AP Interview: Kamala Harris on race and electability in 2020

Kamala Harris can't forget the older black woman she met in Iowa while campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama before the state's 2008 caucus.

"I remember her saying to me, 'They're not going to let him win,'" Harris recalled. "She did not want to go to the caucuses. She didn't want to be disappointed." For Harris, it was a revealing moment, one she says illustrated the limitations many Americans, including black Americans, place on who is considered electable for the nation's highest office.

Twelve years later, with American politics roiled by issues of race and gender, it's Harris asking Americans to expand their definition of electability once again.

"Sometimes it takes awhile to get people to see that this is possible," Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press in which she discussed race and her standing as the most viable black woman to seek a major party's presidential nomination.

The 54-year-old freshman senator from California is unabashedly and unapologetically embracing that role. She's increasingly weaving her personal history into her campaign, including in a searing debate exchange last month with former Vice President Joe Biden over school busing. Her campaign was ready for the moment, quickly tweeting a photograph of Harris as a pig-tailed child, then selling T-shirts bearing the image.

As her place in the race has strengthened, Harris has found herself the target of smears about her citizenship and ethnicity, including by one of President Donald Trump's sons, that echo the same lies and accusations Trump and others raised about Obama, the country's first black president.

To Harris, it's the cost of trying to break through long-standing barriers. "When you break things, you get hurt, you bleed, you get cut," Harris said.

"When I made the decision to run, I fully appreciated that it will not be easy. But I know if I'm not on the stage, there's a certain voice that will not be present on that stage. Knowing that there is a perspective, there is a life experience, there is a vision that must be heard and seen and present on that stage, and that I have an ability to do that."
"She still has a lot more work to do assuring the American people," said Linda Walters, a 55-year-old from Rock Hill, South Carolina, pointing to the questions about Harris' background as proof. "It's Barack all over again. Kamala is going to have to relieve some people of their fear."