Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Dan Moraine, journalists and
Speaker 1: author of the biography Kumela's Way an American Life, spoke
Speaker 1: to me today about Harris's prospect of securing the nomination
Speaker 1: and running for the US presidency. He told me that
Speaker 1: despite Donald Trump saying that Harris would be easier to
Speaker 1: beat than Biden, people who underestimate Comana Harris quote end
Speaker 1: up losing.
Speaker 2: For a person who will be on the most public
Speaker 2: of stages running for the President of the United States.
Speaker 2: She doesn't tell you very much about herself her personal views. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, we know what her political views are. That's
Speaker 2: not a secret. But she can be a very close booket.
Speaker 2: She's a fascinating character, you know, a true California somebody
Speaker 2: who only could have come from California. I think her
Speaker 2: mother was an immigrant from India, her father an immigrant
Speaker 2: from Jamaica. They met at that most California of institutions,
Speaker 2: the University of California at Berkeley in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: She is truly a product of California. Can't imagine any
Speaker 2: other state that could have produced quite like Kamla Harris.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting. Would you think her background. Then, as
Speaker 1: you say, we know much more about her public life
Speaker 1: then her background as a prosecutor. Then is the ag
Speaker 1: the attorney general for California. Do you think that's going
Speaker 1: to help or hurt her presidential campaign? How will it
Speaker 1: shape this campaign?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it can only help her campaign. You know,
Speaker 2: she was a prosecutor. She put people in prison. She's
Speaker 2: running against a candidate who's been convicted of thirty four felonies.
Speaker 2: Prosecutor versus a fellow seems to me to be a
Speaker 2: pretty stark contrast. You know, she will be portrayed as
Speaker 2: being a California liberal. She certainly is liberal, and she's
Speaker 2: certainly in California. But she spent a lot of her
Speaker 2: career putting people who had committed serious crimes in prison,
Speaker 2: and the focus of much of her work as a
Speaker 2: prosecutor was to go after sex trafficking crimes against children.
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of hard to attack that now.
Speaker 2: You know, she opposed the death penalty, the death penalty.
Speaker 2: Her stand on the death penalty probably caught well, certainly
Speaker 2: cost her some support. When she was district attorney in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, the main prosecutor in the city county in
Speaker 2: San Francisco. I'm not sure that that issue is necessarily
Speaker 2: going to resonate quite so much in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 1: Do you think she's going to be able to unite
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party behind her. It's still not a certainty
Speaker 1: that she will become the Democratic Party nominee.
Speaker 2: Right well, she's got so much momentum built up up
Speaker 2: this first day. It's been quite impressive. The last report
Speaker 2: I saw was that she had raised sixty million dollars today,
Speaker 2: which is just a phenomenal sum if that's true. So,
Speaker 2: of course somebody could mount a challenge to her. It's possible,
Speaker 2: but I think she has a huge amount of momentum
Speaker 2: right now. It would be very tough to knock her
Speaker 2: off as as the Democratic nominee in.
Speaker 1: Terms of her best qualities, of what her team might
Speaker 1: put forward. What sort of president do you think she
Speaker 1: might make.
Speaker 2: It's a question for every vice president you know. Can
Speaker 2: a vice president be a Harry Truman, who was Franklin
Speaker 2: delan Or Roosevelt's vice president. Nobody thought very much of
Speaker 2: him when he was vice president. He didn't have much
Speaker 2: of a role at all in the Roosevelt administration, and
Speaker 2: yet he became a very consequential president. So will Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris be a Harry Truman? You know, we will see.
Speaker 2: But you know, people who underestimate Kamala Harris tend to lose,
Speaker 2: and so I wouldn't underestimate her in terms of her position.
Speaker 2: She's going to be a Biden Democrat. She's going to
Speaker 2: be supportive of Israel. She's certainly going to be supportive
Speaker 2: of the war in Ukraine. She's she's going to be
Speaker 2: very supportive of NATO. So she would continue the Biden
Speaker 2: tradition in those ways. I have no doubt.
Speaker 1: What do you think drives Kamala Harris. How do you
Speaker 1: think she's going to deal with Donald Trump? He said
Speaker 1: that Harris would be easier to defeat than Biden.
Speaker 2: Again, I think people who underestimate Kama Harrison of losing,
Speaker 2: and she would not be the first man to underestimate
Speaker 2: she can be formidable. She can be a very good candidate.
Speaker 2: You know, I moderated a debate that she had when
Speaker 2: she ran for Attorney General against a very accomplished prosecutor
Speaker 2: and the head of the district, the district attorney of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles County. So by all accounts he should have
Speaker 2: won that race. He was very accomplished, but she she
Speaker 2: bested him in that debate. I covered a debate, the
Speaker 2: one debate she had when she ran for the United
Speaker 2: States Senate twenty sixteen. And you know, she's very good
Speaker 2: on her feet. So if Donald Trump thinks that she
Speaker 2: would be a pushover in a debate, I'm not so
Speaker 2: sure that he would be correct.
Speaker 1: That was the journalist an author of the biography Kumala's
Speaker 1: Way in American Life, Dan Moraine, speaking to me earlier.