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