AP Interview: Kamala Harris on race and electability in 2020
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kamala Harris can’t forget the older black woman she met in Iowa while campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama before the state’s 2008 caucus.
“I remember her saying to me, ‘They’re not going to let him win,'” Harris recalled. “She did not want to go to the caucuses. She didn’t want to be disappointed.”
For Harris, it was a revealing moment, one she says illustrated the limitations many Americans, including black Americans, place on who is considered electable for the nation’s highest office.
Twelve years later, with American politics roiled by issues of race and gender, it’s Harris asking Americans to expand their definition of electability once again.
“Sometimes it takes a while to get people to see that this is possible,” Harris said over the weekend in an interview with The Associated Press in which she discussed race and her standing as the most viable black woman to seek a major party’s presidential nomination.
The 54-year-old freshman senator from California is unabashedly and unapologetically embracing that role. She’s increasingly weaving her personal history into her campaign, including in a searing debate exchangelast month with former Vice President Joe Biden over school busing. Her campaign was ready for the moment, quickly tweeting a photograph of Harris as a pig-tailed child, then selling T-shirts bearing the image.
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To Harris, it’s the cost of trying to break through long-standing barriers.
“When you break things, you get hurt, you bleed, you get cut,” Harris said. “When I made the decision to run, I fully appreciated that it will not be easy. But I know if I’m not on the stage, there’s a certain voice that will not be present on that stage. Knowing that there is a perspective, there is a life experience, there is a vision that must be heard and seen and present on that stage, and that I have an ability to do that.”
Harris, the daughter of an Indian American mother and Jamaican American father , entered the 2020 race with seemingly boundless potential: a compelling personal story and polished political pedigree; a prosecutor’s skill at taking on Trump’s record; and the prospect of drawing significant voting support from black women, who are the backbone of the party.
