On Politics: The two weeks that changed Kamala Harris’s vice presidency
Good evening! Yesterday, former President Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over her racial identity, which is something she rarely talked about before a key moment in the spring of 2023. I asked my colleague Erica Green, a White House correspondent, to tell us how Harris's little-noticed moves in that period reshaped her vice presidency and laid the groundwork for her campaign against Trump. — Jess Bidgood
The two weeks that changed Kamala Harris's vice presidencyOn March 28, 2023, while Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Ghana, she made a decision that surprised members of her staff. They had worked for weeks on remarks for her to deliver in the country, part of a visit to deepen America's ties with the continent, but Harris changed the plan. Instead, she decided to do something unusual: She talked about her lineage and its impact on her life. "This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally as the first Black vice president of the United States of America," she said. The decision to invoke her personal story was a shift for Harris, who had grown guarded about her life after enduring personal attacks. The episode was part of a two-week period last year — though it flew a little under the radar — in which Harris came to reintroduce herself to the public and, more specifically, the coalition of Democrats she would need to win the White House. Coming after a rocky start to her vice presidency, those weeks in 2023 helped build Democrats' confidence in Harris's political skills, long before she became the party's standard-bearer. As a White House reporter, I've talked to dozens of people over the last year who took notice. "She's owning all of who she is in a way that she couldn't in the beginning, and it's refreshing," LaTosha Brown, a founder of Black Voters Matter, said this year. Telling her own storyIn the new section of her policy remarks that Harris helped craft in Ghana, the vice president reflected on the stories, cultures and traditions she learned from her family in Zambia, where her grandfather had worked in the 1960s alongside newly independent people, and where she had visited as a young girl. "The values that guided my relatives when they were there, and the legacy of their efforts, remain a source of pride for my entire family and continue to animate my work today," Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father, said. Later that day, she toured the Cape Coast Castle, a former slave port where Africans were held before they were taken through the "door of no return" into slavery. Harris emerged from her tour visibly emotional, and did not deliver her prepared remarks. Instead, after choking back tears, Harris described how the descendants of those enslaved people persevered through "odds that were designed to break them," and how their descendants fought for civil rights and justice in the United States and elsewhere. For people watching her vice presidency closely, the trip revealed Harris's increasing openness about her racial identity — which this week came under attack by former President Donald Trump. "What we're seeing is a common survival mechanism for Black women," Brown said. "At some point when people are constantly critical of you, your go-to is to remember who you are." A hurried trip to TennesseeShortly after Harris returned from her tour in Africa, two Tennessee state lawmakers — both young, Black, male Democrats — were expelled from their Legislature by Republicans after they had spoken out in response to a deadly school shooting. The story prompted outrage among Democrats across the country. "We have to do something," Harris told her staff, days after returning from the trip. Her staff and the West Wing scrambled to coordinate a vice-presidential trip, which usually takes days. Within 12 hours, Harris was on her way to Nashville — forgoing Air Force Two and a big entourage for a smaller jet and two staff members. As word spread that she was coming, hundreds lined up to see her. On April 7, Harris capped her trip with a fiery speech, delivered in a small chapel with a page of bullet points that she didn't look at. "We're not having that," she said of the lawmakers' plight, drawing "Amens" from the crowd. "It was validation in so many ways that we were on the right side of history," said one of the expelled (and since reinstated) lawmakers, State Representative Justin Pearson. The episode reminded some Democrats of how Harris had once grabbed the spotlight — by taking a fight directly to opponents and delivering searing, passionate remarks. Watching Harris in Africa and then in Tennessee made Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, think she would be the party's "secret weapon" in 2024, he said in an interview this year. A vice presidency changedSince that two-week period last year, Harris has spoken more frequently about her origin story as the descendant of enslaved people, born to immigrants who fell in love fighting for civil rights in the 1960s. She has increasingly connected her life to policy. "She feels like a credible messenger," Damon Hewitt, the president of the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, told me this year, "who is a bridge between the lived experience of communities of color and the halls of power." After Tennessee, Harris took a more prominent role tackling issues that fire up Democrats, such as battles over reproductive rights, voting rights, gun violence and civil rights. It's not a coincidence that, within hours of President Biden's bowing out of the race, Tennessee became the first state to pledge all of its delegates to Harris.
Asian Americans say they were also confused by Trump's remarks on raceDonald Trump's comments on Wednesday implying that Kamala Harris had long prioritized her Indian heritage over her Black identity and only recently "happened to turn Black" immediately prompted outrage. To many Asian Americans, and especially Indian Americans, Trump's comments were also befuddling. Amy Qin, a New York Times reporter who covers Asian Americans, tells us why. Kamala Harris does not shy away from talking about her Indian heritage. But many Americans — including Asian Americans — do not perceive her as Indian American or Asian American, which is something I wrote about earlier this week. There are various reasons behind the disconnect. Harris has often described herself as a Black woman. She has spoken of how her Indian mother was aware that she was raising two daughters whom America would see first as Black. The complexity of the Asian American identity is another factor. Not all Americans who trace their heritage to Asia identify with the Asian American label. Asian American political organizers hope that Harris's elevated profile can broaden awareness of her Indian roots. And some even said Trump's remarks could have an unintended upside. "Trump continues to be our greatest gift in educating our community that Kamala Harris is actually multiracial," said Varun Nikore, an Indian American and the executive director of AAPI Victory Alliance, a progressive advocacy group. "There are large segments of our community that did not know about her Indian heritage or her South Asian heritage," he added, "so I just say thank you to Donald Trump for that." — Amy Qin Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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