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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKamala Harris Is Resisting Attempts to Pigeonhole Her
Kamala Harris Is Resisting Attempts to Pigeonhole Her
The senator from California announced her candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, seeking to build a broad coalition and speaking to the complexities of life in America.
Edward-Isaac Dovere
7:44 AM ET
Kamala Harris is a half-Jamaican, half-Indian woman from Oakland, California, the daughter of two UC Berkeley grad students. She went to high school in Montreal. She married a wealthy, white, Jewish lawyer later in life, and didnt have kids of her own. When shes not in Washington, she splits her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Her first name is Sanskrit and gets mispronounced all the time. She was being mentioned as a front-runner presidential candidate before shed even headed over to her Senate victory party, all of two years and two months ago.
She is not, by biographical measures, representative of what most would see as the typical American experience. But Harris launched her presidential campaign Monday with a challenge to the rest of the field thatas she put it to me at the press conference she held in the afternoon in the lobby of the Interdisciplinary Research Building at her alma mater, Howard Universitycandidates who want to win have to speak to the complexities of each of our lives, and pay equal attention to their needs.
Elizabeth Warren attacks every issue by diagnosing an economy warped by decades of bad policy. Washington Governor Jay Inslee centers his pitch on the climate-change emergency. For Harris, such a singular focus feels too narrow.
On the issue of climate change: Every parent wants to know that their child can drink clean water and breathe clean air. And that same parent wants to know that theyre able to bring home enough money with one job to pay their bills and pay their rent and put food on the table, instead of having to work two or three jobs, she said. Every person wants to know that there will be a criminal-justice system that is fair to all people, regardless of their race. Every person wants that a mother and father should not have to sit down with their teenage son and have the talk, and tell that child about how they will be stopped or arrested, or profiled and potentially shot because of their race.
She wouldnt say that the other candidates are doing it wrongat least, not directly. Nobody is living their life through the lens of one issue, Harris said. Lets not put people in a box, and as they make their decisions, lets give them credit for being smarter than that.
more...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/how-kamala-harris-running-against-2020-democrats/580921/
SharonClark
(10,014 posts)"California Sen. Kamala Harris will hold a town hall with Iowa Democrats next week, one day after launching her 2020 presidential campaign in her home town of Oakland.
The event, hosted by CNN and moderated by Jake Tapper, will be filmed live from Drake University in Des Moines at 9 p.m. Monday Jan. 28. Additional details about the trip will be announced in the coming days, according to the campaign." Des Moines Register, 1/22/19
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,338 posts)But I'd prefer a candidate who didn't jump on the "oust Franken" bandwagon. It's mostly "small issues" like this that separate the Dem candidates. I'm sure they're mostly in agreement on the major issues.
PDittie
(8,322 posts)Because the way I read the article -- "don't pick a lane" -- it's less resisting a pigeonholing than it is weaving all over the road.
YMMV, of course.