Kamala Harris Says She's 'Ready to Serve'

After special counsel's report, GOP plans to make VP's readiness a major issue
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 12, 2024 4:11 PM CST
Kamala Harris Says She's 'Ready to Serve'
Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she takes the stage at the Savannah Civic Center on her Fight for Reproductive Freedoms tour in Savannah, Georgia on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024.   (Savannah Morning News via AP)

Days before a special counsel's report put President Biden's advanced age in the spotlight, the Wall Street Journal asked Vice President Kamala Harris about what it calls a "delicate question" for the campaign: Whether she has to convince voters that she is "ready to serve" as president. "I am ready to serve. There's no question about that," she replied, adding that everyone who sees her on the job "walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead." Biden, 81, is already the oldest president in US history and would be 86 by the end of a second term. Harris, 59, and other Democrats have pushed back against Robert Hur's description of Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory."

At a White House event Friday, Harris, citing her own experience as a prosecutor, called the special counsel's remarks "inappropriate" and politically motivated, Forbes reports. The Hill reports that last month, Harris criticized Republicans for focusing on Biden's age, saying they "have nothing to run on." After Hur's report, Republicans, who see Harris as more liberal and even less popular than Biden, are expected to step up attacks on the vice president. "She might be the top issue in the election," GOP strategist Scott Jennings tells the Journal.

Democrats, however, see abortion rights as a key election issue, and Harris' allies say she is the right person to persuade young, minority, and progressive voters to vote for the Democratic ticket. On the campaign, she has focused on abortion rights, discussing her work with sexual assault victims as a prosecutor, and the effects of the strict abortion bans introduced after Roe v Wade was overturned. "This stuff should not exist in the shadows," she told the Journal in last week's interview, hours after speaking to a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, about how difficult it would be for a rape victim in the state to have an abortion. "We don't talk about it and then people suffer, because women aren't supposed to talk about these things." (More Kamala Harris stories.)

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