In AP interview, Harris says Democrats ‘are standing up for working people’ in government shutdown

[Thiệu Ngô]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — As Democrats dig in for a lengthening government shutdown, former Vice President Kamala Harris is cheering them on as she travels the country touting her presidential campaign memoir amid speculation about another White House run.

By BILL BARROW

The Democratic 2024 nominee told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that she remains in contact with Democrats on Capitol Hill, encouraging them to maintain their demands that President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional majority 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 they are responsible for the shutdown,” she said.

Democrats, she said, “are doing the right thing by standing up for working people and not allowing the Republicans to carry a tax cut for the wealthiest people in our country on the backs of working people in America.”

It was just one example of Harris using her book tour to urge Democrats to lead a consistent, aggressive resistance to Trump while at the same time recommitting to reaching working- and middle-class voters who supported the Republican or stayed home last November.

Over the course of the day, Harris sat down for an hourlong conversation with five Black college students, spoke to the AP and held two book discussions in Alabama’s largest city. Paid ticketholders filled downtown Birmingham’s Alabama Theatre, where Harris discussed her campaign, the Democratic Party and the course of the nation with radio host Charlamagne tha God.

Through it all, Harris projected the aura of party elder and future candidate. She expressed concern for the country’s direction and outright incredulity over many of Trump’s actions. When VIP ticketholders told her in a photo line how disappointed they had been by her loss, she played it forward.

“We’ve got work to do,” she said repeatedly. “Keep fighting.”

On stage and to the AP, she praised her party’s “deep and wide bench” and even called for lowering the nation’s voting age to 16 to bring more young people into the political process.

Harris signals she’s not done

Harris, 60, maintained she has made no decision about her own political future. But she made clear that running again in 2028 is still on the table and that she sees herself as a player in the party and a voice in the national discourse.

“I am a leader of the party,” she told the AP. “I take seriously that responsibility and duty that I feel” as the previous nominee. That “includes traveling the country talking and mostly listening with folks,” she said, and “getting folks ready to fight in the midterms” in 2026.

Harris aides confirmed she will help Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia with virtual events, fundraising appeals and robocalls. She also recently headlined a fundraiser for North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper, a former governor and Harris’ longtime friend.

Later this month, she plans to campaign for California’s “Yes on Prop 50,” the ballot measure that would allow a Democratic-led redraw of the state’s congressional districts to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other Republican-controlled states.

Authenticity will be key for Democratic candidates

Harris, who was unusually blunt in her book “107 Days” about her opinions on a range of political figures, was more circumspect Friday when asked to assess other leading Democrats.

“We have to get away from this idea of ‘Who is the one?’ There are many ways that I think will be effective when people are authentic unto themselves,” she said when asked about her fellow Californian, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and his recent social media mockery of Trump.

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 that she lost in part because of Republicans’ sustained attacks on cultural and social issues, especially transgender issues. She said economics, notably inflation, was the bigger factor.

“There are a fair number of people who voted for Donald Trump because they believed what he said, which is that he was going to bring down prices,” she told the AP. “Sadly, he lied to them.”

Economic arguments matter most

With prices still high and wealth gaps growing, Harris said, “We’ve got to do a better job of dealing with the immediate needs of the American people.”

She praised the Biden administration’s legislative accomplishments but said household-level policies such as child tax credits, family leave and first-time homebuyer credits should have come before a sweeping infrastructure program and the CHIPS semiconductor manufacturing law.

Even with a sharper economic message, Harris acknowledged structural challenges for Democrats: the proliferation of false information and what she described as conservatives’ assault on democracy.

She rejected the idea of “low-information voters,” saying the problem is actually an abundance of misinformation and disinformation that makes it harder to reach many voters. She said Democrats must penetrate those silos rather than presume anyone is a lost cause.

“They deserve to be heard,” she said.

Backsliding on civil rights

Onstage, Harris described a “reversal” of the Civil Rights Movement. She lamented that the Supreme Court could eliminate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects political district boundaries drawn to ensure minority communities can elect candidates of their choice.

Without that law, nonwhite representation –- especially Black representation in the South –- could diminish considerably, from Congress to local school boards and municipal councils.

“How can we say at this moment in time that the Voting Rights Act and Section 2 has no purpose?” Harris said to the AP.

The issue carried special resonance given the venue. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 after Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leaders marched from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. A later Supreme Court case out of Mobile led Congress to clarify its intent with Section 2 of the law. And it was a Shelby County, Alabama, case that the Supreme Court used in 2013 to gut the law’s requirement that the U.S. Justice Department approve election procedures in local jurisdictions with a demonstrated history of discrimination.

Besides the pending Supreme Court case, Harris said she has followed Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, along with statements from top Trump adviser Stephen Miller and other Republicans suggesting the U.S. owes its identity to white European settlers.

“Just looking at it in terms of their words, they’re race baiting, they’re scapegoating,” she said. But she stopped short of saying the administration is being driven by a white nationalist ideology: “I can’t pretend to know what is in their head.”

Harris said Friday that she never doubted former President Joe Biden’s ability to serve, even when he ended his reelection bid because of concerns about his age. That’s different, she explained, than discussions about whether the 82-year-old could have served another term.

“He and I have been playing phone tag actually in the last couple of days,” Harris told the AP when asked whether she still talks to Biden, who is undergoing prostate cancer treatment. “I’d invite everyone to say a prayer if that’s what you do for his well-being and health right now.”