Transcript
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris is using this moment of maximum attention to try to define herself. She speaks today before a Black sorority groups' gathering in Indianapolis. And yesterday, she gave a speech in the swing state of Wisconsin.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAMALA HARRIS: When Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.
(CHEERING)
MARTIN: By the way, Steve, the campaign had to move the event to a larger venue.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram was with Harris. Hi there, Deepa.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.
INSKEEP: What was it like to be there?
SHIVARAM: I mean, there are roughly 100 days - right? - until the election, and yesterday, in this sweaty, humid high school gymnasium, there were 3,000 people gathered to see Kamala Harris, and it felt like there was this huge jolt of enthusiasm into this campaign that was honestly lacking when Biden was the nominee. I talked to one voter - her name is Celia Jackson - who was in the crowd.
CELIA JACKSON: This is the energy. This is the shot in the arm that the Dems needed in order to turn this around. So I'm really hopeful.
SHIVARAM: I also asked Celia if she had been involved at all in the Biden-Harris campaign before to donate or volunteer, and she hadn't. But she said that that changed this weekend.
JACKSON: I've already signed up. I'm ready to go.
SHIVARAM: And Celia is one of many. The campaign has seen a huge boost in donations and volunteers. And you know, I'll note, I've covered Harris for five years now, and I've seen her on so many different stages. And I think even she coming on stage yesterday was a little stunned by the energy in the room - people chanting her name, the size of the crowd. I think it really all speaks to the intensity and the rapid pace of everything that's happened in the last three days.
INSKEEP: Well, how did she sound in that new environment?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, she talked about Trump a lot, but, you know, she was also talking about herself. And for the first time she was saying when I'm president, which is something we haven't heard before after years of her being number two in the White House.
INSKEEP: Sure.
SHIVARAM: And she also talked a lot about her history as a courtroom prosecutor and the kind of crimes that she dealt with. And that rhetoric is to partly show how she's going to take on Trump in this election. And it's also partly biographic. She's trying to show people who she is and who she was before being Joe Biden's vice president. A new poll from NPR, PBS, and Marist shows 15% of voters haven't heard of Harris or we're unsure how they felt about her. And that same poll also shows that more people are undecided in this race now that Harris is likely going to be the nominee. And that's why I thought it was really interesting to see Harris lean into her history as a prosecutor. There's a bit of reintroducing her to the country that the campaign has to do, and keep in mind, in a really condensed period of time.
INSKEEP: How does the campaign plan to reintroduce her?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, I mean, it's happening in a few ways. Online, there's a whole rebrand of Kamala Harris going on. She is brat. There are coconut emojis. There are things here that I can only sort of explain, Steve, but there is a whole section of the internet that is popping off. And then, of course, you know, her travel is really going to ramp up. Harris has been doing maybe two to three stops a week before all this, and by the end of this week, she will have been to five different states.
INSKEEP: OK, Deepa, thanks so much.
SHIVARAM: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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