Harris calls for Supreme Court expansion and statehood while weighing another run
Kamala Harris closed out a seven-state campaign swing for Democratic candidates with a two-day visit to Georgia, using the final stretch of the midterm campaign to attack President Donald Trump, outline a governing agenda for her party and urge turnout in numbers she said would be “too big to rig” in Tuesday’s election.
The Associated Press, which covered the swing, reported that the former vice president still delights Democratic donors and activists with jabs at Trump, whom she called “callous, corrupt and incompetent” and dubbed the “decorator in chief” for his White House renovations and gold adornments.
“This is the moment where we turn that anger into action,” Harris said more than once during the busy schedule of the campaign’s final stretch.
In the AP’s account, the tour carried a double character. In parts, it resembled the nostalgic final tours of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — two-term presidents whose last campaigns are behind them — and in parts the barnstorming of potential future contenders such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Harris, for her part, is considering whether to run for president again.
Her schedule took in early presidential primary states — Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan — along with Mississippi, not exactly a hotbed of presidential politics, where she campaigned for U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom. “The South is in play,” she said. “When Democrats invest in the South, we can win in the South.”
At a Fulton County Democratic Party fundraising gala she headlined in Atlanta, retired nurse Melinda Johnson praised what she heard. “I think she’s hitting all the right notes,” Johnson said.
As the first Black woman elected to nationwide office, Harris urged fellow Black Americans to “honor the ancestors” with their votes. The AP reported that she has also become unapologetically “transactional” in her approach, demanding more from politicians.
Harris, a California senator before she joined Joe Biden’s ticket in 2020, pushed fellow Democrats to govern aggressively. She called for “structural work” that she said was necessary to reinvigorate American democracy: expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and reconsideration of the Electoral College.
In Georgia, she delved into civil rights history and accused the U.S. Supreme Court of “backdoor racism” over its decision to gut the Voting Rights Act and allow Republicans to redraw boundaries for congressional districts that now elect nonwhite lawmakers.
“Ruthlessness” is key, she said at the Democratic dinner in Atlanta — “not ruthlessness in the sense of cruelty … but in our willingness to use our power to deliver on our commitments.” Democrats, she added, “can no longer let process stand in the way of progress.”
Throughout the stops, Harris nodded implicitly at her loss to Trump. “You know we’ve been spending the last year and a half, so many of us, going through a range of emotions,” she told students. “Anger, depression, sadness, frustration, a sense of helplessness and powerlessness.”
Warning that Trump could try to meddle in Tuesday’s election, she echoed one of the president’s own mantras in pressing her case for turnout. “In this case,” she said at Atlanta’s Elizabeth Baptist Church, “we just need to turn out in really large numbers that would be too big to rig.”