Lawmakers react to Kamala Harris entering presidential race

Lawmakers react as Kamala Harris set to enter presidential raceSource: The Independent

Transcript

00:00I'm a black woman serving in this body of Congress and so we all know what comes with this work

00:05and we are very public facing but what we know is we have to continue to do the work and we have to

00:10be prepared on day one which she already is. My grandma taught me if you stay ready you'll be

00:14ready and Vice President Kamala Harris is ready to serve. She has prepared herself for this moment

00:21by doing the work. You've seen it the energy that's come back to the campaign you know the

00:25palpable feeling that we're in a better position now and the excitement about Kamala Harris. I

00:29think it's never too late and until it's too late and here we are three weeks before the

00:32convention and I think it's a difficult and heavy lift but absolutely possible and that gives me

00:38hope that we can still do it. The energy and vibe I felt inside that room was unbelievably transformed

00:46from what it's felt like for the last number of months. Just all of Latino voting and polling

00:51rather that was just done last week and the polling is saying that she's actually doing

00:56faring better with younger people third parties and independents. I think it's been an energizing

01:02event as you see a lot of people contributing small sums of money all over the country.

01:08I think young people are going to be energized. I think women are going to be energized. I think

01:11yeah this is the game changer. I think it is. So what change is now that Kamala Harris is at the

01:16top of the ticket? We shall see. In the last 24 hours you've seen an enormous amount of energy

01:23excitement and enthusiasm more than 880,000 grassroots supporters donating 60 percent of

01:31them for the first time this cycle in 2024 and on top of that she has already broken records

01:40with the largest fundraising of any presidential candidate in the last 24 hours. In addition to

01:46the legislative achievements she is the new generation. She's the future and she's going to

01:54prosecute the case against Donald Trump. She's just a very strong conceptual thinker. I think

01:58that's going to be really really helpful when we're having to deal with a wild set of stories

02:03over the next 90 days. I mean it's just going to be everything in the kitchen sink and I think

02:07she's just going to swing at a bunch of crazy pitches and make contact. I'm really looking

02:11forward to it. Anybody coming in with a compressed timeline like this there's not a whole lot of room

02:16for error and you have to have a really high level of energy. I think she's showing a really

02:20high level of energy. I think this thing's going to work. You know because she was in charge of

02:24the border do you think that this is going to be the thing that will be her main weakness

02:28in the presidential race? Oh I think Kamala Harris has a ton of weaknesses. That might be one of them

02:33but not that's going to be one of them but that ain't going to be the only one. What do you think

02:36are going to be the ways that Democrats could defend her and push back against some of these

02:41allegations or some of these racist ideas and tropes? I would actually like to know what other

02:46people think is the best way that they're going to fight back against anti-black racism and somebody

02:50who is on the other end of anti-black racism. It's always us who people are asking for how are you

02:54going to stop people from being racist? How are racists going to stop themselves from being racist?