Kamala Harris Will Make 2020 Decision ‘Over the Holiday’
Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris will decide whether she will run for president in 2020 over the Christmas holiday. Calling it a “very serious decision,” Harris revealed her thinking in an interview this weekend at Know Your Value conference in San Francisco, NBC News reported.
“Over the holiday, I will make that decision with my family,” Harris told Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski. A former prosecutor and state attorney general, Harris has risen in the political spotlight since her election to the Senate in 2016.
Harris acknowledged that, should she decide to run for president, the campaign would assuredly be difficult, especially as a woman of color. “Let’s be honest. It’s going to be ugly,” Harris said. “When you break things, it is painful. And you get cut. And you bleed.”
When Brzezinski asked what she would want in the next president, Harris focused on optimism and transparency: “I think Americans want in their next leader someone who will be honest, speak truth, who will have a vision for our country that is unburdened by what we’ve been, but instead can see who we can be. And they want in their leader someone who will paint a picture of the future in which everyone can see themselves.”
She commented on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and President Donald Trump’s reluctance to act, saying, “First of all, let’s be clear about the fact Russia did interfere in the [2016] election of the president of the United States. Flawed though it may be, we designed a beautiful system of democracy, and one symbol of that is that we have free and open elections.”
Harris added, “When a foreign government chooses to manipulate our democracy knowing that would compromise our strength and our perception of our strength, you would think leaders would say, ‘No, we are going to do everything we can to strengthen and to give ourselves the immunity we need to be free from that kind of manipulation.’ Yet, it’s not happening.”
Harris is far from the only Democrat with their eyes on the White House in 2020. Veteran politicians like former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have all expressed interest. As have Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), who narrowly lost a 2018 Senate race against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).