Kamala Harris’s Very Open Secret

“It would be incredible to have a woman of color,” Mandela Barnes, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, told me. “That would speak volumes for the direction of this country and where our nominee intends to take us.” But he said he’s still drawn to Warren.

Barnes is black himself. In 2018, he helped Tony Evers, his older white running mate, beat an incumbent Republican, aided by high turnout in Milwaukee and among black voters. He’s not convinced that Harris would do the same for Biden. “I don’t know that Kamala’s had the time to develop that familiarity,” he said. “I don’t know that [her being black] automatically translates. In fact, I’m not willing to say that at all. It’s going to be important to corral the energy in the activist community in November—people who’ve made it clear that they don’t have to vote for you.”

If Harris is the pick, in retrospect this will probably seem like the longest, most drawn-out lead-up to an obvious conclusion in the history of modern presidential politics. But first, she’ll have to convince Biden’s top advisers that she would be able to deliver younger voters, women, and black voters in numbers that she never did during her own presidential campaign. To some who are talking with Biden, the arguments from people close to Harris that these failures were because Biden had a lock on those voters in the primary are effectively an argument that he doesn’t need her to get them.

“Joe Biden is not going to pick a mythical-beam-of-light woman of color. He’s going to pick an actual politician,” says Sean McElwee, a progressive pollster who has put out surveys showing that liberals want Warren.

Read: It really could be Warren

Robinson, of Color of Change, said he’s been encouraged by what he’s seen from Harris so far. And he understands that she has spent her life pushing against attacks that come when you’re the first woman, or woman of color, to do something. Harris was the first woman and the first person of color to be district attorney of San Francisco; the first woman and the first person of color to be attorney general of California; the first woman of color to be a senator from California (and only the second ever in the country); and the first woman of color to be a major presidential contender.

“Attacks can be gendered, and can be racialized. And there’s ways we cannot give people the full advantage of their expertise,” Robinson said. He added that he thought it was important to consider how much circumstances and politics have changed since the beginning of her career. “There was a time when Kamala Harris was a DA when she was probably considered a progressive DA,” he said. “But she was a DA, and she chose to be a prosecutor.”

Robinson added, “The moment and the time we’re in is continuing to push her.”

Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, another important voice in Biden’s ear, who’s been very public about wanting Biden’s choice to be a woman of color, told me that he thinks Harris would be an “outstanding pick.” As for Harris and Biden’s history, Clyburn compared Harris being put on the ticket to Ronald Reagan picking George H. W. Bush after their bitter primary fight, or Bill Clinton picking Al Gore in 1992. Discounting her as an unexciting, obvious choice doesn’t make sense, Clyburn said: “I don’t think anything is inevitable.”

Edward-Isaac Dovere is a staff writer at The Atlantic.