Kamala Harris said on Friday that Democratic nominee Joe Biden had broken through “one of the most substantial barriers” in the U.S. by picking her to be his running mate.
“Joe Biden had the audacity to choose a Black woman to be his running mate. How incredible is that?” Harris stated in her first one-on-one interview after the former vice president announced Tuesday that she would join the ticket.
“That he decided he was going to do that thing that was about breaking one of the most substantial barriers that have existed in our country — and he made that decision with whatever risk that brings,” she said in the interview with The 19th News, an outlet centered around gender and politics, aired on MSNBC.
Harris, who is the first Black and Indian-American woman on a major-party presidential ticket, said Biden “pushed forward something that might have otherwise taken decades” by picking her and that the Democrats were “representing who America really is.”
She further added that Black women are under-represented in politics and said she planned to get them to the polls by contrasting the Biden-Harris message with President Donald Trump’s “hate and division.”
“When you have one ticket saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ and another who has been full-time sowing hate and division in our country, those are the things that are going to motivate Black women to vote,” she said.
Harris said voter suppression laws in some states would be obstacles in November, particularly for voters of color.
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“Everybody has to remember this and ask this question of yourself: ‘Why don’t they want us to vote? Why are they creating obstacles to us voting?’ Well, the answer is, when we vote, things change,” she said.
Harris’s comments come after Trump on Thursday directly acknowledged that his opposition to funding for the Postal Service is related to his criticism towards the efforts to encourage mail-in voting during the current pandemic.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the Postal Service recently sent letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia warning that mail-in ballots might not arrive in time to be counted, further clouding the outlook for the election.
Since the declaration of her selection for the ticket, she has already come under attack by Trump who portrayed Harris as a “madwoman” who is “mean” and “nasty” and a radical leftist.
Trump on Thursday promoted an incorrect and racist theory that Sen. Kamala Harris, the first woman of color on a major political party general election ticket, and who was born in California, is not eligible to be vice president because her parents were immigrants.
Meanwhile, in a news conference on Thursday, Trump said he would “take a look” at a false “birther” theory that Harris was not eligible to run as vice-president because her parents were immigrants. She was born in California and therefore eligible.
