The New Yorker Radio Hour:

Though historically unpopular as a Vice-President, Harris unified the Democratic Party around her. Evan Osnos reports on her emergence as a contender for the White House.

With David Remnick

Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on the Vice-President. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos has been reporting on Harris for months, speaking with dozens of people close to her from her childhood to her days as a California prosecutor, right up to this lightning-round campaign for the Presidency. “What’s interesting is that some of those people . . . were asking her, ‘Do you think there should be a process? Some town halls or conventions?’ ” Osnos tells David Remnick. “And her answer is revealing. . . . ‘I’m happy to join a process like that, but I’m not gonna wait around. I’m not gonna wait around.’ ” But, if Harris’s surge in popularity was remarkable, her lead in most polls is razor-thin. “If she wins [the popular vote] and loses the Electoral College, that’ll be the third time since the year 2000 that Democrats have suffered that experience,” he notes. “You can’t underestimate how seismic a shock and a trauma—that’s not an overstatement—it will be, particularly for young Americans who have tried to say, ‘We’re going to put our support behind somebody and see if we can change this country.’ ”

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