Vice chairman Kamala Harris stated she was “deeply touched” by using a photo of her young grandniece, in pigtails, looking at her communicate at the Democratic countrywide conference in Chicago final week.
Although Harris hasn’t emphasized it — she stated she is running to be president for “all people” — the photograph captured the potential of her candidacy to make history.
“It’s very humbling. Very humbling in lots of ways,” she advised CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday.
Her feedback came all through the primary joint interview of Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor said that he’d seen video of his son Gus emotionally reacting to his conference speech.
“Our politics may be higher. it can be exclusive. we will show some of these things, and we will have families involved in this,” he said. “I’m hoping humans felt that obtainable, and that I desire that they hugged their youngsters a touch tighter, due to the fact you never recognize. life may be tough.”
In the interview, Harris explained how her positions on problems which include fracking and border protection have developed given that she first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019
And presented a preview of ways she’s going to give an explanation for the ones evolutions to citizens when they come up in her debate with former President Donald Trump and at different moments as the race actions forward.
“My values have not changed,” she stated.
She additionally sought to define the 2024 race as one that gives the yank people “a brand new way forward” after a political decade in which Trump — in office or out — changed into a primary parent.
Democrats have framed Harris’ 2024 campaign as one in every joy — a turning of the web page from a former president who has forged his political rivals, the media and others as enemies and regularly tapped into darkish themes with dire warnings about the country’s destiny.
That technique will quickly face its biggest check yet, with Harris and Trump each making ready for his or her September 10 debate on ABC.
Here are six takeaways from the Democratic ticket’s interview with Bash:
Explaining flip-flop on fracking
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris antagonized fracking — a role that could have proven politically negative in Pennsylvania, wherein it’s a large company. Now, she says, she supports it.
“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will no longer ban fracking,” she stated.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the procedure of breaking through dense shale to unlock natural gasoline. Progressives have adverse fracking due to issues about weather exchange.
But, below the Inflation discount Act, a sweeping $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill that Harris solidified the tie-breaking vote to pass inside the Senate and President Joe Biden signed into regulation in 2022, fracking has multiplied inside the usa, even as additionally advancing easy strength efforts.
Harris said she had already modified her role on fracking in 2020, when she stated at some stage in the vice presidential debate that Biden “will no longer quit fracking.”
“I have now not changed that role, nor will I go ahead,” she advised Bash, including, “My values have no longer changed. I accept as true that it’s very important that we take seriously what we must do to defend against what’s a clear crisis in phrases of the weather.”
She mentioned the Biden administration’s efforts to spur an increase in easy electricity, announcing: “What I have seen is that we will develop and we will grow a thriving easy energy financial system without banning fracking.”
Appointing a Republican to the Cabinet
Asked if she would employ a Republican to her cupboard, Harris stated, “sure, i would.”
The vice president wasn’t equipped to name any specific names, or roles they might play.
“Nobody mainly,” she stated. “We’ve got sixty eight days to move in this election, so I’m not placing the cart before the horse. however i might.”
There’s the latest precedent for cupboard picks that cross celebration traces. Former President Barack Obama appointed numerous Republicans to excessive-ranking positions — which include former Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood as transportation secretary and former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel as protection secretary.
For Harris, the pool of Republicans who vocally oppose Trump might be a pool of potentialities. numerous of them spoke at the Democratic national conference in Chicago ultimate week.
“I’ve spent my profession inviting a range of opinions,” Harris stated. “I assume it’s crucial to have human beings on the table while a number of the maximum crucial choices are being made which have one-of-a-kind perspectives, exclusive studies.
And I think it’d be to the gain of the yankee public to have a member of my cabinet who changed into a Republican.”
Refusing to Engage in Trump’s identity politics
Harris in large part sidestepped questions around Donald Trump’s claims approximately her racial and gender identity.
The remaining month, Trump puzzled Harris’ racial identification at the countrywide association of Black reporters convention in Chicago, suggesting she’d previously identified as South Asian however “befell to turn Black” for political functions.
Shaking her head, Harris said Trump’s statement is part of his “identical old worn-out playbook.”
“subsequent query, please,” she said.
“That’s it?” Bash asked.
“That’s it,” Harris answered with a grin.
Her refusal to comment similarly is consistent with her marketing campaign’s approach to keep away from leaning into identification politics following Trump’s feedback.
It could also suggest how Harris might handle destiny challenges to her race and gender throughout her first debate with the former president next month.
The phone call that changed everything
Sunday, July 21, was a busy morning at the vice president’s house. Harris stated she turned into making breakfast for family visiting from out of town and had simply sat right down to do a puzzle along with her nieces when the phone rang.
“It became Joe Biden, and he instructed me what he had decided to do,” Harris stated, in her maximum vast feedback to date on how she learned the president was finishing his reelection bid and endorsing her to replace him on the pinnacle of the Democratic ticket.
That phone call upended the 2024 presidential campaign and essentially modified Harris’ life and career.
But within the moment, she stated, she turned into more involved in the effect the decision might have on Biden, who’d spent weeks weathering calls for his resignation after a halting overall performance at CNN’s first presidential debate caused Democrats to question his intellectual and bodily health.
“I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said ‘sure,’” Harris recalled. “My first idea was no longer about me, to be sincere with you. My first concept turned into him.”
Harris stated she believes records will display Biden’s presidency became “transformative” and view his selection to withdraw from the race as one that is reflective of his individuality. She defined the president as a person who is “quite selfless and places the American humans first.”
She went on to defend the Biden management’s record, touting their investments in infrastructure, in addition to efforts to lower drug fees and renew relationships with allies overseas.
“I’m so proud to have served as vice chairman to Joe Biden,” she said. “I am so proud to be walking with Tim Walz as president of the United States and to convey … what I accept as true with the american human beings deserve, which is a new manner forward.”
Blaming Trump on border security
Trump has made attacking the Biden management’s dealing with of america-Mexico border a signature issue, however Harris said Trump bears tons of the blame for the border protection troubles he bemoans.
She pointed to his competition to the bipartisan border safety bill hashed out by a set of lawmakers that protected Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a conservative Republican.
“Due to the fact he believed that it might now not have helped him politically, he advised his elders in Congress, don’t position it ahead. He killed the invoice — a border security bill that could have positioned 1,500 more sellers on the border,” she said.
Asked if she could push that bill if she is elected president, Harris stated: “not only push it, i might make certain that it’d come to my desk and i’d signal it.”
She also stated she no longer supports decriminalizing illegally crossing the border into the US, reversing another position she took all through her 2019 presidential run.
“We have legal guidelines that ought to be observed and enforced that address individuals who pass our border illegally, and there must be consequences,” Harris stated, arguing that she had prosecuted transnational crook corporations as California attorney wellknown.
Walz says he owns his mistakes
Walz was additionally pressed on false claims he’s made within the past, together with a 2018 video wherein he addresses gun violence and refers to “weapons of battle, that I carried in conflict.”
Even though Walz served 24 years in the navy countrywide protect, he became in no way in a fight region. He said he misspoke.
“My wife, the English trainer, instructed me my grammar’s no longer constantly accurate,” he said.
Walz had additionally stated in his convention speech that he and his wife used in vitro fertilization to conceive their children, but has on account that clarified it changed into a distinct type of fertility remedy.
“I certainly own my mistakes when I lead them,” he said.
“I received it to express regret for speaking passionately, whether it’s guns in colleges or protection of reproductive rights,” he said. “The comparison could not be clearer … I think maximum individuals get it.”
Walz said he could no longer insult Republicans, a remark that came the same day his GOP rival for the vice presidency, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said Harris may want to “go to hell” in regards to the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Their appreciably special strategies to the marketing campaign can be on display when they meet for a debate hosted by using CBS on October 1.
‘I’m talking about an era’
The reaction that Harris’ policy proposals and promises of a new day in American politics had been met with from many Republicans has been: Why haven’t these things already happened in the three-and-a-half years she’s been vice chairman?
The vice president said Thursday she is “speaking about a generation that started about a decade in the past” — which is whilst Trump moved to the political vanguard.
Inside the Trump technology, Harris said, “there may be a few inspiration — warped, I consider it to be — that the measure of the energy of a leader is who you beat down, instead of wherein I accept as true with maximum people are, that is to believe that the authentic measure of the energy of a pacesetter is based totally on who you raise up.”
“That’s what’s at stake, as good a deal as any other element that we ought to speak, in this election,” she stated.
