David Remnick: Well, that happened. As soon as Joe Biden announced his departure from the race, we asked Jennifer Palmieri to come on the program to talk about what this all means for the person who's almost certainly the new standard bearer for the Democrats, Kamala Harris. Jen Palmieri is the politico in DC who's been around for half of forever. She knows where the bones are buried.

When we talk about the Democratic party establishment, she's right up there. A veteran of the Bill Clinton administration and Barack Obama's White House, and she was the director of communications for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign. Palmieri now co-hosts the podcast, How to Win 2024. She can tell us a thing or two about what exactly is going on in this bizarre and historic race for the White House. Hey, Jen. How are you?

Jennifer Palmieri: I'm good. How are you?

David Remnick: I don't know. Anything going on?

Jennifer Palmieri: Oh my God. [laughs] Oh my God, David.

David Remnick: I spoke with Jennifer Palmieri last week. First things first, you know everybody in this drama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama-

Jennifer Palmieri: Oh my God.

David Remnick: -Chuck Schumer, the Clintons.

Jennifer Palmieri: Oh my God. Oh my God.

David Remnick: Exactly. What happened? What happened over last weekend that turned the tide here?

Jennifer Palmieri: I think that there is a sense that is not true that Obama played a big role in trying to get President Biden to drop out, but it plays into an interesting Shakespearean storyline that between the two of them and the fact that it is true that President Obama did not think that President Biden should run in '16. He endorsed Hillary. He had told President Biden, he didn't think it was a good idea. That is the root of President Biden not listening to other people's advice because all of us were wrong. I have to say, I'm one of the people who was wrong.

I thought in '20 even President Biden shouldn't run because I didn't think that-- we normally don't go back. We go forward. The party decided he was the guy they wanted and he won and he was a remarkable president. Part of the problem was that the normal people who would have credibility with President Biden didn't because all of them were part of the group that never thought he should run in '16 and didn't think he should run in '20. That dynamic is there. I think the sense that President Obama played a big role here is overblown and it's easy to think that was a thing because of that history.

David Remnick: Nancy Pelosi, that appearance on, I think it was Meet the Press, was she ever--

Jennifer Palmieri: No. Morning Joe.

David Remnick: Forgive me.

Jennifer Palmieri: Morning Joe.

David Remnick: It's from Morning Joe.

Jennifer Palmieri: I will never forget this moment. I will never forget this moment of television.

David Remnick: When Biden was already saying, "I've made my decision, I'm going forward." She said almost in a maternal way, but in a way that you know what she wants to happen, "Well, the president will decide," which was a way of saying you haven't decided correctly yet. It was extraordinary.

Jennifer Palmieri: It was. Just like the degree to which all of us chat with each other and we all know each other and I'm not talking directly to Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries and late Schumer, but just everybody around them. It's like Nancy has got to be the one. You can't send anybody else to tell Biden what needs to happen when that time comes than Nancy Pelosi.

David Remnick: She's the one that had the cred with the president.

Jennifer Palmieri: Because she did it. She passed the torch. First of all, she's tough. Honestly, David and I heard this a lot. I heard that--

David Remnick: She's tougher than all of them.

David Remnick: She's tougher than all of them and men won't say hard things. They won't. [laughs] It was like, when the time comes, Nancy and someone descend. Then I saw that she was going on Morning Joe to talk about "Democracy" and I was like, "Oh. Here we go." Then she gets the question about Biden staying in and she's like, "Well, he needs to decide." Jonathan Lemire from Morning Joe is like, "Well, he has decided." She's like, "Well, I know. That's why it's so important that he makes the decision. The clock is running and he really needs to decide."

Then Thursday, NATO press conference, Hakeem Jeffries schedules a meeting with the president to happen immediately following the NATO press conference. I think this is important because Jeffries is thinking, "If the press conference goes well-ish, then this could get another head of steam and the president can think he can stay in and so I am going to go see him right away." I thought that was a very smart deft thing to do. That happens Thursday.

Friday, Jeffries puts out a statement that is very equivocal. He says, "I met with him, I told him where our caucus is," then that's it. Obviously, if the caucus had the president's support, he would have put it in that letter. He did not. Then I heard the next thing that's going to happen is Schumer is going to make a move. He's going to go see Biden on Saturday. What happens on Saturday? The assassination attempt. Then everything shuffled again and I was thinking, "Well, this is done. Biden is going to be the nominee."

On Sunday I'm like, "That's it. He's going to be the nominee." Then, by Monday, he did the Lester Holt interview, which was not great. He needed a couple of interviews and they were not great and you could feel it getting ahead of steam again. Then Wednesday was the day where everything crumbled. That was when he got COVID and Schumer let it be known that he did, in fact, go to Rehoboth on that Saturday. It was like the political version of D-Day.

Pelosi hits the beach first on Wednesday. Thursday, it's Jeffries. Saturday, it's Schumer. Then you have the unfortunate and very tragic hiatus from the assassination attempt and the man that was killed in Pennsylvania. Then Wednesday was just when you were like, "This is not sustainable."

David Remnick: Then last Saturday, he's in Rehoboth Beach and he summons Mike Donlin and somebody else.

Jennifer Palmieri: Rossetti. There's two other players that I think were really important here that we don't talk about, Bill and Hillary Clinton, because they understand people. They didn't necessarily have Biden's back in saying he needs to stay in. As I understand, they were calling him and talking to him and just being friends and also telling donors, continue to give him money because this is crazy. He's likely to stay in and he needs to have the resource and then just do it. The Clintons have been allies, but then there's times where they were not right. When Hillary ran and he wanted to run and then she lost.

I think that for some people, it's easier to talk somebody out of a corner when somebody's got your back. For the Clintons to play that role, everybody had a different role to play here. Then I think that as was reported in real-time, we just didn't see any evidence so it just taking hold with the president that this was getting more serious, and told Rossetti and Donald to come out to see him. Then they showed him the bad polling, the polling that showed even his polling, his own internal polling-

David Remnick: Was bad.

Jennifer Palmieri: -taking big, big, big, big dives in the battlegrounds. Frankly, y'all, the vice president is off to a great start, but such dives that it's a very sobering look at her coming back from what whole a Democratic candidate is currently in.

David Remnick: We assumed at a certain point that Joe Biden was headed toward a really catastrophic loss in November. What gives you the sense that Kamala Harris, whose poll numbers have never been all that great, will do better? I understand that there's a burst of energy, a sense of relief among many people in the party, but when it comes down to it, what gives you any optimism that the results in the ends of ends will be different in November than it might have been with Joe Biden?

Jennifer Palmieri: I guess three factors. One is that there's a huge anti-Trump coalition in the country. Two, I was very worried about the cynicism of both parties or have big problems and they're not dealing with them and it doesn't matter and it's all rigged. The Democrats had a big problem. We dealt with it. I think there's a huge relief to see a younger person out there. I think that's the second factor.

Then the third thing is that the vice president, she's actually a very talented politician. She would not have accomplished what she's done in terms of being AG, Senator from California, vice president if that's not true. Her coverage has been horrific for the last three and a half years.

David Remnick: What's the coverage reacting to?

Jennifer Palmieri: I worked for Hillary so I wrote a book my experiences working for her because it's not like reporters are like, "Oh, we're sexist and we don't like women, and therefore, we're going to write bad things about Hillary." I think it is that when you do not have a model in your mind for what a woman president looks like or, in Harris's case, a Black female vice president looks like, things don't make sense. What I would find with Hillary, it's like, how would manifest itself as people would say, "Well, there's just something about her I don't like." You're like, "Well, what is it?"

We would do focus groups. "There's just something about her I don't trust. Well, she's always so sketchy." "Well, what do you mean?" "Well, she's sketchy whitewater." It's like, "Well, whitewater ended up being nothing." "Well, I don't know." It's not like people are sexist or racist in an alert way, but just it's confounding vaccine, it doesn't make sense, and it's like there's something about our I don't like.

I think the other problem for her is vice presidents do not get consistent attention. They get very sporadic attention. You would just see snippets of her coverage and it's like, "Why isn't she doing better?" That's a constant refrain. That's a really hard thing to beat back, and still she maintained some level of a favorability rating, and I think now we are going to actually see her. If I worked for them I'd be like, from now to the convention, you got four weeks.

David Remnick: Who's a good idea for a vice president?

Jennifer Palmieri: I like Shapiro. He's a very good campaigner.

David Remnick: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. It's a good state to want to win.

Jennifer Palmieri: It's a great state to want to win. Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, he does a really good job at winning Arizona for him, for Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly's very specific thing, he's popular there. I don't know if that really translates. I do have a sense that if you're going to win Arizona or Governor Roy Cooper, North Carolina, he's another good option that she has. Those states might be winnable, but I do feel like Shapiro could actually deliver Pennsylvania for you because he is that popular.

David Remnick: You aren't winning without it, right?

Jennifer Palmieri: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan are real hard this time. They're real hard, but I will say having been through this process a few times with candidates, personality matters a lot. Chemistry matters a lot, and I still think the best ticket ever was Clinton and Gore. Not like trying to match or not trying to round out the typical, but just doubling down. We're doubling down on our strengths.

David Remnick: We seem like in some ways the same guy. Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. matter in this race at this point? We hear all kinds of things that he might exchange an endorsement of Trump for a cabinet position. I've heard that even more unlikely when Biden was still trying to decide what to do, that if he had left a gaping hole in the Democratic Party that Robert F. Kennedy would love to have inherited the party of his father. That obviously was a fantasy too far, but does is he a factor in the race anymore?

Jennifer Palmieri: I always worry about him because it's going to be a close race and so anything at the margins matters. He has proven to be less of a threat and people were concerned about early on. You still have to pay attention to him. You still have to define him and make sure that people know he is got really crazy, dangerous views so that if he is taking them from anybody he's taking from Trump and not from Harris, but also, I think other people are still on ballot in some places so it's any kind of third party thing, whether that's a concern. Green party, whatever, it's a big concern. That's why Hillary lost, it could be everything. It could be ballgame.

[music]

David Remnick: I'm talking with Jennifer Palmieri. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour and we'll continue our conversation in just a moment.

[music]

David Remnick: Welcome back to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At this point, there's no safe prediction to make about this election. That seems really clear, but we're talking today about Kamala Harris, who we presume will be the Democratic nominee. My guest is Jennifer Palmieri. She's a longtime veteran of democratic politics. She worked in the Obama White House, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and much more.

She also wrote a bestselling book called Dear Madam President addressed to some future leader of our country. Now, you write that it was important for Hillary Clinton to show strength as the nominee, but you also recommend women running for office, and this is your quote, "Nod less and cry more. Nod less and cry more." What do you mean by that?

Jennifer Palmieri: I mean the backup title for my book was Crying at Work because all women do it and it should not be [unintelligible 00:14:06]. On the Clinton campaign, we got a lot of bad news, a lot of bad news. Like, oh, Jim Comey just did a press conference where he said Hillary Clinton was reckless with classified information. You're like, "Okay, I can handle this. What else you got?"

Then it's like, Jim Comey has reopened the email investigation and we would just nod and we would say like, "Okay, I can handle this. I can handle this." You're just absorbing too much and you're not for yourself. You're not letting yourself say, "No, this isn't manageable." Then I do think in the Clinton campaign, we did just absorbed too much and think that we could just keep going.

David Remnick: What should you have done instead?

Jennifer Palmieri: It was the before times. It was the before times. It's really different. Hillary got pneumonia from me. I got pneumonia. I ended up in the hospital and I was like, "I can't believe that we think that we can manage all of this," because we knew the Russians were hacking us and hurting us, and no one would believe us plus Trump and all of that but it used to be taboo for women to show motion on the campaign trail.

As early as 2008, Hillary welled up a little bit in a New Hampshire diner and people liked it. I think they see that as real and there's a thing in women politics right now called 360 self. Women are now permitted to show all of themselves. That's why Kamala Harris can wear her Chucks and her rainbow coats and it's okay, it's not considered unserious.

David Remnick: It is striking that we refer to Hillary, we refer to Kamala. That doesn't happen for the most part with male candidates.

Jennifer Palmieri: I think there's a couple of things happening here. I can tell you Hillary Clinton does not like it. I think part of it is Harris is not very distinctive and Kamala is. There were two Clintons. Also, Hillary is a very distinctive name, but it's also true in terms of what researchers will tell you about this is that it is diminishing of a woman to call her by her first name. I thought, well, we only do it with Hillary and Kamala because they have unusual needs, but it's not true. We call her Nancy, everybody knows who Nancy is. It's Pelosi.

I thought about even other senators I know, people refer to Amy, Amy Klobuchar, not necessarily Klobuchars. I know that women researchers tell me it's bad and we should not do it. I do think there's something about female leadership that people feel is welcoming and I think referring to women by their first name is part of that. You don't want to lose all of it, but there is a lot of research and there's a history here that says, and it's also true for Black men that it is diminishing of them and something that goes back a long way.

David Remnick: I spoke with Julian Castor on the program a couple of weeks ago, and he speculated that the Trump campaign, and I think he's probably not alone in this, would weaponize identity politics against Harris. We've seen it already. She's already being called the DEI candidate. It seems that Trump is more concerned about her as an opponent than he was about Biden. How is this going to work?

Jennifer Palmieri: She got announced on Sunday, and I was really surprised that that day that Trump himself on his truth social posts and then his surrogates, people like Stephen Miller were just sputtering. They had nothing to say. They couldn't figure it out. I was like, "How are you not prepared for this?" I had heard that they were going to do shoots the DEI candidate and the border. Also, I don't know that's going to be effective, but I don't think it's that complicated.

I think that's what they will tap into, is that there's a resentment on their side about the DEI measures, their part of the concern about in parts of America about how America's changing and say that and talk about the border. The thing that's good about this only being 100 days, if Kamala Harris had to live with that critique for a year, it could wear you down. I just know in my own family people are just like, "Who do I vote for? I don't care. I don't care. Just tell me who to vote for and I'm going to be for that person.

How do I send my--" like my sisters who don't normally give Biden, they're like, "How do I send money to Kamala Harris? It's still joebiden.com. What do I do?" I would say you can't get tripped up and trying to diffuse the bombs that Trump is going to come your way, you have to just push, you have to do-- I think the first month you define yourself and then you just push on him and you just do your offense on him. Women constantly have to credential themselves.

You'll see Brian Fallon, who is Kamala Harris's extraordinarily capable communications director and was Hillary Clinton's press secretary so we've been through the battles together. When Trump attacks the vice president, Brian puts out a statement that says, "Kamala Harris was a prosecutor and an attorney general so she's used to getting these kinds of attacks. She's been getting these kinds of attacks all her life. They don't stop her. They might offend other women, they might offend Black voters, but they're not going to stop her."

What is he doing in that sentence? He's credentialing her. He's reminding people of what she's done. You constantly need to remind people of what she has done in her career and what she's done as vice president because people assume that women haven't accomplished anything. Again, it's just something-- it's not because we're all sexist, we want to keep women down. It's just like we're still catching up with what our expectations of women are. You do need to credential her so you want to push back on the DEI thing. She's had this extraordinary career in politics. She's one of America's best politicians given what she's accomplished but then you can't worry about what he's coming at. You just got to and then-

David Remnick: Hang on.

Jennifer Palmieri: -that's the benefit.

David Remnick: She ran for president and she wouldn't be the first person to run for president and lose and then come back and win it but she ran for president--

Jennifer Palmieri: Yes, like Joe Biden.

David Remnick: Exactly. More than once, but she ran for president and that candidacy was a washout. It just went nowhere. What was she doing wrong at that moment and what does she have to do better?

Jennifer Palmieri: I think that was in my mind when I talked about how this is only 100 days. She started that campaign in January of 2019, and she dropped down in December of 2019. She ran that race almost a year and it was still a couple of months before anybody voted. It was her first time out and that is a big-- I think it's particularly hard because when I worked for Hillary Clinton, I came into that campaign as the White House communications director, and I thought I knew what I was doing.

Then all of a sudden, it was like I had driven a bus for 25 years, and all of a sudden when I put on the break, the accelerator went and I think most of her team had not worked for a woman presidential campaign. It's a different deal. The other thing I noticed for all of the women, all six of them, it's really hard for women to break through.

David Remnick: In the 2020 primary you're talking about.

Jennifer Palmieri: Right. It was Biden, Beto, Buttigieg, Bernie. It's easy. This is like a provable thing and I'm not super crazy sexist person. We see potential in men that we don't see in women and it takes a long time for women to break through.

David Remnick: Drill down on that. Tell me more about that.

Jennifer Palmieri: There's a thing in hiring, not just in politics, but also in hiring that we have this archetype of Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, we've seen them before. They remind us of Bobby Kennedy, they remind us of John F. Kennedy, the earnest young guy that has a lot of potential. With women, and this is even true for entry-level hiring, it's that they need to prove themselves more. We are less likely to take a flyer on them because we see potential.

We want to see results in a record. That's not very exciting to listen to. It takes a while to break through. I think that's why in the end of that campaign, you had just Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren standing. You have to go through so many machinations to explain away your ambition because people are uneasy about that. Elizabeth Warren is the best at it. She was a genius about how she managed that.

David Remnick: How so?

Jennifer Palmieri: She said her lifelong dream was-- she said, "I've lived my lifelong dream. I've been a public school teacher." Then she did that little high five and kick that she would do on stage. The first time I heard it, I gasped because I was like, "She's a genius" because what did she do right there? She said, "Don't worry if you think my lifelong ambition is to be president of the United States, it's not. It was to be a teacher. We're very comfortable with women as teachers. Also, it's in the past because I've already done it."

David Remnick: Jen, the gloves are coming off and it happened within hours. For example, the evangelical leader Lance Wallnau invoked a comparison to the biblical notion of a Jezebel when discussing Kamala Harris, a Jezebel. I hadn't heard that one in a very long time. Michelle Obama, it seems like ages ago said, "When faced with criticism when they go low, we go high." Is that era over? Does Kamala Harris have to get down and dirty and punch hard?

Jennifer Palmieri: Yes. I think for Democrats when they go low, we go high will never be over because we are fundamentally different from Republicans, and our voters are motivated by different things. I never subscribe. I hate it when people are like, "Oh, you Democrats aren't tough enough. Oh, it's like, we're also why the republic is still standing so be grateful for that." I think it's not like when they go low, we go high, but we don't go as low as they do.

I do think that people are attuned, women are attuned, women are so frustrated, they're so mad about abortion. They hear Jezebel. They know what that means. I do think that this is probably why on Sunday when the Trump campaign realized this is who they're running against, they were sputtering that they didn't know what to say because they know if they go after the DEI stuff too hard or start calling her Jezebel, that's going to alienate a lot of the Black voters, that's going to alienate a lot of women. That's the tougher thing for them.

She just needs to make the effective case about Trump, she doesn't need to diffuse everything that comes her way from them and she doesn't need to be offended by what they say about her. Again, like what you say is I can take it, but I don't want my little girls hearing that. I don't want my granny hearing that and that registers with people.

David Remnick: It seems even before she entered the race that Democrats were doing considerably better with women and vice versa, the Republicans were doing better with men. My guess is Hulk Hogan's equivalent is not going to be introducing Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention. When did this happen that the Democratic party became the female party somehow and the reverse for the Republicans?

Jennifer Palmieri: I think at a metal level that this is about this whole fight Trump, the whole thing is about women in power not being the exception but the norm. I think fundamentally that is what this whole fight is about. It's about people who have traditionally been out of power, women, people of color. Not just having a one-off here and there, but it is becoming the norm to expect that leaders are going to be-- it's going to be 50/50.

That is not to say that all Trump supporters are sexist and racist, but I think that because there's a lot of things that have not worked well in America for a very long time, and government has not responded to the economic needs of most Americans for a very long time so there's real disaffection. I do think there is this other almost mystical battle of the genders about that. I didn't think it was by a coincidence that Hillary Clinton's nomination brought out somebody like Trump on the way.

David Remnick: Or was it Barack Obama's eight years in office as a president?

Jennifer Palmieri: That's part of it. I think that's all part of it because that's part of the moving away from the norm of the white man in charge. That is a big change. I do think that that is part of it.

David Remnick: Why has this taken so unbelievably long in the United States? Dozens of countries have had women's heads of state. Mexico just elected a Jewish woman, Claudia Sheinbaum as president. Why does it seem like it's still such a big deal here in 2024?

Jennifer Palmieri: Big country. There is a macho element in this country. There is the archetype of what the American male leader looks like. The West is part of it. Then there is their systematic differences. It's much easier. This is like a whole thing with researchers about women leaders too is that it's much easier for a woman to be elected in a parliamentary system where a small number of people select you as the leader and then you go before the country as the leader without having to go through a very bruising primary where people don't recognize you and don't see you and hold you to a different standard.

That is why Kamala Harris is in a much bitter shape going into her general election because she didn't go through that bruising process. This is not unusual. This is how a lot of times when women go into power, this is what happens. There was a male leader that was in charge and then something happens to them and then a woman takes over and that's the first breakthrough.

David Remnick: In the last couple of days she's raised $81 million in 24 hours.

Jennifer Palmieri: Now $100. They announced $100 this morning.

David Remnick: Time moves on.

Jennifer Palmieri: $100 million. Yes, I know.

David Remnick: How indicative are these numbers? What's the relationship between dollars and votes in this way?

Jennifer Palmieri: It's a big early indicator because it means if you have enough enthusiasm to give money, and these are small donors that is you're going to vote. It's not about how much money it is, it's about what it indicates for enthusiasm. By the way, Trump is going to have a huge number for his fundraising because of the assassination attempt. He probably has raised even a lot more than that. What's important is what it indicates for. She'll have plenty of money. She'll have all the money she needs, but it shows that there's enthusiasm and excitement.

David Remnick: Jen, you know more about this game than anybody I know. If Harris calls you tomorrow, what are your top three pieces of advice to her?

Jennifer Palmieri: I would say your speech on Monday night was fantastic. That is who you are.

David Remnick: That's the speech in Wilmington. Yes.

Jennifer Palmieri: You are the prizefighter accomplished woman who knows what she's doing better than anybody else. You don't need any more advice, just keep that and go. Tell your story, pick your running mate and just show as much energy and actually being with that person. Show us a new team, a new generation of leadership, and just don't doubt the team that you've built with your running mate in your campaign. Don't doubt yourself and just go. I really think it's not true for all candidates, but I really think that's what she needs. She knows what the contrast is. The contrast is really easy. The prosecutor versus the felon. The prosecutor versus the sexual abuse guy. The guy who's corrupt and rigged versus the woman that held people accountable. That's all fine. She's got that and she knows what she's done. It's like, just go do that.

David Remnick: Jenn Palmieri, thanks so much.

Jennifer Palmieri: Pleasure, David.

David Remnick: Jennifer Palmieri was director of communications for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and she's now the cohost of MSNBC's podcast, How to Win 2024. I have one other question. When you watched the Republican National Convention, what did you see?

Jennifer Palmieri: I watched a lot of Gilmore Girls during that. Went to Stars Hollow.

[laughter]

David Remnick: That's called approach-avoidance in psychological terms.

Jennifer Palmieri: I never get to do that, and I was like, you know what? I watched [unintelligible 00:31:04] and I watched.

David Remnick: Here's the thing, Jen, I don't believe you. You watched plenty of it. What did it say to you?

Jennifer Palmieri: I watched all of Trump and I thought the only speech the entire convention that hung together was Eric Trump's because Eric Trump didn't--

David Remnick: One of the big questions about Vice President Harris's candidacy is undoubtedly going to be race. How will she talk about her Jamaican and Indian ancestry, and how will voters respond? 16 years after Barack Obama was elected president, does race still matter? Or better put, how does it matter in a presidential election in this country? Vinson Cunningham and Doreen St. Félix, staff writers for the New Yorker talked about this on our podcast, The Political Scene.

Vinson Cunningham: I think that most times when people bring Kamala Harris and Barack Obama into the same conversation, they're mistaken. That it's just this kind of wish casting, but what they do have in common is a Black father who is not from America. This brings all kinds of strange things into being, and they both in creating a Black American identity, and trying to curate-- I shouldn't say trying to. I don't know what the level of intention was, but the same way that Barack Obama goes to Chicago, joins Trinity Church, sits under the preaching and the tutelage of Jeremiah Wright.

You can think of the parallel motion in Kamala Harris' life, is going to an HBCU, joining perhaps the most famous historically Black sorority, The AKAs, tying themselves to a more distinctly American former Blackness than the one that is signified by their fathers. That to me is really interesting because Black American identity is always constructed even by those of us who have more traditionally Black American family histories. It's always a function, at least in part of choices that are made not simply by heredity or genetics or whatever, more pernicious ways that you configure somebody's identity.

Politics also, like Blackness, is the process of identity creation. To the extent that that writing oneself into a specifically American form of Blackness and also writing oneself into public consciousness as a politician must, those two things going in concert, that parallel motion is what I'm interested in about both of those figures. I really do wonder-- Kamala has been very good about this. You can see again, videos of her-- it sounds like a college marching band, and she's marching in the middle of the street.

It's a very culturally recognizable thing that she's doing. She's been pretty good at managing these symbols, so I do wonder how she's going to continue to do that over the course of the next 100 or so days.

Doreen St. Félix: That's really interesting, incredibly interesting and astute. It makes me think about in some ways, it's like ignored trip that Harris had made to the continent of Africa, which is how it was framed almost like ancestral going home journey. That was in March of 2023. Harris went for a nine-day trip. She started off in Ghana and then ended up in Tanzania and Zambia. It was described some people as a charm offensive.

The first time that a vice president was demonstrating a modernized interest in what was happening in the continent in the context of increased Chinese investment within many African countries, Harris was potentially taking on an issue that no one else cared about and could have honed a more acute vision of her identity through it. Yet the profile in The Atlantic expresses a disappointment or frustration with her performance during this trip because she didn't actually convey the going back to the motherland excitement that people were expecting.

What I find really interesting about the trip to Africa, about her relationship to American Blackness, is also what is unsaid is her relationship to her south Indianness. Obviously, right now Modi is the leader of India. We don't seem to think of asking Harris about her relationship to that fascism happening on the other side of the world. It speaks to this idea that I'm trying to work through, and I think many of us are trying to work through, is the slipperiness of what it is to be an Asian-American, and how that idea is manufactured within our ideas of American exceptionalism.

I wonder when that part of her identity, which she gets from the mother. That's the matriarchal condition that Harris so much praises in her memoir and in her personal anecdotes. When will it come to the fore in political conversation? There was so much talk this week about the Zoom call that 44,000 Black women attended, and then there was a Zoom call for Black men, but Kamala Harris is also an Indian woman, and I find the lack of engagement with that reality to be. There's just, I think, a level of delusion there.

David Remnick: Doreen St. Félix with Vinson Cunningham, they spoke at length and you can hear all of their conversation on our podcast, The Political Scene. Doreen also has a terrific essay this week about Kamala Harris on newyorker.com.

 

 

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