Two trips Harris took last year set the stage for the ascent that is happening now.
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Vice President Kamala Harris at the Cape Coast Castle, a former slave port in Ghana, in March 2023.
Good evening! Yesterday, former President Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over her racial identity, which is something she rarely talked about before a key moment in the spring of 2023. I asked my colleague Erica Green, a White House correspondent, to tell us how Harris’s little-noticed moves in that period reshaped her vice presidency and laid the groundwork for her campaign against Trump. — Jess Bidgood
On March 28, 2023, while Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Ghana, she made a decision that surprised members of her staff.
They had worked for weeks on remarks for her to deliver in the country, part of a visit to deepen America’s ties with the continent, but Harris changed the plan. Instead, she decided to do something unusual: She talked about her lineage and its impact on her life.
“This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally as the first Black vice president of the United States of America,” she said.
The decision to invoke her personal story was a shift for Harris, who had grown guarded about her life after enduring personal attacks.
The episode was part of a two-week period last year — though it flew a little under the radar — in which Harris came to reintroduce herself to the public and, more specifically, the coalition of Democrats she would need to win the White House.
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Source: nytimes.com
