Kamala Harris for President?

I don't hate establishment democrats. Some of my best friends are establishment democrats. You got it. So in this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. And today we're going to consider the future of the US presidency. Joe Biden's getting up there in age and his vice President, Kamala Harris

is next in line for the presidency. We're going to talk about who she is with someone who knows her better than any of our best friends, Jamal Simmons, who was the communication directors for Kamala Harris, and he happens to also be an old friend of ours, and listen, this is his first podcast interview since he left the White House. This is a scoop, So let's do it. Last baby's dad, so Khalil, the President of the United States,

our President, Joe Biden, is eighty years old. Yes, yes, eighty, or I should say old af And my wife Danielle, was recently in Arizona to visit her uncle and aunt, and she ended up watching the State of the Union with all these eighty year olds and because you know, they're they're they're from Chicago, but they went down there to kind of like Winter's right, and so she's watching it with them, and you know, all these eighty year olds are commenting on his his age and how he looks,

and whether he's had work done on his face, and like how he's moving with with my cousin who I was watching it with, whether he had botox or not, let's just name it, like, you know, look pretty clear to me, you know. And so the whole question of his age was was so even more present in that viewing for her, because um, it wasn't just how young people view him, it's it's how his actual peers view him. And you know, man, They're like, I'm not. I'm not.

I'm retired. I'm not. I'm not. I don't have the biggest job in the world right now. Yeah, they're basically saying, I don't even think it's a good idea that this guy is is gearing up to maybe run for a second term. Yeah. Yeah, that's ah, that is the question, right, and so much the question that I was watching it and looking at Kamala Harris the whole time, and it's been behind him, over his right shoulder as they do,

like that's how it works. Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean, and I have to say, like watching her in this role, in this back half of the Biden presidency, these next two years where the Republicans have now taken majority, and she's sitting next to the speaker Kevin McCarthy as opposed to Nancy Pelosi, right, I mean, it did hit me differently. And I have to say I had a lot more pride in just seeing her in that role symbolically than I than I remember having when I watched her next

to Nancy Pelosi. Um and yeah, and it had me thinking a lot about how Biden's own decision to run for a second term has huge implications for whether or not Kamala Harris will be the presumptive nominee in a twenty twenty eight race, because at that point there'll be no question she's served two years or two terms in this vice presidential role. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're

going to try to unpack today. What we're going to talk about is this attention on Kamala Harris, because when you do have an eighty year old president man the vice president, it means something, right in one sense, like yeah, yeah, man, she could be president next week. That has a lot of scrutiny on her because of this. That's right, there's

so much scrutiny. By the way that the New York Times ran a pretty significant story reported by some of their top political reporters who had access to the high ranking Democrats in the White House, who expressed some concern about whether or not she actually would be a liability

for the ticket in twenty twenty four. You're saying, Khalil that even if she's just on the ticket as vice president, that's somehow that's a liability for Biden, like it might mean that a Trump or around the Santas the governor from Florida, they might win because because she's just even

part of the ticket. Again, well, yes, and I'm saying that's what the New York Times is reporting, because she would be that much closer to potentially inheriting the presidency in light of the fact that Biden might either not make it through his term or might be incapacitated. I mean, you know, just as a matter of history, this is

not abstraction. The notion of someone dying in office is a very real thing, and Democrats are suggesting that she might be a liability if in fact people start calculating whether or not Joe Biden can make it through the

end of his term. And so all of this makes me think, like there's such a need to assess Kamala Harris and the role she's done as Vice president and who she is and what her values are, and you know, maybe how she might govern in a much more like, you know, in a serious way, and to understand more about her because you know, so this idea of her being the VP and being, as you said, like feeling this kind of pride there's a woman of color there

in this role the first time ever. Yeah, Yeah, she's a first she's a first Black woman in this role, and she's a first Asian American woman in this role.

And and you know, I mean that Times article talked about some of this of sort of that the that role of her, how her race and gender plays into some of this, and even as as slights um there's this one note in there of like when she goes on these foreign trips and meets dignitaries and you know, the vice presidents of other countries, they try to introduce her set up meetings with the first ladies of these other kinds. That crazy and She's like, Nah, I'm not

doing that. That that's not That's not what I'm about. That's like yeah, so I want to think more about about her identity, politics, her actual politics. And also like, man, you know, what is a vice president? What are they supposed to do? What are what are we supposed to expect from them? Are we holding her to a standard that's unfair or not? And well need to find out more that's right. And on this point, her former communications director Jamal Simmons, who only stepped down in the last

few weeks. And guess what, we get to talk to him. That's who we have on today Jamal Simmons, who's been a longtime friend of ours. He worked as Kamala Harris's communications director for all of twenty twenty two. He held this position for a year. He is our friend, and he is going to be our Kamala Harris explainer. That's right, we're gonna learn a lot more about her from someone who's one of our best friends who can give us the inside scoop. Let's do it. Jamal, what's up, my man.

It's great to see you. It's good to see you guys. First, I want to say that we've known each other since college. You know, you were in Morehouse and you were friends with Danielle who is now my wife, and she and I were dating then, and she was going to school in Atlanta too, and so yeah, we've actually been friends since then. I mean, that's been been a little bit. And the first thing I want to say, is you getting this job as the communications director for the vice

president of the United States. I was just I just I just felt immense pride. So I just felt pride. I appreciate that it was a it was a good time and honor and a privilege, you know, to be there, and uh, I felt the moral support that I was getting even though I was exhausted all of the time. We can only imagine that we want to hear it. We want to hear exactly what makes one exhausted in

the White House. So listen, um, I mean, I'm a historian, Ben's a journalist, but neither one of us are political junkies, certainly not in the way you are. And while we pay close attention to what's happening in the country nationally obviously, but but here you are coming off of being the man in charge of the messaging of the vice President of the United States of America. So tell us exactly

what you did. Yeah, I mean, I gotta. I actually I'm proud of him, but I don't I don't have no clue what he actually was it where you're just are proving emails to send out under her name, I mean, that's that's probably what it was. I would say all of the above, right, So I'll just tell you this.

My first day in the office was January tenth of two thousand and twenty two, and I got about four hundred and eighty seven emails that day I count it, and some of them you can kind of get rid of immediately because they don't believe I mean that they matter, But it's just like somebody sending you a press release about an announcement somewhere. Some of them, though, are conversations

that are happening between people. But ultimately the communications director's job is to figure out all the ways the vice

president is engaging in the public through media speeches. In my office, I had the director's speech writing, the press secretary, the digital director um and then a communication staff and so all those people reported to me, and the idea was that we should all be saying the same thing on the same day, okay, And so that was the job was to figure out, you know, with my colleagues and the other departments and the Vice President, what is it that we want to talk about on Tuesday, and

how is it that we're going to communicate that message to as many people as possible, and what venues are we going to do it? And then we present that to the Vice President and then she crosses off fifty percent of what it is, we say, add in a bunch of more, and then you know, she goes out and said and and and tell us a story of like a time that that you came up with a message and it went south or something where it was like really tricky. Um, well we're luckily, I will say

I didn't have any experiences where things went south. There were some experiences I think people had before I got there. Um And and as you know, I would just say, all these success was hers, all the mistakes were mine. Uma that next job look a no. But you know, the big thing is she actually knows a lot about what she wants to say. The thing that I remember about Kamala Harris is that she's been her entire early

part of her career as a prosecutor. So like many of us when we start learning our jobs, those lessons that we learned very early to stick with us throughout the rest of our careers. So for her, words have a lot of meaning because, as she would say, when she would get up in front of the public and talk to the press, it was usually about somebody's freedom, right because if she was going to prosecute somebody, they

may go to jail. Or was about a family that was in pain because something had occurred to them and she felt some responsibility to them. So that always informed what the word choices. She would make the way she wanted to communicate. Sometimes I would say she could have been a little bit more rhetorical. I wanted her to sometimes be a little bit more um, you know, a little more political flourish or kind of a you know,

a bigger story. But I think her response to say that she was not that funny is that sounds like she just because I was serious. Yeah, she could just I don't think of I don't I don't think of a single prosecutor who I've ever heard actually told a joke that anybody was interested in laughing. She needed to loosen up. She would never tell jokes, you know, in that environment, right, because it's usually a very serious environment.

So I think the thing that I always hope that she would do more of, which was which was be a little more funny, be a little more personally revealing, um and uh, you know, talk more about the bigger picture. But she always wants to take the bigger picture and then figure out, like what way to make it real to people in very concrete ways. Uh. And that's kind of her brand, is like you know, what does this mean. We're gonna we passed this huge bill. We're gonna spend

a bunch of money on infrastructure. I'm in Chicago today. Tell me about the stretch on Wabash, you know, Avenue or whatever. Tell me about that. That's the that's the original, that's the original, coldish pronunciation. He's got he's got more roots than we do. He's like, he researched this. I love its right. So and then we're looking for jokes wherever we could find. I love it. I'll take it. I'll take it. The White House. It's like a joke

free environment. So I'll get my joke game back up, and and and and what about you, Like, what's the moment of this year, of this intense work where you probably didn't see your family, you didn't see your young children. What's the moment that you're most proud of, like your own your own work that you did. You know, there are some things that I'm proud of that have really,

really very little to do with me. So, for instance, when the tragedy happened in Buffalo, the shooting, we went to Buffalo and the Vice President was just going to go to attend a funeral. She was sitting in the front row of a pew and they invited her to come up and speak, and she got up and spoke and gave one of her most compelling addresses. We didn't write it. She you know, just got up and gave

it off the cuff. But then she also went and met with some of the families in like the church gymnasium and just watching her walk, you know, family and the family shaking hands, hugging people, talking about their loved ones,

talking about the tragedy that had occurred. And I said to her, like, wow, this is like, you know, you were really you know, you were really kind of good in there, Like she said, you know, I spent my entire career talking to people in pain, and she had a really you know way of talking to people who were experiencing like a profound moment of grief. And I think those families felt comfort, you know, having her there. That was a big day for me. Yeah. Yeah, I

do have a follow up question though. It's like, you know, I'm thinking about about what you said about her skills right as a prosecutor, in the way in which she was very careful and deliberate in addressing these very serious topics before the public, and I'm thinking about like a pastor who has to do a lot of eulogies, Like there's a certain kind of rhetorical structure that you're accustomed to because people are always in pain when you are

addressing them, and you just have this natural way of deliberately walking that line between the kind of you know, acknowledgement of that grief as well as the aspiration that people want to believe, you know, in in where this person is going next. You know, they're heavenly afterlife and the family's going to move on. So we just learned a little bit more about her gifts. She could be a prosecutor, or she could be a pastor, giving you well,

you know, what's the other thing I'll say. There was another big moment which we all know you all sign the news when the Supreme Court who started to rule on Roe v. Way, the Dabb's decision. The first thing that happened was the case leaked before it was supposed to come out, right, So the case leaked. We go into her office. She's supposed to speak at Emily's List that night, which is a pro choice women's political organization.

She's supposed to speak at Emily's List that night. We're sitting in her office around around the table and she starts talking about the what's come out in the League of the decision. She said, if this is true, that means they're going to go after privacy rights. That's our freedom, that's liberty. She starts like going through this whole list, and she starts saying, you know, I mean, who are these guys? How dare they do this to American? How

dare that? And she starts going to this and so I'm sitting there and I look at the speech writer and I'm like, and so he's you know, they're typing. He's typing and she's talking. And so that ended up in the speech she gave that night at Emily's List, which was one of the most quoted moments for her. Well, we say, how dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body? How dare they? How dare they? Is right? Wow,

what a powerful voice in that moment for Kamala. We're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, Jamala is gonna make the case for his former boss, Vice President Kamala Harris. We are back with Jamal Simmons, the former now communications director for the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, and he is on Some of my best friends are and while most people are clony, hear us. We can actually see you, Jamal. And I'm seeing these like folders on your desk and some of

them are more classified, I think in top secret. You have all these these documents there, what are those? And so for the for the security services that are listening to this, these are jokes. These are all just um, you know what's funny. What's funny is I was listening to this quote unquote scandal. It has been unfolding for the last few weeks, and I was thinking about my exit from the White House and the briefing that I got.

Don't get it. Basically, this belongs to you nothing. You take the pictures of your kids and you know the cards that were given to you. Everything else belongs to the government. So you should leave it in this white box and good luck. All right, So so listen, we we are. We are expectant, like so many people, that at minimum, the current Vice President, Kamala Harris, will likely be a presidential candidate in twenty twenty four. She was once already so this won't be the first time that

she at least runs in a primary. So we don't know Biden's going to do. But let's just say that she's in the cards. But before we figure out like how to evaluate her as a future presidential candidate, we want to have a clearer sense of how to judge her as a vice president. So let's just start off with a really basic question, what the hell does a vice president do? Anyway? Okay, I just want to say this one thing. Joe Biden is running for president in

twenty twenty four. So everybody, we just we just broke We just broke the news. Ben. This is that we've been waiting for this moment for two seasons. We just broke news. All right, expectations He's running for president. She will be his vice president, vice presidential running mate. You may see her, I think in twenty twenty eight. Listen, here's the thing about Comma Herr. She's fifty eight years old. Ye, she's going to be too old in twenty twenty eight.

Joe Biden is one hundred and twenty three. Like I was joking, best line ever you can president forever? Um? No, So I think. So that said, the likelihood is one day you will see her name on the ballot again, um by itself or at the top of the ticket, whether there's twenty four or twenty eight. Um. So what does the vice president do? The vice president has two responsibilities. One is to cast votes and tie tie breaking tie breaking votes in the United States Senate, there's a fifty

fifty split, all right. She did more of that than any friends and any vice president since like John Quincy Adams happened to me fifty fifty those twenty six times, twenty six times, and by one hundred and seventeenth Congress. You just had that in your back pocket, Khalil Or did you come on, man? You know I'm just playing. I'm possum here. I'm already. I'm just playing. He's a well resoarsed man. Um uh. And so so that's number

one job is to cast tie breaking votes. Number two job is to be in case you have to become president. That's it. Everything else is like made up. So I had this, I had this approach when I took the job, and I talked to my staff about this. That what the idea of something being vice presidential is built upon a notion created by every other person who had ever

been vice president. So whatever Kamala Harris does will become vice presidential because she is the vice president, and therefore she will set the tone for her for whatever the future of this office is. And so we should take advantage of that, and we shouldn't feel imprisoned by what other people chose to to do or chose not to do. And if you think about her versus our most recent vice president, I mean, like the guy she's the vice

president for exactly like a Joe Biden type. So we have this notion, we have this notion of these vice presidents who are people who are more experienced in the ways of Washington and politics, national politics and the president. Right, Joe Biden the Washington tutor for Barack Obama, you know, George H. W. Bush was the you know, the tutor for Ronald Reagan. Um, Dick Cheney was the hold on. But Dick Chaney was the actual president, right, Like he

wasn't tutoring George Walker Bush, he was actually the president. Okay, sorry, sorry about that, so right, so mean, so you see you see the pattern. You see the pattern here, uh, and Cheney being the most extreme case. Um, that's not true for kamal Aaris right, like Joe Biden, has got the most Washington experience. So in her world, I always looked at it like this. She is the face of the America we're becoming, not the America that we used

to be. Right, it's more educated, it is more centered in the Sun Belt, the West and southern states of the United States. Um and frankly a little more progressive. So um, So she should not be thinking about how a conservative white guy used to do this job. Conservative white guy who've been in Washington his whole life, his whole career, you should do this job. She should do the job based on who she is and bringing something new.

So we spent most of our time traveling around the country three days a week, meeting people who are out in the country, bringing people from other parts of the country to Washington to meet with her in her office, because I believe that her power lie out in the country with the people who were looking for her to lead, not sidered in marble hallways inside Washington, DC or the White House. So don't play the game of Joe Biden

or Al Gore. Make a new game where you go out to the country, not one where you go out

to the Senate. So this is like her basically going around meeting with all the AKA branches, the alfacap alf branches around the country to break with tradition as a part of in fact of maybe what you did, so you called you called it the Ski week, right, I will say I will say this, there were more Divine nine meetings, not just akas, but there were more Divine nine meetings in the last year of my life than probably in the last thirty five years of my life.

All right, So Ben Ben Ben is in this conversation, and while he's cool, he you know, I just have to tell you, Ben, Divine nine are the historically black fraternitys and sororities. It's it's the umbrella way to define all of them together. Just I thought i'd let you man. Thank you SAMs. All right, all right, all right, I was I was five Beta Kappa. He is married to an AKA, so I'm sure he's heard some of this before.

That's true. So Jamal, you came into this job. It's a communications director at a time when when Kamala Harris was getting criticized for a dysfunction in her office, and she's often criticized and I want to hear from you, like, can we talk about the criticisms of her? Could you tell us maybe to start, like, like, what are the invalid ones? What are the ones that you think are trumped up? Maybe we can't say trumped up anymore. What are the ones that you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah, if

you we can yeah. Um uh So I'll start here, which is that racism and sexism misogyny are real. Um. And it is not that she is flawless. It's not that she doesn't make mistakes. It is, however, true. Two things are true. One, when she makes mistakes, um, they are magnified and people look to them as more of an indicator of some innate ability or disability or lack of ability. Um. Then if somebody else makes a mistake.

I mean, Joe Biden says things all the time, you know, and turn out to be wrong or I'm a fucker as president. If you looked at the things he said over time, I mean it's crazy, Like if you just if those if you just took the list of his his malaproprisms or like screw ups or like, you know, funky things he said just about like Barack Obama. I mean somebody asked me the other day. They were like, yeah, so what you know, where's commonly hair has been. I'm like,

what do you believe? Remember about Joe Biden? You remember a couple of things about Joe Biden. One healthcare bill passes, big fucking deal, right, it says into the microphone, and Barack Obama's like patting him on the shoulder like come on, bro stop um uh. And then two to the beer summit, yess to. And then the third one, I would say is when he came out in favor of marriage quality before the before me. Yeah, right, yeah, that's kind of which was a gaff which was kind of a gaff

in and of itself. Right, So from a communication standpoint, I mean, just very briefly describe how that was a communications a crisis in a way. So if the president the number one okay, the number three job of the vice president after vote, stay alive and take the job. The number three job is don't upstage the president. Exactly is it is one of the cardinal problems. And I'll tell you people always said, well, you know about the

filibuster or one of the other issues. You know, the vice president vice president here should should She should just say what she wants to say. You know, Joe Biden bucked Barack Obama marriage quality. She should say something about voting rights or criminal justice or something else, even if

Joe Biden doesn't believe it. Well, I think you get one bite at that apple, right, You sort of get to do that at one time, and you better hope you're on the right side of history, because you could end up spending the rest of your time going to funerals in the South Pacific, you know, South Pacific islands for American allies, you know, around the world, instead of she was just out there anyway? Is that right? She did? But okay, but I do think that this is this

is like a thing. It's a very hard thing to do. Uh, it's to buck the president. That is actually like your job is to do the you work for the president of the United States. Um. So you know it is very hard for the vice president to make news. And so um I shouted off here she won racism, sexism a real It doesn't mean she doesn't make mistakes, just means they get magnified. Two people think she might run

for president one day. So there is a concerted effort on the right to attack her, go after her, you know, and blow up any small mistakes she may make and turn that into a bigger deal. Alternate may otherwise be Okay, Well, you've already said she was very deliberate, so I might

already know the answer this question. But you know, Obama was very circumspect and very reserved stoic, even in the face of the same kinds of attacks, at least because of his race as opposed to his gender and certainly caricature lampooned in the most racist ways imaginable, and for the most part, he kept us cool. I mean, with the exception of Michael Key and his version of Obama's alternative ego Luther, instead of giving voice to this, is

there an alternate ego for Kamala Harris. She have her own version of Luther that she's playing out either in her head that you could tell or in private inside of the White House. She actually really is cool as a cucumber. You know, I think these things happen. I'm not saying they don't annoy her, but they I think they happen, and she does let them kind of blow off. Um. She also, by the way, likes to use the F bomb. It is, oh all right, the way she's in good

company with Ben. It is by far the best swear word in the in the American language because because it is it is there's an adjective, verb and a now right depending on usage. I kind of love that. So

I should tell you this funny story. So an episode we did you Know a few few episodes back, Ben's mom listened to it, and she regularly listens to our show, and Ben sent her a note asking her something, and she answered the note back She's like, Yeah, I'm gonna fucking do this when you fucking tell me to do it. And and by the way, you fucking curse too much on your show. So according to succeeded, I changed her language to use this fantastic word. Yeah. Absolutely, I like hearing.

That was a good question. Khalil um jamal. Are they're valid criticisms? Can you talk about about sort of things that she has slipped up or could do better? Like was the dysfunction real? Like we heard all these stories of dysfunction in her office, and that she's, you know, a manager that wasn't able to retain people. So, um, here's what I'll say about that. Every day that I was with her, I saw some little black or brown girl look at her like she was wonder woman right,

like she was there on their own personal superhero. I saw older women of all races, black, white, and others grab her by the hand and say, I never thought I would see the day right how a woman that would be in this office would be in the White House, even a vice president, And I want you to be president one day. A lot of people would say that, even if people felt some kind of way, A lot of people would say like, I hope you get to

be president. With that, I think she feels very acutely the responsibility to all of those people who are looking at her with this, with this expectation and this um, this pride in her assent um. And she would say like she's not that this is not the first job. She was the first black woman ag in California. Now she's the first black woman vice president. So she's had

this expectation on her for a long time. And I think some of that is part of the reason why she's probably more reserved that somebody would like me, would want her to be because the idea of making mistakes, every mistake she made that got blown up in public.

I think she didn't just feel it as a personal problem, but she felt Perhaps she never told me this, but I'm supposing that if she was letting down all these people who looked at her and said, I'm so proud of you, right, I want somebody I want my daughter to be like you. Um So I think, um. I think that I created like a reservedness about her that I think does not always suit her and does not always, you know, do her well. And I think she could stand to get outside of that. And I think it's

rooted though, and something that's very legitimate. It's also rooted in talk about the staff thing, that responsibility she feels acutely. She holds herself to a high standard. She holds her staff to a high standard, and she can be tough. She could be a tough boss. But I think it comes from a place that is rooted in I've got to perform because these there are millions of people who want and need me to perform, and I can't afford

to let them down to get this job. Jamal, did you have to tell them that you voted for Kamala Harris and the primary? The Democratic primary nobody asked. And I mean, that's I'm thinking out a loud here because Khalil and I I'm pretty sure Khalil didn't. I know I didn't, And you know, sort of that to even hear us talk about why, and then maybe you can sort of like, you know, try to tell us what differently, you know, why you didn't. Don't tell me she didn't

make it. She didn't make it. She wasn't actually on the ballot in the Democratic primary. That is a good even Yeah, you know, you know, from from jump as you're sort of picking who your who your people would be, you know, I mean, I think for me, part of it, part of it was her background as a prosecutor and the attorney general in California and some of her her

stances on criminal justice and not looking for criminal justice reforms. Um. Some of it was that I felt, you know, I'm more progressive, I think than than some of her policies. But and then in a way that the sort of symbolic things that you said of being the first, of being a woman, of being a woman of color, those are really important to me, and still policy things felt

like they superseded them. You know what's interesting she actually used to be regarded she was kind of the progressive prosecutor right, So in San Francisco she led the way

on prosecutors actually waiting into criminal justice reform. So in San Francisco she started this first step program where she would get people who had been in their first conviction and tried to deal with recidivism and reform and get them into like, you know, track them into other occupations, maybe away from the thing that got them in trouble in the first place. So she was ahead of her

time on that. And one of the ways she first became known is because in San Francisco there was a cop killing in her first year as DA, and she and everybody wanted the killer to be prosecuted under the death penalty, and she refused to go after the death penalty for this cop killer, and the police in California and all came out against her because of this, and people were protesting her. So in early two thousand she was really at the forefront of prosecutorial criminal justice reform.

I think what happened is the movement, you know, sort of passed by this leader, which happens to a lot of people in leadership where you know, they start down to place and they get you know, vilified by the establishment for being too pushing, too far, and then the activists sort of keep pushing and maybe pushed past where they were when they started. So she kind of got she kind of got caught in between both of those, um, both of those polls of being both a progressive and

being a prosecutor. I love that you are complicating our impressions. I mean, the truth is, you know, you know her up close better than most people. Certainly having these conversations. I will say that you know her leaning into the role as a top cop writing a book about smart own crime. You know, this was this was progressive light right by the standards of where the conversation moved. You know, I think it's fair to say she was, well, it's

progressive light today. But I mean, your history made your history. A historian, you kind of have to look at people in the context their times as well as in the context of what we think may may or may not be. Like the ultimate what years did she Lets let's run this down real quick. What years was she in the office progressive prosecutors? Then it wasn't yet a thing, So yeah,

she invented the concept. By two thousand and three, the Sentencing Project had for more than a decade pointed out the rash of sentencing laws under mandatory minimums and drug sentencing that had wreaked havoc on justice in this country. The footprint of racial disparity data by that time was already a mountain. And even I mean, you know, you

know this as well as anybody. I was showing Boys in the Hood, which was like a foil for John Singleton to give life to this notion of mass incarceration and the relationship between concentrated disadvantage and a system of brutality from policing, you know, to caging black people as a death sentence back in nineteen ninety one when that

film was released. So while I will accept that within the construct of what prosecutors saw themselves capable of doing, Kamala Harris can claim a role as a pioneer, but there was a politics that was more to the left

of where she was, and that's important. Now I'm going to also say one more thing, so without saying too much, you know, I know her sister Maya Harris because of my time as a fundraiser at Schaumberg when her sister was VP at the Ford Foundation, and through a series of relationships, I got to ask a little bit about Kamala Harris, and you know what I got, What my little birdie told me was that, you know, she wasn't

her sister, that her sister was more progressive. Her sister had been worked at the ACOU And so I think it's fair to say that Kamala Harris was more centrist. Not just that she was kind of on the cutting edge, but she was fundamentally more centrist on some of these really tough issues than a lot of people even at that time. Listen, I think that maybe true. I wouldn't dispute that. I think what is true also is that

you have different jobs. Right. So if Maya is a social justice ACLU for foundation, you know, NGEO leader that has a different job than being a prosecutor who is charged with enforcing the laws on the books of their community, right and then trying to do what you can creatively to try to prevent people from being on the wrong end of your prosecutorial stick. Right. So I think it's the same thing is true about being a US senator or being a president being a president is not being

an activist. So I just think you have to look at people in the role that they are in. And then the role of the activist and the community outside of politics is to push the politicians in the direction that it is we want them to go. But if the people are not there, it is very difficult for someone who is elected to go to a place where the people do not support him or her to be And I think we, you know, the adults, adults in us kind of have to recognize that that's that's just

sort of what the world works. All right, Well, this is good. We're gonna we're gonna keep it moving. From that point, I did, I did. I did learn something though, that is that, um, if she can be funnier and more personable, then she has a really good shot at running for president in twenty twenty eight and winning. So she's the most likely, most likely next nominee, most likely

next nominee. So so here's a good question, then, jamal Or like something for us to think about and discuss, Like you described all the things that she does as vice president, and you know, those three big roles and then these other sort of tasks and part that you even shaped over the last year of going out and meeting people. How should we judge her as a presidential candidate, say,

in twenty twenty eight, on what basis? Oh, I think people should judge her based on the way we judge every candidate, which is, what do they want to do for my future? Right? I don't think elections are about the past. Elections are always about the future, and it's about and it also comparative, you know, they're also they're always between candidate A and candidate B, not candidate A and my sense of who the perfect human being ought to be in the world, who could sit and sit

in an office. Um. But I think we always make judgments about what somebody's going to do in the future and then we decide with not you know, it makes sense. Um. We also personal qualities matter a lot. Just just to push you, you know further, like, um, okay, we get that it's about the future, So tell us just just give us like her top three values. Like you know, here we are, we've gone through the resurgence of white nationalism and white supremacy. We've had every kind of existential

democratic or a democracy threat unfold before us. Um. So She's not going to have the country that Obama inherits the first black president. She's going to be the second black president and the first woman if she wins. So what is her vision of the future. So, first of all, I don't work for her anymore, So I don't I can't speak directly for her, but what I will say is that she believes a lot in inclusiveness and making sure that people who are not at the table are

at the table. She believes in standing up to bad actors and making and holding them accountable. Right, So if you look at like the Corinthian student loan scandal, like she went out for them when she was Attorney general and then as vice president and president. They helped get people get restitution for some of the people who were taking advantage of by these predatory companies that had gone

after people who are trying to get educations. So she believes in standing up against people who are trying to take advantage. She believes in making sure people who are not in the picture are at the table in order

to be included. And what it is we're talking about as a country and how we're going to govern, and so I think we'll judge you will judge her at the time on what it is that she really wants to be, what it is she really wants to say and offer the country, and people will decide whether or not they think she's, you know, a good enough candidate. Man. I love that question, Khalil, what are her values? And Jamala love that answer? Like you. You were up close

and personal with her. Um, You're right, you don't work for her anymore, but you you do know her really well, and so you saw these in practice, and so hearing them from you is meaningful and if not yet persuasive, it's at least influential. There's a lot of Listen, there's so much ground between here and twenty twenty four or twenty twenty eight. Yeah, there's a lot of that point. But that point, you would the three of us will

be thinking about our social security. Do we want to go early retirement or we're gonna make it all the way to sixty five? Man? But I do want to take this and Khalil, I'm gonna I'm gonna put you in this camp. I think we've talked about this before. I just gonna take a personal moment of pride that the first black president Nited States was named Barack and the first black woman vice president was named Kamala. They

were not named uh Brian and Camille and Leroy. I'm sorry, Like you know we have I mean, you know, those of us who've had names that are you know, rooted in Africa or our you know, our other cultures, um have always had this sort of shadow of people saying, oh, your your opportunities are going to be diminished because you have these names that's sound Anglo and you know that quote unquote black sounding names that Bill Cosby, before his his own self destruction, used to lampoon and make fun

of and tell Black people they were their own worst enemies because they named their children these made up names. What an asshole. But here we are, we've all proved them wrong. Yeah, exactly three of the two of the three of us here have those black on the names. We're doing. Okay, that's right, We're doing the damn thing. All right. We're gonna take a quick break before we wrap things up with Jamal Simmons. We are back on

Some of my best friends are with Jamal Simmons. Jamal, I actually want to go back earlier in your career because you worked in the Clinton administration as well. Yeah, and I'm thinking about when I first met you, you gave off this vibe of somebody who wanted to go into politics, like you had that about you. And I mean, actually, Khalil, I want to you said that about me. I want

to throw that. I want to throw this at you, actually, Khalil, because like, like I think everybody who knew Jamal then was like that fool's going into politics in some way. And but you know, Khalil, you had you had some of these ambitions, I guess, but you never went into politics. You didn't. You didn't look in that way. Did you think that was something you want to do? Why or why not? Like what? Oh, that's that's really that's funny you should ask. Because I actually thought by fifty ben

that I would go into politics. It was the Obama era that made me change my mind in the opposite direction, as you know, as opposed to like actually living up to the ambition. I actually figured I'd do the history thing for about fifteen good years and I'd go into politics. But yeah, Obama era kind of turned me off. Yeah, well, I thought, like, you know, if if if a guy

this brilliant and this committed to uh political ambition. UM can get into a position of power like this and have such a hard time UM sort of reconciling his own biography around racial justice and his own governance strategy. It just seemed it was a little depressing. Um. You know, I spent a lot of time frustrating with his first term and very hopeful for his second term, and the two together left me UM kind of disenchanted. You know,

even to this day. I think there's like a pill that you get when you become elected to these uh senior leadership roles, whether it's in Congress or in a state house or in the White House, and you know, you come in and you're like, all right, let's get this shit done. Let's get let's let's do it. And then someone like slips you a mickey, and you're like, Okay, we have to follow the rules just as they have been followed, and we're going to do these few disabuse

him of his notions educated I'm not. I'm actually gonna put it in maybe at the context that is familiar. I think about the president of a university, right, Um, the president of a university kind of has power but maybe the deans have more power than the president does. Right in some ways the dean of in my school.

But don't the deans, I mean in some ways. So you're the president, but you kind of you have all these people who have their own little fiefdoms, right like all of you know, journalism, the liberal or the school of you know law. They have their own budgets, they have their own little like worlds that they that they govern. Um. And so you can kind of get them to do things, but you just you're not the dictator, you know, like

you have to. So the president's not a dictator. The president is sort of the one who can try to cajole the people and the and the people who are in charge, whether it's a congressional committee or it's a governor or you know, whatever it is, they have a say on what the president gets to do. Um. Now, some people don't care about the rules. We had a president like that from twenty seventeen. We've had a few of those, but what one very recently, they don't care.

They do whatever they think, whatever they want. That tends to not end well, um for those people, because you know, you sort of have you have to. It's the consent of the government. And I think if the if the if the population is split about what it wants, it is very hard for the president to muscle through big ideas against the will of say fifty percent of the people. You can do that maybe once, maybe twice, and one might argue healthcare could have been one of those times

for the president President Obama. It's very hard to do that insistently. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I think that I'm curious since you were part of the Clinton administration and you were a young buck like you know, like we all were back when we were in our twenties. I mean, you know, that was a consequential presidency. A lot of big things happened, and of course in hindsight, from the crime bill to the Welfare reform bill, which you know, gut it a lot of the social safety

net to the poorest Americans. You know, how did you experience that period working in the Clinton administration? What what what is your sense of how you experienced that then as compared to what you've just been through. So those things happened, The crime bill happened, the Welfare reform bill happened. I will say the welfare reform bill happened, and both

of those happened with a lot of support from unlikely places. Today, there are a lot of people today who were complaining about those bills, who were in favor of them at the time. So you know, but the history is that but including members of the Congressional Black Hawks, absolutely, a lot of mayors of big cities, a lot of members of Congressional Black Caukis. But at the same time, during that era, you also saw a profound amount of growth

in black wealth. You saw more black homeownership, you saw the lowest black unemployment, you saw more black kids going to college, you saw higher incomes among African Americans beginning to go up. The debt of the government was sort

of going down. So the economic prospects for black people actually were improving, while of course, you had these social costs on the other side that we all look back and say they probably we went to far and some of those social things, the crime bill being the big one. But you can also look at the crime bill not to make excuses for it. This is just the politics of sausage making. While there were these horror punitive laws that put people in jail for a long period of time.

There also was the Violence Against Women Act. There also was an assault weapons band that was in that bill. We haven't been able to get an assault weapons band passed since that bill was done. So there are things sometimes in politics that you feel like you have to do something you don't like in order to get something done that you think will actually be something you like and you want to see done. You can shut down the bad stuff before it gets to be too bad.

If it's if you start, you are doing your job. You are modeling your job right now giving us. You are a schooling us on how to sell the communic Listen, this was such a great conversation, was so great talking to you. We are just so happy that you made time for us. We appreciate the you sharing sensitive government secrets with us. We appreciate you helping to make sense of the conflictated things that happened behind the scenes of the White House, and we look forward to what comes

next for you and for Vice President Kamala Harris. Well, thank you, and this is my first podcast interview since leaving the White House, so I am excited to do it. I appreciate you guys having me, and I'm looking forward to more episodes to find out who some of your best friends right on, Jamal, right on, Jamal, You got it? Thanks man, all right, thanks guys, Khalil. We broke some news on this episode on Some of my best friends are today we are. This is amazing and so by

my account, I think we broke three things three story. One, Joe Biden is running in twenty twenty four. Two. Kamala Harris, despite all the criticism, is going to be his running mate in twenty twenty four. We heard it here first, some of my best friends are number three. The next time there's an opening, Kamala Harris is gonna run. She's going to be at the top of the ticket. Yeah. Man, that's that's really, that's such important news. We did this, man,

we did this together. Listen. Awesome, but no, seriously, man, I mean listen, this is high stakes politics, right. We really are talking about a country on the precipice, and the fact that that's where we've come at this moment in terms of national politics means that this next presidential race is probably more important than the last two we've had.

And I mean for real, So in light of that, I mean, I took a lot of inspiration from Jamal's insights about Kamala Harris, I have, you know, much better sense of who she is as a person, and amazing, amazing to get to speak with him. I mean, he really gave us an an insider's view, that's right. But there's one thing that I just want to sort of

think about because I think it matters. You know. He talked about how leaders lead and active do their thing, and often the activists have to push the leaders in order for them to be effective. And while I think maybe on paper that's generally true, it's not always true in practice. And I'm thinking about when in the middle

of Black Lives Matter during the Obama administration. I know people like Deray McKesson actually know him as a personal friend, and he talked about being at the White House and talking to Obama and he basically said like they weren't listening, and they were basically saying, like, you guys are messing

it up, because we got this. And so I just want to say for the record that we have to not take for granted that our leaders are actually going to respond when activists are doing their work, and that that way, Kamala potentially will have an amazing presidency if everybody keeps their eyes focused on the issues that will

save this democracy. That's interesting because I'm thinking about that what you just said, and I'm thinking about all we learned from Jamal, because I certainly have a better understanding of what a vice president does and all the limitations on her, and that when he was talking about how you can't outshine the president or necessarily disagree, he said, you have one bite of that apple, you maybe you

can do it once. And so so that sense of being of being limited by this role, which is largely symbolic and political, and so what you were just describing of in the VP role for Kamala Harris, how you could how you could then sort of push policy beyond

where it is. One of the things I've been thinking about in from this talk is like that she the moments when she has shined are in these symbolic spaces when she's spoken to the issues that you're talking about, And I'm wondering, you know, I haven't felt like I haven't seen her around and do the kind of things you're just describing, and I mean, maybe there's even more she can do in those spaces. Is that feel symbolic, but also feel like they're they're touching the most critical

issues of the country at the same time. Right, Well, I'll just say, I mean, we learn from Jamal that vice president's job is primarily to stay alive in case they're they need to become president and to break votes

in Congress. My suggestion is really about if she does become president, I mean, yeah, whenever that happens, and what we hope will be her ability to literally save the democracy, to pursue a scale of equity and justice in this country that we've not yet seen, and deliver on the promise that being a black woman, or a black Asian or any kind of first means more than just the symbolic and representational pride that comes with it. Yeah, I mean I think a lot about sharing her identity politics

and not say sharing her politics her policies. But I appreciated what Jamal said about that we don't really know her yet and that a presidential campaign is also a process of getting to know somebody, and we're going to learn more about her and she's also going to continue to fill this role. So this was really a valuable talk and I appreciate you. All Right, Love You Man, Love You Too. Some of My Best Friends Are is

a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil, Jibron Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin. This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Sarah Knicks, our engineer is Amanda Kawang, and our managing producer is Cottonstanza Gallardo. At Pushkin thanks to Leita Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Kone and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the Brilliant A. R. Young from

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