• ACLU = 93% on civil liberties
• AFL-CIO = 100% on trade unions
• Human Rights Campaign = 100% on queer rights
• League of Conservation Voters = 91% on environmentalism
• NARAL = 100% on reproductive rights
• NRA Fund = 7% on gun rights (we LIKE a low score on this one)
• NEA = 100% on education
• Planned Parenthoos = 100% on reproductive rights

Kamala Harris Steps Up

The future of American democracy now rests on the vice president’s shoulders. That’s why it’s more important than ever to understand who she

The Nation

Harris’s outreach to African Americans is arguably as important as her role in connecting to women. Part of her strategy is touring American cities with large Black populations—including Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, and Philadelphia—to promote the administration’s “Economic Opportunity Agenda.” When I traveled with her to Milwaukee on May 16, a New York Times/Siena poll had just come out showing Trump getting more than 20 percent of the Black vote nationally, more than any Republican since the 1960s.

Harris brought Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Acting Housing and Urban Development Secretary Adrianne Todman to Milwaukee to help her spread the word about the administration’s record on advancing economic opportunities among Black Americans.

Harris shared the stage with the comedian and radio host D.L. Hughley and addressed a crowd of roughly 350 small-business owners, healthcare workers, realtors, and community leaders and activists. There was a lot to discuss. While much of her pitch was aimed at businesspeople and aspiring homeowners, she and Hughley also delved into what the administration had done for those who are still trying to make ends meet. Under Biden, small-business loans can now go to formerly incarcerated people. Student loan debt can be forgiven even for students who didn’t get degrees. The administration has also mandated that medical debt be excluded from credit score calculations.

The most meaningful interaction came when Hughley apologized to Harris for believing the “media narrative” about her as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who locked up too many Black men as the San Francisco district attorney and later the California attorney general (the shorthand: “Kamala is a cop”), which helped doom her presidential bid. A January 2019 New York Times op-ed by the legal advocate Lara Bazelon had blared “Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive’ Prosecutor,” arguing that as attorney general she had failed to sufficiently support progressive criminal justice reforms and fought the release of several prisoners whose appeals made a convincing case for their innocence. But as Biden prepared to pick Harris as his running mate 18 months later, Bazelon told Politico, “She’s positioned herself in the last couple of years as someone who really is on the right side of these issues, and that carries weight.”

Hughley said onstage that he’d heard only the criticism, not the corrective: “I had let a media narrative co-opt my perspective, and I think that tends to happen with women and people of color. I had to apologize to you.”

“I didn’t want to like the prosecutor,” Hughley tells me later by phone. “It’s not cool to like a prosecutor! California had become such a mean place. I wanted to blame somebody. But then we had dinner. It was a very heated conversation, and I remember how calm she was listening to me. I was very impressed.”

In the audience, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was moved by the interaction. “I thought that was so powerful! You don’t get a lot of Black men apologizing publicly to Black women,” he says. (“You don’t see men apologizing publicly to women, period,” Celinda Lake adds later when I recount the story to her.)

“She got in the weeds, and we needed her in the weeds,” says Crowley, who at 38 is the youngest person, as well as the first Black person, elected as county executive. Crowley gave me a list of local initiatives that had been made possible by programs passed under Biden and Harris. “We’re making the largest push to build affordable housing in years. We’re creating opportunities for Black and brown families to become first-time homebuyers. The dollars are coming to Milwaukee: for development, housing, health equity. Black unemployment is down. We’ve broken ground on more Black businesses. More programs for seniors. We’ve also been able to save programs that were jeopardized.” These are not just talking points: Unemployment and poverty among Black Americans are at all-time lows across the country.

The influential Milwaukee radio host Earl Ingram Jr. was equally impressed. “I had never had a chance to hear directly from the vice president,” he says. “The media made her a caricature, just focusing on her giggling. It was clear to me that the first thing I have to do is reassure people who haven’t met her that she’s a bright, accomplished woman, she’s astute, she’s not what you’ve been told. I’ve gotta make sure people who didn’t see her know that.

“I’m proud to see her as my sister.”

[...]

Harris said that her approach to young people is consistent. “There are so many issues impacting Gen Z,” she said. “They’ve only known the climate crisis. I ask in every venue, ‘Raise your hand if at any point between [grades K-12] you had to endure an active shooter drill.’ Almost every hand goes up. We grew up with fire drills. These kids are afraid that somebody’s gonna bust through the classroom door with an assault weapon. They witnessed the killing of George Floyd. During the height of their reproductive years, the highest court of the land took away their right to make decisions about their own bodies. They have endured so much.”

Harris is less afraid that young voters will go for Trump than that they’ll stay home in November. “You’ve got, on the one side, an administration in Joe Biden and me fighting for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, your right to love who you love openly with pride; on the other side, someone who took away a fundamental right, his allies who promote ‘Don’t say gay,’ want to take away contraception, IVF,” she said. Trump will also roll back the administration’s moves on climate protection, student loan relief, and gun safety reform, she has pointed out. “Don’t let a situation or circumstance silence your voice,” she tells young voters.

[...]

Kagan loved it too. She sees Harris finally embracing all of who she is. “She has always been a compassionate, empathetic person—with power—who fights for the rights of people. Then there’s the professional side. Then she’s quirky and she’s fun and she loves to dance. I just love seeing it all come together: the power, the passion, and the funny.”

Gaspard, of the Center for American Progress, sees a lot of the same things: “Authenticity is so important to voters. People have to know they’re seeing who you really are.” He adds, “Sometimes history comes running at you and you have to be ready. She has demonstrated that she’s ready.”

Can Harris hold on to her authenticity, cement her nomination, win back the voters who had gone cold on Biden, and keep Trump out of the White House? Strap in. We’re about to find out.

Biden, Harris, Trump and 2024

Slow news weekend, am I right? Some thoughts on the current state of things, in no particular order. 1. I was not a fan of the idea of Joe B

Whatever

consider that the announcement was made on the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, and after the Sunday morning political talk shows were put to bed, i.e., after the GOP political capital was spent slagging Biden, and when professional spinners would be caught flat-footed by the announcement. Biden’s news was quickly followed by his endorsement of Kamala Harris, which in turn was followed by a flood of endorsements for Harris across the Democratic political firmament, effectively slamming the door on any serious challenge to Harris at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.