As reported at The Atlantic, Kamala Harris's first choice for VP running mate last year was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. However, it would be “too big of a risk” for a Black woman to run with a gay man. What? Wasn't the Democrat party supposed to be the part of diversity and inclusion? This speaks volumes of the mind set of Harris. She stated, “but we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. This is their thinking as they call the GOP racist, antisemites and homophobes.
As Kamala Harris rushed to pick a running mate last year, her “first choice” was her close friend Pete Buttigieg, but she decided that it would be “too big of a risk” for a Black woman to run with a gay man.
Buttigieg “would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes in a passage of her soon-to-be-released book, 107 Days, that I saw. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”
Harris instead selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and the two went on to lose to Donald Trump. Her honest recounting of that decision—much more candid than I usually see in political memoirs—highlights one of the core challenges facing Democrats, especially as they try to refocus their message ahead of the next presidential election, in 2028.