Lawmakers react as Kamala Harris set to enter presidential raceSource: The Independent
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00:00I'm a black woman serving in this body of Congress and so we all know what comes with this work
00:05and we are very public facing but what we know is we have to continue to do the work and we have to
00:10be prepared on day one which she already is. My grandma taught me if you stay ready you'll be
00:14ready and Vice President Kamala Harris is ready to serve. She has prepared herself for this moment
00:21by doing the work. You've seen it the energy that's come back to the campaign you know the
00:25palpable feeling that we're in a better position now and the excitement about Kamala Harris. I
00:29think it's never too late and until it's too late and here we are three weeks before the
00:32convention and I think it's a difficult and heavy lift but absolutely possible and that gives me
00:38hope that we can still do it. The energy and vibe I felt inside that room was unbelievably transformed
00:46from what it's felt like for the last number of months. Just all of Latino voting and polling
00:51rather that was just done last week and the polling is saying that she's actually doing
00:56faring better with younger people third parties and independents. I think it's been an energizing
01:02event as you see a lot of people contributing small sums of money all over the country.
01:08I think young people are going to be energized. I think women are going to be energized. I think
01:11yeah this is the game changer. I think it is. So what change is now that Kamala Harris is at the
01:16top of the ticket? We shall see. In the last 24 hours you've seen an enormous amount of energy
01:23excitement and enthusiasm more than 880,000 grassroots supporters donating 60 percent of
01:31them for the first time this cycle in 2024 and on top of that she has already broken records
01:40with the largest fundraising of any presidential candidate in the last 24 hours. In addition to
01:46the legislative achievements she is the new generation. She's the future and she's going to
01:54prosecute the case against Donald Trump. She's just a very strong conceptual thinker. I think
01:58that's going to be really really helpful when we're having to deal with a wild set of stories
02:03over the next 90 days. I mean it's just going to be everything in the kitchen sink and I think
02:07she's just going to swing at a bunch of crazy pitches and make contact. I'm really looking
02:11forward to it. Anybody coming in with a compressed timeline like this there's not a whole lot of room
02:16for error and you have to have a really high level of energy. I think she's showing a really
02:20high level of energy. I think this thing's going to work. You know because she was in charge of
02:24the border do you think that this is going to be the thing that will be her main weakness
02:28in the presidential race? Oh I think Kamala Harris has a ton of weaknesses. That might be one of them
02:33but not that's going to be one of them but that ain't going to be the only one. What do you think
02:36are going to be the ways that Democrats could defend her and push back against some of these
02:41allegations or some of these racist ideas and tropes? I would actually like to know what other
02:46people think is the best way that they're going to fight back against anti-black racism and somebody
02:50who is on the other end of anti-black racism. It's always us who people are asking for how are you
02:54going to stop people from being racist? How are racists going to stop themselves from being racist?