Election 2024

Kamala Biographer: Look for Harris to “Go Back to Her Roots as a Prosecutor” in Taking on Trump

A Conversation with Dan Morain on the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Likely Presidential Contender

This story first appeared at Newsmakers with JR.

“You may be the first to do many things,” the mother of Vice President Kamala Harris once instructed her daughter. “Make sure you are not the last.”

As Harris suddenly stands on the brink of becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race on Sunday, the advice her mother bestowed on her as a schoolgirl endures: the vice president is about to embark on a campaign to become the first woman, the first Black person, and the first American of South Asian heritage to win election to the White House.

Author Dan Morain surfaced the quote — and the enormous, singular and abiding influence of Harris’ mother on her character, values, and ambition — in “Kamala’s Way: An American Life,” his 2021 unauthorized biography of the vice president.

On Monday, Morain returned to Newsmakers for a conversation about the extraordinary political events now swirling around Harris — and the strengths, weaknesses and life experiences of the 59-year old California politician, who now stands at the white hot center of an unprecedented moment in American history, barely more than 100 days before the Nov. 5 election.

In the thoroughly researched book, Morain recounts how Harris’ immigrant mother, the late breast cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan Harris, took in a high school friend of Kamala’s after the girl had confided that she was being abused at home.

In the years since, Harris has cited the terror and trauma which her friend suffered as the genesis of her decision to train and work as a criminal prosecutor, first as San Francisco’s District Attorney and later as Attorney General of California.

It is those two decades of her professional career, Morain said, that represent the vice president’s greatest political strength, as she works to consolidate support within the Democratic Party. Even if she captures the nomination, Harris will run as the underdog to Donald Trump, who has unified the Republican Party under his right-wing strongman bid to reclaim the presidency.

“She’ll go back to her roots,” Morain said. “Her greatest strength is that she was a prosecutor.”

With Trump running in the wake of his conviction on 34 counts of criminal business practices in New York, as well as being found liable for sexual assault in a separate, civil case, Harris and the Democrats would love to define the election as the The Prosecutor vs. The Felon, a framing they set forth with an online ad, repurposed from Harris’ failed 2020 presidential run, within hours of Biden’s announcement on Sunday.

That said, Harris still faces an uphill fight against Trump, given that her favorability ratings are as low as Biden’s, who has trailed the Republican nominee in polling for nearly a year.

Beyond voters’ significant concerns about the state of the economy, it is all but certain that more personal, sexist and racist attacks will be forthcoming from the white nationalist base of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, if not the candidate himself.

There are also outstanding questions about the legal and political processes the Democrats will use in a bid to pivot to Harris from Biden, as they push back on narratives of a rigged backroom deal, not to mention any unlikely party rivals to the vice president that may yet emerge.

Then there is the considerable unanswered question of who Harris will select as her running mate – Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a military hero from a battleground state with bipartisan appeal? Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, to boost her chances in a must-win Midwest state? Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, to appease white male voters uncomfortable with voting for a woman of color? Gretchen Whitmer, to nail down Michigan, without which Democrats cannot win, while creating excitement around an all-woman ticket and doubling down on attacks against Trump as a sexual predator? An as-yet unnamed retired general, to boost her national security credibility?

Morain, who knows Kamala Harris better than any other journalist, discusses these and a host of other urgent political issues with the genial host on a special edition of Newsmakers TV.