The NPR Politics Podcast - How Harris Incorporates Biography Into Her Election Pitch

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Kamala Harris often quotes her mother on the campaign trail: "Don't let people tell you who you are. You tell them who you are." Though she would be the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to serve as president, she rarely explicitly talks about the historic nature of her candidacy. Instead, she weaves her identity and biography into her issue-focused campaign message.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, campaign reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Sarah from Sydney, Australia, and I'm getting ready for my wedding while listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. on Monday, September 23rd, 2024. Things might have changed since you heard this, but I'll be a married woman. Here's the show. Wow. Oh my God, congratulations. You know, we could have helped with vows if she'd reached out. I hope that our podcast is calming. Maybe. I'm really trying to process what she said.

And that's very exciting for her. Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to talk about how identity gets woven into a political candidate's strategy and what it says about the voters that they're trying to reach. We've talked about this on the pod before, about how Vice President Harris addresses her biracial identity as someone who grew up raised by a single mom with parents who are both immigrants. Tam, I want to start with you because you have been on the road lately. You were last in... Well, I was last in Wisconsin and Georgia on Friday. Right. And so how has her

biography generally and her own background and story weave into the message she's taking to voters on the road? What I would say is there was a line that really stood out to me in her speech in Wisconsin. I think this is a common part of her stump speech, but for some reason it really hit me on Friday night. She said, I come from the middle class. I'll never forget that I came from the middle class. She also talks, as you say, about having a single mother, immigrant parents. She is placing herself in the American story in a way that I think is authentic to her, but also meant to maximize who she appeals to. Right. And that really does come out in all of the ways that she talks about her policy. Right. Domenico, I mean, when she rolled out her plan to make housing more affordable and owning a home more achievable, she referenced back her own experience with that.

And it sort of comes out in all these different ways. Yeah. I mean, I think that she's leaned in way more on obviously her immigrant story, middle class upbringing. And there's good reason for that, right? I mean, the Trump campaign has had an advantage on the economy. And Harris coming into this race has talked about the economy a little bit differently than Joe Biden has and has been able to chip away at the margins that Trump has had on who you trust most to handle the economy. So I think

there's a clear strategy for that. Leaning into identity is not something that, you know, most political strategists would say is something that would be advantageous to someone who feels like it might be something to overcome. You know, Harris doesn't necessarily want to run on that. She's not running on that. Certainly very different than what Hillary Clinton did, much more in line with what Barack Obama did. It is so interesting, too, though, because there's an element of her where she is. I know we talk about how she isn't talking about her blackness. I think that's what we mean. She's not going up on stage and saying, I'm black and I'm Asian. She is talking about being a child of immigrants, though, which is, and to your earlier point, Tam, about the thing that is the most relatable, is a identity that relates across so many racial lines, relates across so many

generational lines in a country that is built from being, you know, immigrants. Like she used to say in 2019, unless this is your native land or your people were brought here on slave ships, you are an immigrant. Like you come from an immigrant background. And so I think for her to tell that story of what it meant to have a mom who had an accent and, you know, come here and have that journey, it does cover that ground of trying to relate to Latino voters, trying to relate to all kinds of Asian voters and things like that. As she's sort of been taking her message on the road,

she's been traveling so much in the last couple of weeks. And obviously we have about 40- something days to go until voting ends. But one thing I noticed that really kind of came up post debate was that she started this different kind of messaging, basically saying like, you know, yeah, I didn't have my wealth handed to me on a silver platter. Like some of us didn't inherit a lot, which is a really big, I think, contrast point against someone like Donald Trump, right? She's trying to hit that message home that her own financial history, her own, you know, background growing up as a kid is really different than the person she's running against. And this is not an accident. Talking to a senior member of her campaign, they have seen the polls improve for her. This polling Domenico is talking

about who do you trust to handle the economy. Republicans always have an advantage on this question, but there have been some recent polls, not all of them, but there have been some recent polls that show Harris doing better than Trump or even with Trump, which is unheard of for a Democratic candidate. She also polls really well on those questions about who do you think cares about you. And so this person on the campaign I was talking to said that they can drive this contrast with Trump saying, look, she's middle class. Remember, she worked at McDonald's when she was in college. They've been playing up that part of her identity a lot.

Whereas on the other hand, they aren't saying, and she'll be the first female president of the United States. They just aren't leaning in on that the same way that they are leaning in on a contrast with Trump on, does he understand you? How could he? He's a billionaire. You know, it's not surprising either, though, that she's mirroring sort of the Obama strategy a little bit because Obama won. Right. And, you know, going to try to do the Hillary Clinton strategy of saying, of leaning in very strongly on gender is clearly something that her team looks at and says, well, she didn't win. And she's surrounded by more Obama people now than she was in 2019. And there's a

clear path for being able to do this, for being able to win this way. And frankly, she does stand on the shoulders of Obama and Clinton, who are both able to sort of knock down some of these barriers and have to address it themselves in both of their campaigns. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. Tam, you did some reporting recently about the political strategies around the way Kamala Harris talks about her gender. She did lean in on the idea of being the first female president. They said that Vice President Harris doesn't need to do that in the same way. They said that in part, the Clinton campaign made this decision to lean in, at least in part because she needed to excite the Democratic base. She needed Democratic

base voters to want to get out and vote. And in Harris's case, one, Democratic voters are already pretty energized, much more energized than they were in 2016. But also, Trump is more of a known quantity now. Back then, Hillary Clinton, they said, was running against the idea of a Donald Trump presidency. And as a result, they felt that they needed to highlight and respond to his sexist attacks and that Harris doesn't need to in the same way. And just to give you an example of this so that it's not as abstract, Hillary Clinton in 2016 had this line that she used almost the entire campaign year. The other day, Mr. Trump accused me of playing the, quote, woman card. Well, if fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in. Ultimately, that wasn't enough.

And it certainly excited some voters, but I think it also turned off other voters. You know, one thing I think that's notable here is you mentioned that Trump was hypothetical in 2016. He was theoretical. And I think that that made it harder for Hillary Clinton to make the case that women's rights were under threat in the same way that Kamala Harris is able to now because of the Dobbs decision. I think that that gave Harris a pretty strong message to be able to run on. She did it as vice president, not when she was running, but had certainly some time to get that messaging under her belt to be able to talk about that. So, you know, I think that it's way less theoretical now and way more practical to be able to underscore the need for a champion for women's rights,

women's reproductive rights in particular. And Tam, and part of the reporting you did in your story was also how Kamala Harris is or maybe isn't kind of talking about her identity on the trail. The reality is, and you've reported on this going back much earlier than I have, Deepa, but she doesn't like to be asked the question, what's it like to be first? Or what is your identity? What is it like to be a woman? She seems both uncomfortable with it and just not interested in engaging with it. And one person explained it to me that, you know, by engaging with it, you would be talking on someone else's terms. And she only wants to talk on her own terms about this. You know, I will say we're talking a lot about, you know, how Harris talks about her identity, which we've noted that she's really tried to sort of sidestep it and try to talk about the issues that matter, which is probably a strong, safe strategy, which, you know, makes a lot of sense. There's a reverse side to this, too, where I felt even from the beginning that if Harris did get in, that Trump and Republicans would really struggle in talking about a black woman.

And we've seen that play out repeatedly where it really has sort of become a trap for them. Trump at the debate certainly struggled in not even looking at Harris. He's, you know, he didn't say her name, didn't say her name. You know, he he's had these times when he's tweeted or sent posts out on Truth Social demeaning black women and belittling them. And, you know, I think that it is really posed a challenge in some respects more for Trump and Republicans than it has for Harris. I think it's part of like Harris's personality. She really rejects being demanded to explain herself or being asked to explain herself. That's not just in her political DNA. And it's not even in her personality. I mean, she was raised by a mom who often said, don't let anyone tell you who

you are. You tell them who you are. And so this isn't something that she feels like she does have to explain to anyone, let alone the media and largely like white reporters who feel the need to ask about this over and over again. When like, we should point out, Donald Trump does not face these questions and candidates who are white and male don't face these questions either. All right, we're gonna leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.