“‘I believe Congress should take the steps towards impeachment. But I want to say this, because it doesn’t end there … I’m also a realist. … I have also witnessed folks in the United States Congress, and in particular in the GOP, who have been presented with many reasons to push back against this president and they have not.”
— Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), quoted by Politico.
“When Kamala Harris made her much-heralded arrival in Washington as California’s first African American U.S. senator, she made a curious early decision. Within months of her swearing-in, she sponsored a bill urging states to eliminate cash bail, denouncing the system as a scourge on the poor and communities of color,” the AP reports.
“That position would become a key part of her criminal justice reform platform. But her choice surprised some bail reform advocates back in California. In her seven years as a district attorney, and then six as attorney general, Harris was absent on the issue, they say. In fact, less than a year earlier, her office defended the cash bail system in a pair of federal court cases, shifting course only weeks before she entered the Senate.”
“Sen. Kamala Harris is building out her Nevada team, including one longtime aide to former Senate Leader Harry Reid, as she prepares to make her first trip to Northern Nevada of her 2020 presidential bid next week,” the Nevada Independent reports.
Former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon told CNBC that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Beto O’Rourke stand the best chance of giving President Trump a tough fight during the 2020 election.
Bannon, who said he doesn’t expect Trump to lose in 2020, said he would put the two Democrats on a combined ticket with Harris running for president and O’Rourke for vice president. They would be “a way to mobilize their base and give it their best shot.”
“Five prominent South Carolina Democrats, including three state lawmakers, are getting behind U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris in her presidential bid, offering an early boost to the California Democrat in a critical early-voting primary state,” the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
FiveThirtyEight is tracking the “endorsement primary.”
New York Times: “Over the last two years, Ms. Harris has systematically constructed a database of donors and email addresses that raised several million dollars for her fellow Democrats, demonstrating an uncommon potency for a first-term senator.”
“Now, as she makes her own run for president, her digital following serves as a kind of stealth weapon, putting her in perhaps the best position to challenge the small-dollar fund-raising operations of two top rivals, former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”
“Sen. Kamala Harris made the first major policy announcement of her campaign Saturday, promising to use federal dollars to boost teachers’ salaries as she spoke to a boisterous crowd at Texas Southern University,” the Washington Post reports.
“Harris didn’t reveal details of the plan, which her campaign says will come within days. But the crowd of 2,400 that gathered at the historically black school showed her ability to attract a diverse gathering, including older white voters from the Houston area, Latino students who drove from the University of Texas at Austin and a large contingent of African American voters.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called for a federal moratorium on the death penalty in an NPR interview:
NPR: No one would be executed if you were president of the United States, for any crime.
HARRIS: Correct, correct.
“In interviews, two dozen political strategists, elected officials and Democratic activists and voters — most of whom watched Harris’ events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — said she’s shown promise as someone who can connect with voters at an emotional level,” Politico reports.
“The excitement she’s generating and her profile as a charismatic, mixed-race progressive, they said, is creating a sense that she may be the candidate who best matches the mood of Democratic voters at this moment. But in her early-state debuts, Harris has at times compensated for her lack of precision and detailed policy prescriptions by lapsing into prepared remarks, turning to legislation she supports — even when it indirectly relates to the question — and leaning on anecdotes to connect with audiences.”
Politico: “The California senator and 2020 presidential candidate has nursed connections with the state’s biggest donors during three campaigns for statewide office and two more for district attorney in San Francisco.”
“Now, Harris is working aggressively to turn those connections into commitments securing those donors before out-of-state presidential rivals have a chance…. Harris’ efforts to win over her state’s money could not only boost her campaign but starve some of her rivals.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told The Root that she supports the decriminalization of sex work nationwide.
Said Harris: “I do not believe that anyone that hurts another human being or profits off of their exploitation should be…free of criminal prosecution. But when you’re talking about consenting adults? Yes, I think you have to really consider that we can’t criminalize consensual behavior as long as no one is being harmed.”
Yahoo News: “A weekend swing through the Des Moines area — in preparation for next year’s Iowa caucuses, now a mere 11 months away — highlighted Harris’s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate.”
“Comfortable in crowds, she is capable of soaring rhetoric, even if that rhetoric is perhaps not quite of the same caliber as that which Obama displayed in 2008. But in more intimate settings, she sometimes avoided specifics, leaving some Iowans unsatisfied.”
“As she moves swiftly to build a juggernaut in her home state, California Sen. Kamala Harris is revealing what looks like an audacious strategy for delivering a mortal blow to her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination next March,” NBC News reports.
“It relies on her geographical edge at home, her perceived demographic advantage in the South and a primary calendar that brings them together on March 3 — known as ‘Super Tuesday’ because it is the date on which the most delegates to the party’s convention are in play in primaries across the country.”
“California voters alone will send more than 400 delegates to the convention, nearly double second-ranking Texas, and Harris, who is one of two African-American candidates in the race, is likely to have a shot at consolidating the black electorates in Southern states voting on Super Tuesday, including Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.”
Donald Harris, the father of Sen. Kamala Harris, told a Jamaican website that he did not appreciate his daughter’s joke about smoking marijuana in reference to her Jamaican heritage,” Politico reports.
Said the elder Harris: “My dear departed grandmothers, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.”
He added: “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
“In just over the first four hours of his 2020 presidential campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had already raised money from 42,000 donors, a total that bested the number Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) had hit in the first full day of her campaign. The campaign estimated that Sanders had raised $1.2 million in three-and-a-half hours on Tuesday,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The figure is another sign of the incredible money-raising prowess that Sanders brings to the race. Up to this point, Harris had been the most dynamic fundraiser among Democratic candidates in the race, having raised a whopping $1.5 million in 24 hours after declaring from more than 38,000 individual donors.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), visiting New Hampshire for the first time in her life, distanced herself from the last candidate to win this state’s Democratic presidential primary, saying she was “not a democratic socialist” like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the New York Times reports.
Said Harris: “The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire, but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist.”
Politico: “The Democratic senator has been activating her forces on the home front since launching her White House bid last month — cornering some of the state’s most prolific donors, locking down big endorsements and homing in on a statewide blueprint to rack up early delegates.”
“California’s Super Tuesday primary is foundational to Harris’ plans to win the nomination. Her home-state advantage is an enormous asset, holding the promise of a huge haul of delegates early in the nomination fight. At the same time, a poor performance there could end her bid.”
“Well aware there’s no guarantee of success, Harris and her team of longtime operatives there started working the state long before many of her 2020 Democratic rivals arrived for their first fundraisers and retail campaign stops.”
Politico: “Harris’ decision to sit for extended radio interviews with black hosts at the outset of her run is part of a broader strategy for the half-Jamaican, half-Indian former prosecutor. It’s designed to give her the chance to directly confront the uncomfortable and offensive internet memes about her personal life before they can metastasize among voters, three advisers to Harris said.”
“In recent days, Harris has parried skepticism over everything from claims to her black heritage to her decision to marry a white man — bluntly putting down markers on nuanced topics to help inoculate her from false critiques with answers that also illuminate how she views her own identity.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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