BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — As Democrats prepare for an extended government shutdown, former Vice President Kamala Harris is cheering them on as she travels the country sharing her presidential campaign memoir amid speculation about another White House run.
The 2024 Democratic nominee told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that she remains in touch with Democrats on Capitol Hill, encouraging them to maintain their demands on President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional majority to address looming spikes in Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums.
“The Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. They are in charge and are responsible for the shutdown,” she said.
Democrats, she said, “are doing the right thing by standing up for working people and not letting Republicans push through a tax cut for the richest people in our country at the expense of working people in America.”
It was just one example of how Harris used her book tour to push Democrats toward consistent, aggressive opposition to Trump while recommitting to reaching working- and middle-class voters who supported the Republican or stayed home last November.
Over the course of the day, Harris held an hour-long conversation with five black college students, spoke to the AP and led two book discussions in Alabama’s largest city. Paid ticket holders filled the Alabama Theater in downtown Birmingham, where Harris discussed her campaign, the Democratic Party and the direction of the nation with radio host Charlamagne tha God.
Through it all, Harris exuded the aura of a party elder and future candidate. She expressed concern about the direction of the country and her complete disbelief at many of Trump’s actions. When VIP ticket holders told her in a photo line how disappointed they were at her loss, she kept playing it.
“We have work to do,” she said repeatedly. “Keep fighting.”
On stage and in front of the AP, she praised her party’s “deep and broad bench” and even called for lowering the country’s voting age to 16 to include more teenage people in the political process.
Harris signals she’s not done yet
Harris, 60, claimed she had not yet made a decision about her own political future. However, she made it clear that running again in 2028 is still on the table and that she sees herself as an actor in the party and a voice in the national discourse.
“I am a leader of the party,” she told the AP. “I take the responsibility and duty I feel seriously,” said the previous candidate. That “includes traveling the country, talking to people and, most importantly, listening,” she said, and “preparing people to fight in the midterm elections in 2026.”
Harris aides confirmed she will lend a hand Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia with virtual events, fundraisers and robocalls. She also recently led a fundraiser for North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper, a former governor and longtime friend of Harris.
Later this month, she plans to campaign for California’s “Yes on Prop 50,” the ballot measure that would allow Democratic-led redistricting of the state’s congressional districts to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other Republican-controlled states.
Authenticity will be crucial for Democratic candidates
Harris, who has been unusually outspoken about her opinions on a range of political figures in her book “107 Days,” was more cautious Friday when asked to assess other leading Democrats.
“We need to move away from the idea of ’Who’s the right one?’ say goodbye. There are a lot of ways, I think, that will be effective if people are genuine to themselves,” she said when asked about fellow California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his recent mocking of Trump on social media.
She named U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, and Brittany Petterson, D-Colo., but did not elaborate. “Every voice and every perspective” can resonate with certain voters, she said.
Harris rejected conventional political wisdom, which she had lost in part because of Republicans’ persistent attacks on cultural and social issues, particularly transgender issues. She said the economy, particularly inflation, was the bigger factor.
“There are a whole bunch of people who voted for Donald Trump because they believed what he said, which was that he would lower prices,” she told the AP. “Unfortunately, he lied to her.”
Economic arguments count the most
With prices still high and the wealth gap widening, Harris said, “We must better address the immediate needs of the American people.”
She praised the Biden administration’s legislative achievements but said budget-level measures such as child tax credits, family leave and first-time homebuyer credits should have come before a comprehensive infrastructure program and the CHIPS semiconductor manufacturing law.
Despite a tougher economic message, Harris acknowledged structural challenges for Democrats: the spread of false information and what she described as conservatives’ attack on democracy.
She dismissed the idea of ”selective, low-information voters” and said the problem was actually an abundance of misinformation and disinformation that made it harder to reach many voters. She said Democrats need to break through those silos instead of assuming anyone is a lost cause.
“They deserve to be heard,” she said.
Setbacks in civil rights
On stage, Harris described a “turnaround” in the civil rights movement. She complained that the Supreme Court could strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects political district boundaries established to ensure minority communities can elect candidates of their choice.
Without this law, the representation of non-whites—particularly blacks in the South—could decline significantly, from Congress to local school boards and local councils.
“How can we say at this point that the Voting Rights Act and Section 2 have no purpose?” Harris told the AP.
Due to the venue, the topic received a particular response. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 after Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists marched from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. A later Supreme Court case in Mobile prompted Congress to clarify its intent with Section 2 of the law. And it was a case out of Shelby County, Alabama, that the Supreme Court used in 2013 to strike down the legal requirement that the U.S. Department of Justice approve election procedures in local jurisdictions with a proven history of discrimination.
In addition to the pending Supreme Court case, Harris said she has been following Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants as well as statements from Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller and other Republicans suggesting that the U.S. owes its identity to white European settlers.
“If you look at it just from their words, they are race-baiters, they are scapegoats,” she said. But she didn’t say the government was driven by white nationalist ideology: “I can’t pretend I know what’s going on in their head.”
Harris said Friday she never doubted former President Joe Biden’s viability, even when he ended his re-election bid due to age. This is different, she explained, than discussions about whether the 82-year-old could have served another term.
“He and I have actually been playing phone tag the last few days,” Harris told the AP when asked if she is still talking to Biden, who is undergoing prostate cancer treatment. “I would invite everyone to say a prayer if you do so now for their well-being and health.”
