala Harris in that moment that her decision not to seek the death penalty and the way she’s handled it is not appreciated by some key constituencies.And it’s, you know, a really key moment in her learning as a politician and in her career that she had to really work to come back from, to re-earn the trust of the law enforcement community that is so essential to her work as a prosecutor.
Do you think that it makes her more cautious?
Certainly throughout her career Kamala Harris gets a reputation over time as sometimes being too cautious.And perhaps it does go back to this moment where, this moment and others where she gets burned by a decision she made.Sometimes being cautious is an asset for a politician.It makes you think through your decisions and how you are going to sell them.Being overly cautious is not necessarily an asset for a politician.And has wavered between those two sort of sides of the line at various moments throughout her career.
Harris’ Attorney General Years
Because we see two different stories of the attorney general years, of how she—because we are now at the center of her campaign that she’s talking about a lot.And other people say during those years she was sort of, she did what she could to stay out of the most controversial issues, whether it’s legalizing marijuana or investigating police shootings.What’s your take on her years as attorney general?
Again, when we consider various moments in Kamala Harris’ career, you always have to make an effort to understand them in context.And it’s a mixed bag.Most of those years are always a mixed bag.There are things she did that were forward leaning, that were creative, that were barrier breaking, that set examples for others.And there are times where she pulled a punch that others would have liked her to take.You know, as attorney general, she made a really gutsy decision to hold out during a massive mortgage settlement, after the foreclosure crisis, massive settlement with the big banks.
California was only going to get a few billion dollars in the initial settlement proposal.She held out. She held out, did not take the settlement, and ultimately got a lot more money for California and other states; she helped other states get a lot more money out of the banks in that mortgage settlement.That was gutsy.That was daring.That was Kamala Harris at her best in terms of being courageous and getting something out of it.
There is also a moment where her team puts together a proposal to go after OneWest, which later, Steven Mnuchin, a member of the Trump administration, is affiliated with, go after them specifically.The report itself feels pretty strongly that she had a case to make.And ultimately, she makes the decision not to do it.Now, she later told us at the <i>Chronicle</i> that she felt the law was structured in a way that it wouldn’t have been a winnable case.And she stands by her decision not to go after it.But that’s, you know, an example of the type of thing that then gets second-guessed for the rest of her career.
There are several moments where she makes a decision that, you know, when it comes up ten years later, she has a hard time defending.But it’s always that sort of mixed bag, right?She does some things that are really gutsy and barrier breaking and there are other things that she takes a pass on.You know, to a certain extent you have to wonder if that’s true for every person and politician.But yes, there are always things you can go to in her record that paint the picture either way.You can paint the picture of a really gutsy, really innovative, novel, holder of the office.And you can paint a picture of someone who is a little too tentative sometimes.
Harris’ Senate Years
That’s interesting.She’s on a real upward trajectory and ends up running for the United States Senate and wins.And the years when she does it is 2016, which is also the year of Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.Can [you] help me understand that moment when she wins and also Hilary Clinton loses and Donald Trump is winning?
So, one important piece of context to remember here is that Kamala Harris is running in California, which is the latest time zone in the county.It’s the last polls to close.So, by the time her race is called, it is clear that Hilary Clinton is not going to be the first woman president.And for folks on the East Coast who are watching the returns, it took a while for that to settle in.
But by the time Kamala Harris is ready to go on stage and give her victory speech, having won the Senate seat, it is clear this is the way the trend is going.And she says that in that moment she scrapped the speech she thought she would be giving, winning the Senate seat alongside Hilary Clinton taking office, and in that moment it sort of dawns on her that she is going to go to Washington for the first time to represent California under a Donald Trump White House, who stands against pretty much everything she stands for.The two could arguably not be more dissimilar.And she gives this speech of fighting, of taking the fight to Donald Trump.And, you know her words in hindsight are very poignant and very powerful in terms of the prescience for the type of role she would ultimately play in Donald Trump’s Washington when she gets to the Senate.
I mean how does it shape the senator who she would become?Because presumably she would have been a very different Senator under a Hilary Clinton presidency.How does that shape Senator Kamala Harris?
I truly wonder if in some alternate timeline Hilary Clinton the presidency and Kamala Harris comes to Washington and it’s a Democratic sweep and she is just a rank and file, Democratic senator in a Democratic Washington, I wonder at what point she would have become a household name if at all.Because as much as the Donald Trump years were probably, I would imagine, actually painful for her on some level, right?The policies that Donald Trump put into place during his presidency truly went against everything Kamala Harris would have fought for.So, I think on some level those were actually very difficult few years on sort of a personal basis.
At the same time, in a sort of naked political calculation, they were tremendous for her politically.The way that, in a Donald Trump and Republican Washington, the role that Democratic senators have to play in that moment is pretty limited.Their bills aren’t going anywhere.They’re not writing the laws.What they have is the ability to question the officials who come before them.That’s pretty much the only real strategy that Democratic senators or the opposing party senators get in that kind of an environment.
It just so happens that that role played incredibly well to Kamala Harris’ strengths.And so, you know, 2017, after Washington changes over and Donald Trump takes office and the new senators are seated, the first order of business is to try, the Republicans to try to confirm all of Donald Trump’s nominees.And to do that, they have to sit for confirmation hearings.And so, Kamala Harris immediately starts making a name for herself as a very sharp questioner of some of these appointees.And we’ve got all these storylines that really play to her base of knowledge in addition to background as a prosecutor, as a lawyer, who is very familiar with questioning witnesses and cross examining and trying to trip people up.That is part of her strength.
It’s also, you know, a moment where Donald Trump has come into office largely on an anti-immigration platform.You know, Kamala Harris is a child of immigrants herself, comes from a state with the most immigrants in the entire country, has made a forward-leaning and progressive immigration policy part of her identity.And there she is, questioning Donald Trump’s nominee to be Homeland Security secretary.And then, once he is confirmed, which he ultimately was, questioning him on decisions she doesn’t agree with.
You know, there she is questioning Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s attorney general, on what became a huge storyline of how much Russia was involved or tried to be involved in Donald Trump’s campaign.And she starts having all these very memorable moments, questioning these officials.Jeff Sessions, in particular, had a very hard time standing up to her questioning.John Kelly, who was the first Homeland Security secretary, he didn’t stammer the way that Jeff Sessions did but he really bristled and took issue with her level of questioning in a way that really became a moment.
And so, immediately she makes a splash.And that really continues throughout the Trump years.You then move on to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings when the Supreme Court seat comes up and there’s all the questions about Christine Blasey Ford.And in all of these moments, not only is Kamala Harris part of them but she emerges as one of the top questioners, that really can in some ways get these officials in a sort of defensive position that is gold for the Democrats.
So, as much as the Donald Trump years were about a set of policies that ran against everything Kamala Harris would have wanted to see — it was the exact opposite— they were also a moment where she really got to make a splash on the national stage through the role she was able to play, which was interrogator.
Yeah. I mean it really is amazing when you think about the Kavanaugh moment and if her career began with Wanda Kagan and abuse in high school.And she’s on a stage that’s taking on that same issue.
Absolutely.And you know, we still see today a credibility on the issue of defending and helping victims of sexual assault, of reproductive rights, which also became a key line of questioning with Brett Kavanaugh.One of her most memorable questions to him was asking if he can think of any law that regulates a man’s body the way laws regulating abortion does.That presages what we see today in terms of her national profile.Those moments play to her strength.
The other aspect of what played to her strength, not just her experience as a lawyer but I remember talking to Mazie Hirono for the podcast series we did, and Cory Booker.The two of them are both more recent arrivals in Washington.Cory Booker is a Democratic senator from New Jersey.Mazie Hirono is a Democratic senator from Hawaii.The three of them ended up being the three most junior members of the Judiciary Committee.They also ended up being the Democratic members of color on the Judiciary Committee.
When you spend a long time in the Senate, as many of the rest of the Judiciary Committee had, you kind of fall into a bit of a routine in terms of the way you question officials.There’s a reverence for the Senate way that we see, you know, for example, in Joe Biden, when he ultimately takes office.There’s a respect for history and tradition.When Kamala Harris gets to the Senate, she’s immediately thrown into a lot of these hearings.But she’s brand new.She’s never served in a legislative body before in her career.She’s been in politics, but Kamala Harris has always been an executive.
So, she comes to the Senate.She’s got her lawyer background.She’s got her experiences as a multiracial daughter of immigrants from Berkeley.And she also doesn’t have this sort of sense of tradition.And so I talked to Mazie Hirono about how the three of them would sort of wait as the questioning goes in order of seniority down the dais to the end where these three of them sit, these three barrier breakers in their own right, these three politicians who don’t approach it the same way.
And so, I say all of this to get at the fact that Kamala Harris wasn’t just asking sharp questions but she was doing it in a way that was distinctive from a lot of her peers.And so, those breakthrough moments weren’t just about her training and her policies but also a demonstration but sort of a new guard that had arrived in the Senate and thought about using the vantage point of questioning in a new way.
Harris’ 2019 Presidential Run
That’s really interesting.I mean, and her profile is raised very quickly to the point where by 2019 she makes the decision she is going to announce running for president.I mean, help me understand that decision and what that says about Kamala Harris and where she is when she announces.
There are lots of ways to compare Kamala Harris to Barack Obama.There are lots of ways to show how they are different.But her decision to announce that she is running for president in 2019, two years after she got there, basically, instantly draws Barack Obama comparisons because he did a similar thing — not two years, but he came to the Senate, served a relatively short amount of time, and ran for president.One thing to remember for both of them is that political opportunity is all about moments.And so if we go back to that alternate timeline where Hilary Clinton had become president, Kamala Harris is never announcing a campaign for president two years after she gets to Washington, because Hilary Clinton would be going for a second term and, you know, Kamala Harris would be waiting until open primary comes around again.
But she got to Washington under Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton tried and failed to defeat him in 2016.It is a Democratic free for all to try to defeat him in 2020.And Kamala Harris was an ambitious politician who is riding a wave of public attention and really has captivated the public.And honestly, she would have been insane to not try in that moment.I mean it was just—any political calculation would tell you, if she ever wanted to run for president, this was going to be one of the better moments for her to do it.Otherwise, she was going to have to wait perhaps four, eight years.Who knows how the pendulum is going to swing.Is she going to fade into obscurity, et cetera, the same reason Barack Obama really seized on 2008.
And it’s also important to remember that for people like Obama or for Kamala Harris, for any politician who has ever had to break barriers, to be the first person like them, there were so many people along the way that told them a version of, “Wait your turn.You’re not ready.You’re not right for the moment.”You know, again, Kamala Harris’ at the time, colleague from California, Sen. Feinstein, same deal.We know her today as having been a legend.But on the way to becoming a legend are many people telling you, “No. Not right now.You’re not right for it.”
None of those barrier breakers get where they are if they listen to the people who tell them to wait their turn.And they know that.People like Kamala Harris.Kamala Harris herself knows that if she waits for someone to give her an opportunity, she is never going to get it.You have to go after it.And so, when she makes the decision to run in 2019, ultimately we know it was not successful, right?She didn’t end up winning that primary.But I think she knew she had to go for it in the moment.
Of course, the criticisms of her having just arrived in Washington and immediately jumping in, those criticisms are valid.But I think the alternative was a choice she couldn’t live with.
And she starts out, that campaign starts out with a lot of energy —
Yes.
— for the first rally and being ahead and just the punditry saying that she has a good chance.What happens?
She instantly becomes a contender as soon as she announces, she falls into the top tier of candidates.She had an incredible kickoff rally in Oakland.Tens of thousands of people cheering.She’s riding high, really through the first debate or two.First debate at least she has the moment with Joe Biden on the debate stage.A couple of things happen.
Joe Biden enters the race a little bit later than a lot of the initial—you know, Kamala Harris jumps in right around Martin Luther King Day in January, very intentionally.A lot of the candidates declare in the early, mid-January, early February timeline.Joe Biden gets in a little bit later.But Joe Biden is the favorite from the moment he enters the race, in every poll, he’s always the favorite.And anyone who wanted to be successful against Joe Biden in the primary, had to have a way to overcome him.And Kamala Harris came close.She tried on that debate stage, where she went after him on the issue of race.But then we start to see her stumble.And once she becomes one of those top two or three contenders, everyone else is going to train their fire towards her because they want to be the one that ends up going head to head with Joe Biden.
And so, we see her have this bump as she sort of rises, rises, rises, has this great moment — she gets a bump out of the debate.And then the next debate, everyone come for, and [then-Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard comes for her and starts dragging up some of the parts of her record that she has the hardest time defending in terms of criminal justice, in terms of some of her, at the time tough-on-weed positions that don’t really jibe with where America is on marijuana today.
You know, that question of, yeah, you might have made the right decision in the moment ten, 20 years ago, but it’s not the decision that voters want to hear today.She struggles to explain some of those on the debate stage.It’s a crowded primary.All the politicians are sort of competing for a very narrow slice, you know, they all want health care.So, they have to sort of parse and slice and dice exactly how their health care plan is different than these five people to their left and these five people to the right.And we see Kamala Harris try to triangulate some of that with health care in particular and supporting Medicare for all but then maybe walking that back a little bit and trying to be closer.
And she doesn’t really stick the landing on many of those moments.And she struggles to explain how her plan is clear.And she starts to come across as one of those sort of finger-in-the-wind politicians who is trying to adapt to the dynamic as it goes and not really grounded in her convictions.
Harris Chosen as Vice President
… Why is she chosen to be on the Vice Presidential ticket?
So, she closes up her primary.So, she closes up her campaign.So, do many others.The field narrows as it does.We get the last few contenders.And Joe Biden is running away with it and going to be the nominee.You know, then we hit the pandemic.We hit the outcry of sadness and protest with the killing of George Floyd.We enter a completely new era in American consciousness between the time she ends her campaign and the time Joe Biden is accepting the nomination and looking for a vice presidential candidate.
You know, Joe Biden has pledged to name a woman as his vice president.There is a lot of pressure on him for that to be a Black woman for the message it would send in terms of, you know — Joe Biden’s age was already an issue in 2020 and he, some people think he pledged to be a one-term president.He never made that promise.But he did promise to be a bridge.That was how he put it.And so, seen as part of that was this idea that he could name a running mate who would be historic in a way that his candidacy would not be.That he could use the choice he had of who to run with to send a really clear message to some key constituencies.So there is that context.
And on top of that, Joe Biden is sort of famous for wanting people he’s comfortable with, being an incredibly committed family man, that his family is super important to him.And so he’s weighing his political options.He’s weighing his personal options.He has been vice president himself.Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president.He understands that relationship.Although there were breaks in the relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, we also know that they were close.And he wants a relationship with a vice president to be similar, someone he can be close with and have a trusted advisor that can be that bridge.
So, all those things are swirling in Joe Biden’s mind.And when you draw up the short list of people who can check that box, there aren’t that many of them.And Kamala Harris is absolutely one of them.Yes, she checks the box as a woman.She checks the box as a Black woman, as a multiracial woman.Again there is a very cynical, pure political calculus way of looking at it.But she also knew Joe Biden’s son, Beau [Biden], who died of brain cancer, who was attorney general in Delaware when Kamala Harris was attorney general in California.And they worked together on some of these issues where all the state AGs kind of band together.So, it is also an incredibly important factor in her favor that she knew Beau.
Now, she was not instantly accepted by the Biden family.There are some people will tell you that Jill Biden really did not forgive her for that moment on the debate stage the year prior, where Kamala Harris was very careful to say that she was not calling Joe Biden a racist, but to the rest of the world it kind of looked like she was.And Jill Biden was furious that her husband was portrayed that way and really did hold that against Kamala, all the reporting indicates, really did hold that against Kamala Harris, all the reporting indicates.
But, you know, at the end of the day, again, with this relatively short short list of qualified women who would be up to the campaign, who would legitimately bring something to the table as vice president, as a running mate, who click with Joe Biden in a way that he’s looking for, few can compete with that, and ultimately, none competed with that.And Kamala Harris was the clear choice to fit all the things that Joe Biden was looking for in a running mate.
Harris’ Adjustment to the Role of Vice President
She had been running her own office when she was in the Senate.But even more as a prosecutor, able to make decisions—
Yep.
—being able to decide whether to bring a case or drop charges.And she walks into the vice presidency, which is a position without that much authority and power.How much of an adjustment was it for her to walk into being vice president?
Being vice president went against almost everything Kamala Harris had experienced in her political career.I remember talking to her when she was in the Senate about serving in a legislature for the first time.And she told me how much she missed the executive branch because she missed being able to be the one who just puts a plan into action.
The vice presidency, although it is an executive office, you are not the decision maker.And the vice presidency, you are not the brand.So, Kamala Harris walks into the vice presidency and has neither of the things that have stimulated her and driven her in politics.Her job as vice president is to represent Joe Biden in the presidency and put a completely united front up with him in public.And she certainly can have an influence behind the scenes, and she does.By all accounts she did.She has influenced Joe Biden with their private conversations, with the questions she has asked in meetings that they have held together.But to the public, they are a united front and her job is to hold up Joe Biden, even when the policies he’s pursuing are not the policies she would have liked.
The Republicans very strategically knew that they could go after Kamala Harris because she was a less defined entity.And if they were going to get some knocks in on the White House, it was probably going to be her.So, she walks into an environment where all of the opposition wants to knock her down a peg.And she has very few tools to counter that because her job is not to defend herself.It’s to defend Joe Biden.You could still argue that perhaps there could have been better ways to handle it than some of the decisions she made along the way.But it was a very difficult role to step into from the outset.
Harris Takes on the Root Causes of Migration
I mean it’s a difficult role.And then she ends up with this portfolio of the root causes of migration, which becomes the things that she’s identified with in those first years in the Lester Holt interview.I mean how does that happen and what was the effect of that?
Basically her introduction to the publics ends up being Joe Biden tasking her with, in his mind, what he did as vice president, which is build these relationships with other countries, take on a responsibility like liaising with the northern triangle countries, which are the countries in Central America that really send a lot of, at least at the time, sent a lot of the migrants to the U.S.The big picture take on why migration happen is this complicated interaction of push factors that send people out of those countries, pull factors that appeal to them from the U.S.It’s this big thing that you can spend decades working on.
That’s all true.I’ve covered immigration; that’s all true.It is a complicated set of factors that drive migration.But Joe Biden assigns that, essentially, to Kamala Harris.Could be a good fit.She’s the daughter of immigrants.She was a really thoughtful voice on this when she was in the Senate.But it coincides with a rise in migration at the southern border, with Republicans really seeking to go on offense on the issue because Republicans really, for the past, upwards of a decade, have seen it as an issue that benefits them over Democrats.They are much harsher in their perspective on what border security and immigration policy in the U.S. should look like.And certainly, that was a key feature of Donald Trump’s presidency.
So, instantly, you have this mix of the border as a potential weak spot for the administration that Republicans are eager to go after.Kamala Harris gets that assignment, and then her team started working very hard to try to distance her from it.And they insisted that her job was not the border, her job was the root causes.And that’s true.But it’s a distinction that probably doesn’t mean a whole bunch to the average American voter.And she and her staff spent several months, instead of talking about what they were doing on the issue, the spend several months trying to explain to the media and the public why, no, it wasn’t the border, you know.
And just from a public relations standpoint, that’s not a very effective position to find yourself in.If you are not even talking about the issue you’re trying to explain.“No, no, no. That’s not ours. This, this is ours.”It became about that instead of her articulating a policy, it became about litigating what she was and wasn’t doing.So, that’s how it starts.And then, ultimately, the posture of the Biden White House is, as far as Democrats go, on the more conservative side of Democratic policies towards immigration.And it really carries on some talking points that probably are not what a Kamala Harris White House would have pursued itself.
And so she then becomes the messenger for these set of policies that probably aren’t hers.And again, there are different ways she could have potentially approached that.And you can do all the Monday-morning quarterbacking that you want to do on whether she handled it well.But it culminates in this trip—again, Republicans are crying, “Go to the border.Go to the border.Why haven’t you gone to the border?”And again, it’s this defensive, “Well, I’ve been to the border many times.I come from California.I don’t,” you know—and not wanting to play into the trap.
So, it culminates with this trip to Central America and this interview with Lester Holt, where she very clumsily handles those questions and delivers a message that comes across as awkward, maybe because it’s not the message that she ultimately wanted, of, “Don’t come.”You know, that’s the policy. “Don’t come to the border.”That’s a policy that administrations, Democratic, Republican have tried for years.It really is not an effective immigration strategy, immigration experts will tell you.But that is what they said.
And so, again, a confluence of things culminate in the Lester Holt interview of her sort of radiating a distaste for the assignment that people can pick up on, and not very effectively communicating what the strategy is while being assailed by opponents trying to make hay of it.And it is not her finest moment as vice president.
Challenges Inside the White House
And it really sticks with her.And it’s sort of amazing when you think about where she is right now.The way that’s she’s described in Washington, especially but also in the polls, in the months and years after that, and the talk about should be replaced on the ticket.And is she holding Joe Biden back.I mean help me understand how she came to be seen, up until rather recently, in Washington.
The first two to three years of the Biden administration were really rough for Kamala Harris.I don’t think there is another way to put it in a number of ways.She, as we talked about, the vice presidency is tough role.She comes into the office, not having worked in Washington very long.She doesn’t have the decades of loyal staff that Joe Biden does that she can bring with her.Her staff, when she gets to the vice presidency, a lot of them are new to her.She has a few key people that have served her a long time and really get her.
But she is also inheriting a lot of staff from the Joe Biden campaign, trying to staff up positions she never had to have before, trying to bring in people with perhaps experience in the office but not much experience with her.Some former staff of hers have chafed at her leadership style.I should also say that I’ve talked to some former staffers of hers who really appreciated her leadership style.But there has always been a question hanging around her as to how good of a boss she is.And there is a lot of turnover in her office right away and some staff who aren’t a great fit.
So that talking point takes hold, that she is bleeding staff.Perhaps there are problems in the office.She’s, as we see in the Lester Holt interview and other interviews, she’s a little bit awkward sometimes in defending the positions of the Biden White House while staying true to him.She’s keenly aware that her only power in the vice presidency comes from the trust that Joe Biden places in her.So, you know, if you’re talking about the “first, do no harm” principle, her first do no harm is she can do no harm to the relationship with Joe Biden.That has to be her first responsibility if she wants to stay effective as vice president.And that means sometimes doing harm to herself, because she can’t stick up for herself in the same way when she is maintaining that.
You know, and there is a whole right-wing ecosystem that is sitting there waiting for any moment that she stumbles, they can amplify it because again, Joe Biden is such a defined entity in the American consciousness that the opportunities for Republicans that want to go after them, the opportunities are really with her.And so, every time she says something strange or out of context or she stumbles in a speech, every time that 30 seconds gets clipped and made viral.And so, there is this whole swarm of factors that started to take hold that, you know, these arguments that she is not a good boss, that she’s not a good decision maker, that she’s not a good speaker.
All these talking points start to take hold and she really struggles to fend them off.So, there aren’t really many wins for her.And arguably, that continues all the way up to the Dobbs decision that overturns Roe v. Wade.And that is the moment, perhaps doesn’t reset her whole vice presidency but that is the first time we get to see her go on offense a little bit in the vice presidency.After the Dobbs decision overturns Roe v. Wade, Kamala Harris takes on the issue of abortion for the Biden administration.And that is the first time where all those different factors we talk about actually play in her favor in the vice presidency, where she has long been on this issue an effective communicator.She knows the abortion rights groups.She had been a leader on this conversation, going back to her time in California.
Joe Biden is not an effective communicator on this issue.It is not his strong suit.He struggles to even say the word abortion.He struggles to — while he generally is an abortion rights supporter, he struggles with how to explain that with his deeply held Catholic faith.
Another thing that happened in this time period around the Dobbs decision is they pick up a seat in the Senate.They go from a 50/50 Senate to a 51/49 Senate, which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it frees Kamala Harris up from having to break a lot of ties in the Senate.I talked to her sort of at the halfway mark of her vice presidency and she and I talked about —she told me how much it had kept her off the road, which is what she wanted to be doing as the vice president.But she had to stay in Washington in case there was a tie, because the vice president has to break the tie.
So, getting that extra seat in the Senate at the same time that the Biden administration needs a road warrior to go out and sell the abortion rights message around the midterms, it all comes together.And like I said, it’s a moment where the confluence of factors actually plays to Kamala Harris’ strengths.And so you begin to see her get that confidence back, get the ability to change the narrative around her a little bit as she becomes the administration’s de facto messenger, the top Democrat messenger on abortion rights, which is arguably the top issue now for Democrats.
That is the one thing that you could say went right for her, again, in a sort of pure, political calculation view that went right for her in the vice presidency.
Biden Stumbles and Harris Steps Up
But it is almost like she is preparing for something that she doesn’t know is going to happen.And it does on that debate night when Joe Biden goes out and she has to go on to cable television right after it, to be a spokesman.Help me understand that moment where so many people who had stopped paying attention to her after the Lester Holt interview notice her again.
Until a short time ago, earlier this summer, until then all the pundits would have told you, “Presidential debates never make a difference in the trajectory of the election.”I don’t think we can say that anymore because Joe Biden’s presidential debate with Donald Trump is probably, I’ll leave it to the historians to give me a fact check on this, but I would argue probably the most consequential debate in American history outside of, perhaps, Richard Nixon’s, probably right up there.It’s a disaster.It’s an absolute disaster for Joe Biden.There is no way around it.
It rattled—you know, Republicans came away from that debate saying, “We told you all this time.”It fit exactly into the narrative the Republicans have been spinning about Joe Biden since he took office, that he was too old, that he wasn’t with it.There were a lot of arguments against that up until the debate.It really rattled Democrats who thought that Republicans were just, you know, making it up.And maybe Republicans were making it up and they got lucky that it turned out to be true in that moment.
But all of a sudden, Democrats, whether or not they still believe in Joe Biden’s abilities, now fear that the American public will never again believe in Joe Biden’s abilities and the election will slip away from them.So, yes, in the moment, all of a sudden, all eyes turn to Kamala Harris.And as soon as there is talk of the possibility even that Joe Biden step aside, Kamala Harris is, in every way you write it down on paper, the logical next choice.She is the vice president, which makes her the absolute, most qualified Democrat for the position, because you don’t get more qualified to be president than the vice presidency.She is a barrier breaker.She’s, again, an effective communicator, on arguably the top issue for Democrats in the election, abortion rights.
So, yes, as soon as that debate happens, all eyes turn to her.And she is, once again, as vice president, in the awkward position of defending Joe Biden until he decides that he doesn’t want it anymore.And when we look at this through the lens of history, it will be a very short time.It will be like, you know, in a history book it will be like two sentences.He had a terrible debate. He dropped out. Anointed her.In the moment, what was a very long few weeks, where he really dug in his heels.He didn’t want to do it.She kept defending him.But, you know, with the power of the vice presidency resting in the trust of the president, that is the power of the vice presidency is serving the president.
Her continued loyalty to him in those moments, in those hard moments, while perhaps Republicans point to it and say, you know, allege that she was part of a cover up or was lying to the American public about what they saw with their own eyes, she maintained the trust with him.And when he ultimately made the decision to step aside, again, through a historical lens, practically moments later, he passes the torch to her.And that day, I mean she basically locked up the nomination, even though others could have decided to run against her.
By the time he handed the torch to her, she made calls, apparently all day, got people to back her up.You know, she came sprinting out of the gate as the favorite for the nomination.By the end of the day all the ambitious people who probably would have like a shot at the nomination are looking at the situation and thinking, it might be political suicide to run against her against her at this point.
Harris Becomes the Democratic Presidential Nominee
We’ve been talking about her life.And we’ve been talking about political moments.And when she meets a moment and when she doesn’t.And we don’t know what will happen at the general election.But she secured the nomination of the Democratic Party.Why was this her moment in the lifetime, in the context of the lifetime we’ve been talking about?
This whole conversation has been about alternate timelines.What might have been?But what happened over the course of the summer of 2024 in rapid succession as all of a sudden it became clear that Joe Biden could not continue his campaign and pass the torch to her.Many of the things that went wrong for her in 2019 are suddenly in her favor in 2024.
She doesn’t have to—now she doesn’t have to go through a primary.No one challenged her for the nomination, probably for smart reasons because she was going to run away with it.And it would have been messy and prolonged things, both for the Democrats, and probably not reflected well on the person who challenged her, who tried to, you know, tried to take something from the most qualified person out there who happened to be a Black woman.And the message it would send to Democrats’ most important voting constituency of Black women.You know, all those factors.
So, she runs away with the nomination.Now, you know, whereas in the 2019 primary one of the ways she was most destabilized was trying to parse exactly her lane and how her policy triangulated with all these other policies.You know, we don’t have 15 Democrats competing to be the best on abortion rights.All Kamala Harris has to do now to November is contrast with Donald Trump, which is a much easier challenge in terms of drawing a distinction, right?She doesn’t have to get into her exact particulars on abortion rights because she knows that her opponents are anti-abortion.So, that goes right for her.She doesn’t have to do the primary.
Some of the political liabilities she had in 2019 in terms of defending her record as a prosecutor at a moment that America is giving a second look to being more progressive with that office.The pendulum has swung back by 2024.And we see a backlash against some of the more progressive prosecutors in the U.S. and a rise that is now going back down, but a rise in crime coinciding with the pandemic that has rekindled an appetite for a tougher-on-crime approach.
The argument in 2019, this almost slur against Kamala Harris, Kamala is a cop, that we saw in 2019, arguably in 2024 is an advantage with the general electorate, the same way it was a liability with the 2019 Democratic primary base.
What is the Choice on the Ballot?
So the last question that we ask everybody is, from your perspective and from your reporting, what is the choice that voters face in November between these two different candidates?
It is an incredibly stark choice that voters face in November.And when we talk about how this summer has unfolded that played to her strengths, I mean when it was Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, there were still very stark differences.But it was two, older, perhaps I can get away with saying old, white men that America knew.They had both been president.It would be a sort of a redo of one or the other.
Now, with Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee, voters have a very clear choice between Donald Trump, who is a known entity.Kamala Harris is not an unknown entity but gets an opportunity to now make a case as to how she would be a different president from anything we’ve seen.But any of the issues, she and Donald Trump are on pretty much opposite sides of it.I mean it’s abortion rights versus — abortion rights enshrined at a national level, which is what she argues for, versus Donald Trump who is anti-abortion, even though he sometimes wavers on exactly what that looks like.It’s maintaining the status quo of Dobbs, where abortion rights can be restricted at a state level, pretty much completely, if that’s what the state determines.And that’s one of the key issues in this election.
On immigration, which is arguably the other, really top tier issue, it’s a choice between pretty much Kamala Harris has adopted what Joe Biden has done, which is actually a fairly conservative approach for Democrats, but comes with this idea of be restrictive at the border but give immigrants other opportunities to come as a way of deterring them from making the illegal journey.So, there is that sort of mixed approach, versus Donld Trump who is promising an even more draconian version of the immigration policies than he pursued his first presidency, which were more extreme than we had ever seen from a president in the past.
Go down the list of issues and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pretty much night and day on all of them.
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