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Erin Schaff/Pool/Reuters Vice President Kamala Harris walks to her motorcade at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 30, 2024. |
Leaps of faith aren’t Kamala Harris’ style. But she’s about to have to take one.
When making decisions, the vice president like to take her time. Despite having a lot of information, she frequently requests more. Go over everything one more time. Next, see if there are any further data.
She doesn't have that luxury going into a weekend of interviews at the Naval Observatory with potential running mates for a position that will impact her campaign and the Democratic Party - and potentially her administration and the nation.
Numerous colleagues of Harris's told CNN they don't think she's entirely at ease with the pressure as she conducts her farewell interviews.
They do, however, concur that it's just another facet of this shortened and expedited campaign that might work to the vice president's advantage by reducing the likelihood of the kinds of missteps that have dogged her in the past.
"This election has the feel of one in Europe!" One attendee who witnessed Harris speak at the dinner on Wednesday night said that she made jokes to donors about the race to Election Day while she was in Houston.
Once chosen, running mates frequently become political afterthoughts. However, the Harris team is aware that, as so many Americans are still getting to know her, her decision will provide an important and early glimpse into her personality, political philosophy, and understanding of the electoral vulnerabilities she will need to overcome.
Plans already being made for the pick
Outside advisors have already offered advice on how to introduce the nominee to maintain the enthusiasm and positive energy, especially in the event that Harris finds himself in the awkward situation of not selecting Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. This is true even though the governor's battleground blitz is scheduled to begin on Tuesday in Philadelphia, which is far from his hometown and place of origin as a local politician. Replicating what Joe Biden's 2020 campaign did, which involved releasing a video of him telling Harris that she was his choice, is one approach. Another is that following the news, Harris and her selected candidate would show up by surprise.In an unrelated interview with CNN last week, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated, "This is a decision that is not just a campaign decision." "This is a decision that ultimately binds the entire nation."
"The vice president must make a decision at this time that is quite personal. with whom she desires to run. with whom she wishes to rule. And who can support her through the most difficult decisions she must make on behalf of the American people? When she's ready, I think she'll decide that on her own terms," he remarked.
Shapiro responded, "I hope to be," when asked on Friday if he would be in Philadelphia on Tuesday when Harris makes her decision.
Looking for a personal connection
Pros and cons and a pragmatic mindset
Over the coming days, Harris, with her prosecutor-trained mentality, will be running pros and cons, testing out theories and looking for what aides can tell her about qualities in running mates that have actually changed votes in the past.
She has talked to Biden. She has talked to Barack Obama. Polling and focus groups have been conducted. Sample videos to play have been requested. Hours and hours of interviews with aides, on top of thousands of pages of hastily assembled documents, and in some cases with detailed follow up questions, have been coalesced by a group of lawyers led by former Attorney General Eric Holder and former White House counsel Dana Remus into briefing books.
Harris and her team know, though, that there are limits to what polling can reliably say over just two weeks, particularly given the historic upheaval the race has just gone through. They know there are questions, particularly about finances and deep dives into their backgrounds, that even the prospective choices themselves might not remember to bring up amid this rush. A chunk of the message testing on prospective choices has come from their TV appearances in the past two weeks of hurried public auditions.
Several involved with the process, though, say that they have walked away with one clear sense from the Harris team: no surprises. Nothing that could derail the honeymoon Harris is trying to keep going. Nothing that could give them their own version of JD Vance’s clunky start that they have been watching carefully or the clear tensions that have set in between some in Donald Trump’s and his running mate’s orbits.
Advice has been streaming in. Everyone who can get in the ears of anyone near Harris – whether that is her government chief of staff Lorraine Voles or her brother-in-law Tony West or campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped Biden pick Harris in 2020 – has been weighing in with advice.
Some have been explicit in pitching a specific choice. Some have pantomimed subtlety, like just laying out the importance of winning Pennsylvania or Arizona. Some have tried to be reassuring, urging aides and advisers to remember that the pick probably won’t matter much politically, especially in this sprint of a race against Trump.
At almost exactly this point in the summer of 2020, when Biden confided to Obama that he was worried that given the lingering bad feelings about how Harris had attacked him during their first primary debate, the two might not be able to have the same good relationship that Biden remembered having with Obama.
Obama reminded his former vice president that they had not gotten along well at first. And, he stressed to Biden, none of that was nearly as relevant as who would help him win – because with Trump as the opponent, Democrats had to win.
Harris is less emotionally driven than Biden. And she knows, as a woman of color leading the Democratic ticket, how much is riding on her not to be seen as failing in this moment.
“She will recognize that she’s in a tough race, and she needs to pick the best running mate that will help her win,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and current candidate for Senate who has known Harris for years. “I think it’s going to be less about who does she have the best chemistry with and more about who has the best chance of helping the ticket.”
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