Harris’ veepstakes are heating up
There’s no question the Kamala Harris campaign is off to an incredible start. She’s broken fundraising records, already earned nearly every key endorsement from Democratic leadership and launched a fantastic new ad to set the tone.
Her next major task? Picking a vice presidential candidate.
There are a lot of names being thrown around as potential running mates, with pundits debating whether she should pick a midwestern governor or border state Democrat to help her campaign in key battleground states.
But beyond all of the whiteboard strategizing, Harris has to ask herself a series of questions.
But beyond all of the whiteboard strategizing, Harris has to ask herself a series of questions: Who does she want to be the first in the room and the last to leave for every major political discussion of her presidency? Who does she want to call from the Oval Office when stuck with a thorny issue? And with just a few months until Election Day, who has their own following, their own ability to fundraise, and their own ability to draw crowds for events?
There is no time for on-the-job training. Whoever Harris picks has to be ready to champion the Democratic ticket from Day Ane. Remember, Donald Trump picked someone who looked great on paper. But as soon as Sen. JD Vance opened his mouth on the campaign trail, things started to go downhill.
How will Republicans go after Harris?
The Trump campaign has spent this entire election cycle attacking the wrong opponent. And those attacks may now backfire.
The 78-year-old Trump spent a lot of time attempting to portray the 81-year-old President Joe Biden as “too old” to be president. (The maxim, “you only have to be the second-slowest swimmer in the ocean to escape a shark attack” comes to mind.) Harris is 59, meaning the tables have quite literally turned, and all the questions about Biden’s mental acuity will be naturally redirected to Trump.
The Trump campaign seems clueless as to how they should go after Harris. So far, Republicans have tried mocking her laugh and clipping her speeches out of context, a strategy which has completely boomeranged. Even Trump is aware he can’t criticize her record as a prosecutor without giving Harris the obvious rebuttal that he was recently convicted by a jury of his peers.
Other Republicans have referred to Harris as a “DEI hire,” suggesting she only became the presumptive Democratic nominee because of her race and gender. This racist, sexist dog whistle is so obvious even Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has criticized it. This woman was a prosecutor for two decades before being elected the attorney general of California. She became a United States senator in 2016, gaining notoriety for her tough questioning of judicial nominees and other witnesses in contentious congressional hearings. And for the last three and a half years, she has been vice president of the United States. Contrast that with Trump, who became president after a career spent losing money on real estate and fake firing people on TV.
The “DEI” attacks are also designed to disillusion would-be supporters. As one woman of color told The New York Times this week, “America is just not ready for a woman president — especially not a Black woman president.” But that’s the thing about firsts. They’ve never happened before. Believe me, when I joined the Obama campaign in 2007, plenty of friends and family assumed I would be off the campaign trail within months. Because — and this may sound familiar — the country wasn’t ready to elect a Black president.
In a new op-ed for the Times, Hillary Clinton — herself no stranger to firsts — laid out the challenge for Harris, writing, “While it still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, I’m proud that my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket.” She continued, “Ms. Harris will face unique additional challenges as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket…That’s real, but we shouldn’t be afraid. It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible.”
Hillary is right. Fear is a trap. And it’s a trap that needs to be called out. There is no time for wallowing. Because even if Mike Johnson and Republican leaders could get their caucus to stop saying the quiet parts out loud and stop taking cheap shots at Harris qualifications, right-wing media pundits aren’t going to get the memo.
And neither is the guy at the top of the ticket. As one adviser to Trump told the Bulwark this week, “Trump leads this campaign. So we’re ready for him to call her a DEI hire by Biden.” Republicans are ready, and Democrats should be too.
A story you should be following: Biden’s court reforms
In his Oval Office address Wednesday night, Biden further discussed his vision for the remaining six months of his presidency and promised to “call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy.”
While the president has yet to announce any specifics, such a plan may include an enforceable code of ethics, term limits, and perhaps even expanding the number of justices. Additionally, Biden may be considering calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders.
Of course, those plans face long odds in the Republican-controlled House, and Democrats only hold a slim majority in the Senate. (Although to be clear, roughly two in three Americans say they favor term limits or a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices.) A constitutional amendment would pose even more challenges, requiring two-thirds support in both chambers and ratification by three fourths of state legislatures.
Biden spent eight years as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and nearly a decade as ranking minority member. It’s safe to say he takes these proposed measures of Supreme Court reform seriously. Clearly, Biden does not intend to have a “lame duck” presidency.
Someone you should know: Yamiche Alcindor
NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor has featured prominently in our U.S. Supreme Court this May and June. Now she turns her focus to the Harris campaign.
Few journalists are as attuned to the stakes of this election as Alcindor. With her deep understanding of issues like the Supreme Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling and the broader implications of court decisions, she’s uniquely equipped to address the proposed reforms that will be central to the 2024 campaign.
“Tweet” of the week
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz put it best this week when he posted the following in response to Donald Trump:
“Say it with me…
Weird.”
I had the pleasure of interviewing Walz this week, and he didn’t hold back.
Jen Psaki is the host of "The Briefing with Jen Psaki" airing Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. EST. She is the former White House press secretary for President Joe Biden.