What Barack Obama really thinks of Kamala Harris (and why it might explain his silence)
They’re meant to be old friends, so where is Barack Obama when the US vice-president needs him? Alex Hannaford talks to those who know them and uncovers a personal and political relationship which goes back years
Back in 2020, shortly after Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his pick for the vice-presidential nomination, the Biden/Harris campaign posted a short video on its social media channels. It took the format of a folksy, light-hearted video chat between Harris and former president Barack Obama.
The former president, looking relaxed in an open-necked shirt and dark suit, tells her the work can be gruelling and asks if she has any tips to get through the day. Harris replies that she works out every morning, regardless of how much sleep she’s had.
He asks what music she listens to; she says Mary J Blige. She then asks about his relationship with Biden; what does she need to know about the man who worked for him as vice-president from 2009 to 2017?
Obama says Biden likes ice cream, pasta with red sauce, and that he loves his aviator sunglasses. “He knows he looks good in them,” he adds, signing off with a jovial “Make sure you get those workouts in, get enough sleep and stay healthy.”
The former California senator from Oakland and now America’s first female vice-president had the endorsement of one of the most popular public figures in America.
After that November’s election, when Biden and Harris emerged victorious, former first lady Michelle Obama tweeted her congratulations: “I’m beyond thrilled that my friend Joe Biden and our first Black and Indian-American woman vice-president, Kamala Harris, are headed to restore some dignity, competence, and heart at the White House. Our country sorely needs it.”
Fast-forward to today, and with Biden now out of the race and a raft of endorsements from high-profile politicians in her party for Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee for president, one name is conspicuous by its absence: Barack Obama.
It’s an omission so glaring that it’s generated headlines across the world. The question is: why hasn’t that endorsement by such an imposing presence in the Democratic Party come?
After Biden announced his withdrawal, he threw his support behind Harris, saying picking her as his vice-president was the best decision he’d made, and offering his “full support and endorsement” in her own presidential run.
In a joint statement, former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said they were “honoured to join the president in endorsing Vice-President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her”.
Then came senator Elizabeth Warren, who said Harris could “unite our party, take on Donald Trump, and win in November”. Other heavyweights followed: California governor Gavin Newsom, who himself has been mooted as a potential candidate; transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg; Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.
On Monday, despite initially calling for an open primary, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gave her support to Harris. “Politically, make no mistake,” she said. “Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”
But despite Obama writing an affectionate tribute to his own former vice-president and friend Biden – in which he called him a “patriot of the highest order” – the only reference to what would come next was the following line: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”
Happy birthday to a thoughtful, compassionate, and relentless leader—the one and only @KamalaHarris. We are so lucky to have you serving our country! pic.twitter.com/71d4EOyMhd
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) October 20, 2021
Republicans jumped on the statement, calling it a snub. Yet some politicos were unsurprised. “Everyone chill out,” wrote one political observer. “Barack Obama not immediately endorsing Kamala Harris was NOT a snub. It’s strategy. In case there’s a contested nomination process, Obama, now an elder statesman, would play the role of peacemaker and bring unity. He’ll work hard to elect her. No doubt.”
Another said, “I would guess he [Obama] wants to wait to let things shake out on their own rather than being accused of anointing someone or orchestrating things.”
Texas-based political consultant David Logan told The Independent that Obama not immediately endorsing her was just a sign that he is endorsing the correct political process. “With the Democratic convention due to take place in his hometown of Chicago, I’m sure he’s just letting the party do its thing; letting those who have been elected run the party.”
Like Obama, throughout Harris’s career, there have been so many firsts, encompassing race, and in her case, gender
Like Obama, Harris was raised by her mother after her parents separated. Shyamala Gopalan emigrated to the US from India in the 1950s to do a master’s, and later a PhD, in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley.
That’s where she met Harris’s father, Donald, who had come to the US from Jamaica to study economics. The couple married in 1963. Donald taught economics at Stanford University, and Shyamala became a renowned breast cancer researcher.
They had two children – Kamala and her younger sister Maya – and split when Kamala was seven years old. Remembering that time Harris wrote in her memoir that her mother “understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters”. She wanted to make sure “we would grow into confident, proud Black women”. Shyamala died in 2009.
Also like Obama and his wife, Michelle, Kamala and her sister both studied law and navigated a career in politics. After completing her political science and economics undergraduate studies at the historically Black Howard University in Washington, DC, Harris went to law school in California before becoming a state prosecutor.
In 2004, she was elected as district attorney of San Francisco, and a couple of years after Obama became the first Black president of America in 2009, she became the first woman, Black American and first Asian American to be elected attorney general of California.
The pair first met when he ran for US Senate in 2004, and Harris was an early supporter of his presidential bid at a time when Clinton was the establishment favourite. She campaigned for him in his senate race 20 years ago when she was the district attorney of San Francisco, then endorsed his bid for the presidency in 2007.
In 2013, he was forced to apologise after calling her the “best-looking attorney general in the country” at a Democratic fundraiser.
“They are old friends and good friends and he did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general’s professional accomplishments and her capabilities,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney said at the time. In 2016, when Harris ran for the senate, Obama appeared in a television ad and championed her as a “fearless fighter”.
In October 2021, Michelle Obama posted a picture of her and Harris hugging on Twitter to mark Harris’s birthday. “Happy birthday to a thoughtful, compassionate, and relentless leader,” she wrote. “We are so lucky to have you serving our country!”
When she became vice-president, she moved in with her husband Doug Emhoff, an entertainment lawyer who she married in 2014 after meeting on a blind date. Stepmother to Emhoff’s children, Cole and Ella, now 29 and 25, she is known as “Momala” and is said to have the support of their mother Kerstin Emhoff, who attended the presidential inauguration in 2021.
Today, she lives with Doug in her official residence in a quiet enclave in Washington, DC – a place she’s called home for the last three years. But if the Obamas and Harris and Emhoff socialise outside of work, they keep it quiet.
“I don’t think these people have social lives outside of work at all,” Logan laughs. “But I would be shocked if there was any malice, because Obama was one of many who encouraged Biden to drop out, so I can’t see any reason why he’d then say ‘maybe it shouldn’t be her’. That would have been a conversation he’d have had with Biden well in advance. Going from the first Black man to be president to the first Black woman – there seems no reason he wouldn’t be excited.”
Like Obama, throughout Harris’s career, there have been so many firsts, encompassing race, and in her case, gender. Any speculation that Obama may be holding back in the hope of his wife Michelle winning the nomination is without any foundation, according to those in the know on Capitol Hill.
Despite a recent Ipsos poll revealing that she is the only hypothetical candidate to stop Trump, Michelle is said to have no such aspirations. It is Harris hoping to become America’s first woman president; the first female Black – and Asian American – commander in chief. It is Harris wanting to bring new hope to a divided country, and make her “old friend and good friend” Obama proud.
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