Kamala Harris, the former Vice President and 2024 Democratic nominee for the presidency, stopped at Playhouse Square as part of a nationwide tour promoting her new book, 107 Days, about the election. The name of the book is derived from the number of days that her failed campaign encompassed, from its announcement until the election of November 5, 2024. That bid, as it turns out, was the shortest presidential campaign in the history of our country.
The evening was moderated by Phoebe Robinson, a Cleveland native and rising comedian. Many of the questions posed by Ms. Robinson circled back to one of the central themes of the book: community.
The inevitable jumping off point into the conversation started with Donald Trump’s recent State of the Union address, on which Harris commented that much of the rhetoric coming from the President has done nothing to address the problems being faced by everyday Americans. While cutting a trillion dollars from programs like Medicaid, which millions of Americans rely upon to meet basic health care needs, to fund a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthiest in this country, she feels that Congress has “abdicated its responsibility to the American people.”
“With every abuse of power that we’re seeing,” Harris said, “the founders knew that one day there would be a situation like this.”
She went on, “Three equal branches of government should act as a series of checks and balances. Congress, however, hasn’t done that job.” Whether that is in “fealty to the president,” or derived from something else, both houses of our legislative branch are “letting Trump do whatever he wants.”
She emphasized that Congress has two essential duties: The power of the purse and the ability to declare war — both of which have “been neglected.”
Segueing to the future, as “we can’t afford to be nostalgic,” she said the upcoming midterm elections will hopefully ”bring back a semblance of balance,” which elicited a loud cheer from the sold-out house.
Hope and remaining hopeful, she said, are important parts of our national DNA. She mentioned in detail the unorthodox redistricting plans that many GOP-led states have been attempting to enact prior to the November mid-terms in the hopes of gerrymandering many districts to help GOP chances of maintaining control of the House and Senate. Harris said that there’s a “good chance” that those efforts will backfire on Republicans, as “more and more people are seeing “up close” how their rights are being taken away from them. She brought up the recent FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia that took ballots away to investigate widely debunked claims of 2020 election fraud. She asked if other ballots were taken as well. “Did they collect them for 2024? No, they’re only trying to help the grievances of a petty little man who couldn’t handle a loss.”
Robinson then asked a question about election laws being motivated by racial bias. The SAVE Act, the new legislation designed, presumably, to safeguard against voter fraud, will disproportionately affect people of color, primarily affecting women, whose birth certificate would not match their married name, effectively eliminating their ability to register to vote.
“Forty percent of Americans,” Harris said, “would not have the proper documents to qualify to vote under the new legislation.”
She further elaborated on efforts to “throw up obstacles” in advance of the mid-term elections. She mentioned the deployment of federal officials in Minneapolis to “intimidate American people.” The crowd was attentive and responded to many of her comments with cheers and applause.
The antidote? The importance of community. Talking to your neighbors. Helping out at food banks. Serving the community in small ways; giving your time to help those that may need a moment or two of your time and attention.
“When the people show up and vote,” Harris said, “we will demand change. We will demand that the government serve the people and not the special interests.”
Perhaps the most illuminating and well-received comments of the evening came toward the end. Further enunciating her point about moving forward, she said that people have asked her since the election, “What can we do?”
She noticed that a common theme that she’s heard from people all over the country is that “people have felt alone.” The pandemic and its assorted isolationist issues “changed us.” Talking directly to the audience, Harris stated that, “Nothing is more disenfranchising than feeling alone.” Community, she said, is what it’s all about. Local heroes, “influencers” on a local basis, like mayors, pastors, and community organizers, is where the true power lies and can inspire people in any community.
Loneliness, she said, creates an “isolation from community.” It runs even deeper than that, she said. “There’s an extraordinary amount of distrust among the American people. It’s not just ‘Can I leave my door unlocked?’ But are you an existential threat to my existence?”
“The power of connecting neighbor to neighbor” is what needs to drive our future. “We have some work to do as a nation,” Harris said in wrapping up the night. “There’s nothing that shows the size of your muscles more than by helping someone out.”
Robinson asked her about the ugly sea change in politics that has commenced over the past twenty years.
“When I was in the U.S. Senate, we investigated the Russian interference in the 2016 election.” Harris related the sheer amount of both mis- and disinformation that has taken over many large social media platforms. “Effects of misinformation and disinformation have been around for centuries, but only nation states have had the ability to do it in any meaningful way. But social media, while being a great tool to democratize access to platforms, has lowered the bar in terms of giving anyone access to the information, which can be changed to meet their desired ends.”
So, when talking to your family and friends, she said, “Are we all working with the same information or is one party dealing with ‘alternative facts?’”
Perhaps the most important point of the night, she said that “we need to approach any conversation that at first is a query: What information are you working with?”
“Here’s the information that I’m working with. We need to agree that two plus two equals four, for instance.” I’m working with two-plus-two-is-four every day, then we have to agree on the same information in order to engage each other in a meaningful way.”
Sadly, that’s much easier said than done.
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