(NEW YORK) — Vice President Kamala Harris stopped by on ABC’s The View Wednesday to talk about the administration’s message to voters and its goals as the 2024 presidential election kicks off.
Harris said she was “scared as heck” when asked about her thoughts about former President Donald Trump being reelected, and that many Americans that she has talked to in the last couple of weeks have that same feeling. The vice president said that she has been actively listening to those concerns and has worked to provide not only an ear but also policy solutions.
“We’ve got to earn reelection and we have to communicate what we have achieved,” she said.
One of the biggest concerns, she said she has heard from constituents, is the future of reproductive rights following the end of Rove v Wade when the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision in June 2022.
“Many of us often think about the future of our country in the context of our children, and so they talk about their concern that if their daughter is going to college, will she go to a state where she will have access to the health care she might need including reproductive health,” Harris said.
She said that women and doctors are constantly living in a state of fear because of the strict abortion laws put in by states following the Supreme Court decision and many women’s lives are at an unnecessary risk.
The vice president said the government needs to stay out of health decisions for women.
“So many of us actually grew up when Roe was intact, and we would absolutely say, ‘We must protect it. A woman’s right to choose but we kind of believed it was always going to be there.’ And look what happened,” she said. “And I say that in the context of this democracy also. Don’t take anything for granted.”
When asked about criticisms about the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis, the vice president acknowledged that the country’s immigration system has needed fixing for a long time and contended that the Biden administration has reached out to leaders on both sides of the aisle for a solution.
Harris noted that the administration included immigration reform in its latest $14 billion security package, which has the support of Senate Republicans.
“The solutions are at hand, but, frankly, we’re in an election year, and the folks who want to return Donald Trump to the White House would prefer to talk about a broken immigration system instead of focusing on the solutions that are at hand and engaging in bipartisan work,” she said.
Harris addressed criticisms from Democrats and other pundits that the Biden administration has been focusing too much on warning about a potential second Trump presidency instead of talking about the last four years of their work and other issues such as the economy. A recent ABC News poll found that Biden’s approval rating is at 33%.
The vice president contended that many of those issues, such as the economy, are tied to the issues related to the future of democracy that she said Trump poses with his rhetoric and it was important to stress what is at stake this November.
“There is a split screen you can throw up and see and it’s going to be the choice between what is about respecting our democracy, what is about competence versus chaos,” she said.
At the same time, Harris touted the administration’s work lowering student loan debt, creating more jobs and passing a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Trump wasn’t the only GOP hopeful that was discussed during the vice president’s appearance.
Harris responded to recent claims by Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on racial matters. The former South Carolina governor initially did not say the Civil War was started by slavery at a campaign stop last month before backtracking. This week she claimed that the U.S. was never racist during an interview.
Harris, who like Haley is of South Asian descent, said, “The issue of race in America is not something that should be the subject of a sound bite or a question that is meant to elicit a one-sentence answer, but there is no denying that we have in our history as a nation racism and that racism has played a role in the history of our nation.”
“I think we all would agree that while it is part of our past and we see vestiges of it today, we should also be committed collectively to not letting it define the future of our country, but we cannot get to a place of progress on the issue of race by denying the existence of racism,” she added.
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