Photo: Annie Leibovitz
For Vogue’s October digital cover, Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris talks to Nathan Heller about finding common ground, fighting for the middle class, and who she’ll call first from the Oval Office.
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Culture: Only rarely are individuals summoned overnight for acts of national rescue, but in late July, Vice President Kamala Harris received one of those calls. With President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign, the world looked to Harris with hopes and doubts. She was a leader of widespread support but no especial following, and now, she was expected to do something unprecedented in American history: to mount, and win, a presidential race in three months, as a woman of color, with a felonious former leader as the opposition and the future of democracy said to be at stake. “You can always trust me to put country above party and self—to hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power,” Harris asserted when accepting the Democratic nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August. They were words that seemed a caption to the monumental moment in American history.