What Kamala Harris Needs to Win the Presidency

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kamala Harris will face barriers as a woman running for the Presidency. “Women constantly have to credential themselves,” Jennifer Palmieri, a veteran of Democratic politics who served in the Clinton Administration, says. She was also the director of communications for the Obama White House, and then for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign. Harris will “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.” But Harris also has notable strengths as a candidate, and—having avoided a bruising primary campaign and having been handed a torch from the incumbent—she has advantages that no other woman running for office has had. For a female candidate, the world has changed since 2016, Palmieri believes. She shares insights into how Joe Biden was finally persuaded to step out of the race, and explains what she meant by advising women to “nod less and cry more.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the political scene and I'm David Remnick.
0:07.0	Well, that happened. As soon as Joe Biden announced his departure from the race, we asked Jennifer
0:18.8	Paul Mary to come on the program to talk about what this all means for the person who's almost
0:24.8	certainly the new standard bear for the Democrats. Kamala Harris. Jen Paul
0:30.3	Mary is the kind of political in DC who's been around for half of forever.
0:34.4	She knows where the bones are buried.
0:36.7	When we talk about the Democratic Party establishment, she's right up there, a veteran of the
0:42.0	Bill Clinton administration and Barack Obama's White House,
0:45.3	and she was the Director of Communications for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.
0:50.9	Paul Mary now co-host the podcast How to Win 2024. So she can tell us a thing or
0:58.0	two about what exactly is going on in this bizarre and historic race for the White House.
1:05.0	Hey Jen, how are you?
1:08.0	I'm good, how are you?
1:09.0	I don't know, anything going on?
1:11.0	Oh my God, oh my God David. I spoke with Jennifer Palmieri last week. First things
1:18.8	first, you know everybody in this drama. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Clintons.
1:26.0	Yeah, exactly.
1:28.0	What happened?
1:30.0	What happened over last weekend that turned the tide here?
1:35.0	So I think that there is a sense that is not true
1:40.0	that Obama played a big role in trying to get President Biden to drop out.
1:48.0	But it does, you know, it plays into an interesting Shakespearean storyline between the two of them and the fact that, you know, it is true that President Obama did not think that President Biden should run in 16.
	...

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