Kamala Harris is on the cover of Vogue. Annie Leibovitz cover photo + very long article/interview: [View all]

[highplainsdem]

https://www.vogue.com/article/kamala-harris-digital-cover-october-2024-interview

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She is dressed in an easygoing black suit with a plain white blouse, a few pearls on a double necklace, and black patent leather heels. Since becoming vice president, in 2021, Harris has sought reductions in gun violence, middle-class jobs in clean energy, drinking water for poor communities, and a strategy for Americans’ reproductive freedom. Before our meeting, I talked with more than 20 of her former colleagues and collaborators, who described Harris in these projects as a roll-up-the-sleeves leader. I ask what her first call would be on reaching the Oval Office.

“One of my first calls—outside of family—will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,” she says. “It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work in a way that benefits them?” She says she plans to meet with “those who can help us put back in place the freedoms that have been taken away with the Dobbs decision”—the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to get Congress to pass a law. “That’s going to take some work,” she says.

Work, one senses, is a happy word for Harris: What at first seem lucky breaks in her life tend on examination to reveal themselves as outcomes of strategic effort. The hurricanes that barreled into Florida in recent days and brought heavy destruction as far as inland North Carolina have required rescue and recovery from officials and ordinary Americans, and Harris has moved quickly on the ground to show them her support. But work can’t resolve every crisis. In recent weeks, the violence in the Middle East has grown, first with Israeli movement into Lebanon and more recently with a missile attack on Israel by Iran. I ask what “new element” voters can expect from a Harris administration in balancing the United States’ commitments in the region with attempts—so far unsuccessful—to de-escalate the conflict.

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“There’s been a language and a conversation around what’s been happening, particularly around Israel and Gaza, that suggests that this is binary. It’s not,” she tells me. “You’re not either for this one or for that one.” A better conversation, she thinks, is about the region and its interlocking crises. “On October 7, 1,200 people were massacred, including hundreds of young people at a concert. Women were horribly raped,” she says, and pauses for emphasis. “And far too many Palestinians have been killed.” The United States must keep laying groundwork for a two-state solution, she insists, “not giving up a sense of hope that that is possible—even if it does not appear to be imminent.” In both foreign and domestic policy, Harris’s case for the presidency comes down in large part to her experience of the vice presidency—a role that she describes as being both active and receptive, learning not just how to solve problems but to consider what problems voters think they have, and how they overlay. “People, at this point, have memes about my love of Venn diagrams,” she says, and then turns serious. “You’re never going to have a complete agreement on all the issues. But you can find common ground—and expand that.”

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Much more at the link.