ATLANTA — Two years after Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, she still delights Democratic donors and activists with jabs against him, saying the Republican is “callous, corrupt and incompetent” and calling him the “decorator in chief” for his White House renovations and gold adornments.
The former vice president also has plenty to say about what her party, the electorate and the country should do next as she also considers whether to run again.
“This is the moment where we turn that anger into action,” Harris said more than once during a busy schedule in the final stretch of the midterm campaign.
Harris campaigned for candidates across seven states, ending with a recent two-day visit to Georgia. It was, in part, the kind of nostalgic tour seen from Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — two-term presidents whose last campaigns are behind them — and the barnstorming from potential future contenders such as Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
As the first Black woman elected to nationwide office, Harris urged fellow Black Americans to “honor the ancestors” with their votes. She also said she has become unapologetically “transactional” by demanding more from politicians.
Harris, a U.S. senator and attorney general from California before joining Joe Biden on the 2020 ticket, also pushed fellow Democrats to govern aggressively and she called for “structural work” that she said was necessary to reinvigorate American democracy: Supreme Court expansion, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and reconsideration of the electoral college.
“I think she’s hitting all the right notes,” said Melinda Johnson, a retired nurse who attended a Fulton County Democratic Party fundraising gala that Harris headlined in Atlanta.
Harris made it to early presidential primary states, including Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan. She also went to Mississippi, not exactly a hotbed of presidential politics, on behalf of U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom.
“The South is in play,” she said. “When Democrats invest in the South, we can win in the South.”
In Georgia, Harris delved into civil rights history as she accused the U.S. Supreme Court of “backdoor racism” with its decision to gut the Voting Rights Act and allow Republicans to redraw boundaries for congressional districts that now elect nonwhite lawmakers.
“Ruthlessness” is key, she said at the Democratic dinner in Atlanta. “Not ruthlessness in the sense of cruelty … but in our willingness to use our power to deliver on our commitments.” Democrats, she said, “can no longer let process stand in the way of progress.”
Throughout her stops, Harris nodded implicitly to her loss to Trump.
“You know we’ve been spending the last year and a half, so many of us, going through a range of emotions,” she told students. “Anger, depression, sadness, frustration, a sense of helplessness and powerlessness.”
Warning that Trump could try to meddle in Tuesday’s election, she echoed one of the president’s mantras to encourage people to vote.
“In this case,” she said at Atlanta’s Elizabeth Baptist Church, “we just need to turn out in really large numbers that would be too big to rig.”
Barrow writes for the Associated Press.
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