Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Kamala Harris has some thoughts about her potential 2028 rivals
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
Updated:
1:14 PM EDT, Fri September 19, 2025
Source: CNN
Kamala Harris hasn’t made up her mind about whether she’ll run for
president again in 2028 — but she does seem to have made up her mind
about some of the other Democrats also looking at getting in.
CNN reviewed an advance copy of her which is peppered with comments
about many of her party’s next generation of leaders, some of whom
she would almost certainly confront on a debate stage if she tries for
the White House again. Some comments come from her notes from the phone
calls she had in the frantic hours last July after and to replace him
atop the Democratic ticket.
Some get several long paragraphs. Some are brushed over in a few
telling words.
Some are nice. Some are very much not.
Harris’s comments about wanting to pick Pete Buttigieg as her running
mate, and what that reflects about , came as a surprise to both. She
writes that Buttigieg was “my first choice,” making clear that the
Minnesota governor who was so loyal to her throughout the campaign and
since was not. But she also writes that while Buttigieg would have been
“an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man.” While
extolling the then-Biden transportation secretary for his
accomplishments and political skills, Harris says his sexual
orientation made him an impossible pick for America to accept, at least
with her on the top of the ticket.
Walz, she recalls, “had an appealing authenticity and was genuinely
self-deprecating” and “plainspoken, hardworking, strong, kind, and
a fighter for what he believes is right.” She says she was impressed
about how he seemed ready to appeal to rural and working-class voters.
She calls him empathetic and impressive and ready to work well with
her.
Then later she reflects on watching Walz’s , which, she points out
again, he had prepped for with “consummate debater” Buttigieg. She
writes of seeing JD Vance gloss over Donald Trump’s rhetoric and
record, “when Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at
JD’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug (Emhoff, her husband),
‘What is happening?’” Walz fumbled answers, she writes.
She says that other than Maya Rudolph’s literally spitting out wine,
the “Saturday Night Live” skit about her watching the debate in
horror was “uncanny in its portrait of our evening.”
Pressed for his own response to what Harris wrote, Buttigieg told
Politico on Thursday, “My experience in politics has been that the
way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think
you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.”
Of her other potential running-mate choices, Harris’s feelings about
are the roughest. Though much of what she discloses leaked in the days
following their interview for the job last August, she writes in the
book of clearly being annoyed with him despite being “poised,
polished and personable.” Shapiro did an able job of explaining how
he wouldn’t be weighed down by the attacks that were already coming
at him, Harris writes, but as to his detailed questions about what his
role would be and whether he would be in the room for every decision
(as Biden had been for Barack Obama but she had not been for Biden),
“I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation. A vice
president is not a co-president.”
Harris throws in a line about how Shapiro was asking what kind of
artwork he could get hung in the vice president’s residence.
Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for Shapiro, told CNN, “It’s simply
ridiculous to suggest that Governor Shapiro was focused on anything
other than defeating Donald Trump and protecting Pennsylvania from the
chaos we are living through now. The Governor campaigned tirelessly for
the Harris-Walz ticket – and as he has made clear, the conclusion of
this process was a deeply personal decision for both him and the Vice
President.”
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who was the other finalist with Walz and
Shapiro, gets an extensive recounting of his record in the Navy and as
an astronaut. She calls him “an American hero.” She writes about
his wife, Gabby Giffords, being shot and the work they had done
together on gun reform. She writes that she liked how he’d handled
immigration as he won in his border state though was concerned how he
had delayed in backing pro-union legislation.
He was “magnetic” and “our American ideal of self-service.” But
she writes that she concluded he was untested in a major political way,
and worried about how he’d be torn up by the Trump campaign in a way
that would leave him permanently tarnished.
No others in the 2028 conversation get many words in Harris’s book,
and most of them come as she goes through her notes from her phone
calls as she tried to rally their support on that first manic
afternoon.
While she writes that Buttigieg and Kelly were fast to endorse her and
Shapiro asked her then how she was holding up and told her she could
win over Trump voters in her state, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker offered a
studious rationale for why he wasn’t committing: “As governor of
Illinois, I’m the convention host.” Similar hesitation came from
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: “I believe you’ll win, but I need
to let the dust settle, talk to my colleagues before I make a public
statement.”
Though Harris does not write about this, both briefly explored whether
they could run themselves in those first few hours after Biden’s
announcement.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response, per her notes was “Hiking.
Will call back.” She adds, “He never did.” Maryland Gov. Wes
Moore’s response: “You’ve been loyal. I respect that.”
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.