Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris: Inside their quietly close bond

Washington: Hillary Clinton was on Martha’s Vineyard on July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, when her phone rang. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had already received a call from the same number, so she knew who wanted to talk to her.

Vice President Kamala Harris was calling to tell her she was running for president and hoping to build support as quickly as possible. Hillary Clinton didn’t hesitate: she told the vice president she was all in. The Clintons rushed out an endorsement well ahead of many other party leaders, including the Obamas.

As Democrats revolted against Biden’s re-election bid this summer, Hillary Clinton wanted no role in pushing him out, according to people briefed on her thinking. But behind the scenes, she was also adamant that if the president chose to step aside, Harris should become the party’s nominee with no drawn-out primary.

The two women, once on opposite sides during the contentious 2008 Democratic primary, have quietly bonded over the past several years. They share dinners at Clinton’s Washington home, discuss high-impact decisions like whom Harris should pick for her running mate, and connect over the still-stubborn ways that women in high office can be underestimated.

On Monday night, Clinton, who came achingly close to becoming the nation’s first woman president, passed on the torch to a woman nearly two decades younger in a moment that friends say came with a mixture of bittersweetness and pride for Clinton.

The last time Clinton stood on the convention stage, dressed in suffragist white, she thought she was on track to be the next president. Much has happened since then – from Clinton’s grief over and eventual acceptance of her 2016 loss to the rise of a new generation of Democratic leaders. And America seems more at ease with women as candidates for the highest office, a shift no doubt advanced by Clinton’s candidacies.

But still her party is grappling with the energised movement Donald Trump created. The former secretary of state is acutely aware of how challenging it will be to defeat Trump and the ugliness of the personal attacks that await Harris.

“Nothing would make Hillary happier than seeing the first in history beat the worst in history,” said Philippe Reines, a former top adviser to Clinton who has been playing the role of Trump in Harris’ debate prep.

Reines said a Harris victory in November would be a “karmic two-fer” for Clinton – who longs for Trump’s defeat, and would find it more satisfying if Trump lost to a woman.

Of course, Clinton’s presence triggers uncomfortable flashbacks for some Democrats who were devastated by her loss. But many are leaning in to the present, watching the stunning reversal in energy for their party since Biden bowed out and allowing themselves to feel hopeful – and excited – once again.

“After the disappointment in ’16, I think many, many of us had PTSD – I know I did,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a longtime friend of Clinton’s and a major Democratic donor who is supporting Harris. “I’ve never been the same. And suddenly, I feel a certain invigoration that I have not had in a long time.”

Indeed, alumni from both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s former campaigns planned to gather for a reunion in Chicago.

For Hillary Clinton, the chain of events that led to Harris’ rise has made it easier to enthusiastically – rather than dutifully – back her.

Trump’s ongoing political strength, people close to Clinton said, had helped reset widespread beliefs about her 2016 defeat – the idea that only Clinton, with all of her baggage and well-documented political weaknesses, could have lost to such a candidate and that had she only visited Wisconsin, history would have changed course.

The ensuing years have shown Trump to be a unique and durable political force.

Hillary Clinton at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.Credit: Bloomberg

Harris, after all, has ascended because Biden was pushed out by fellow Democrats who feared he, too, would lose to Trump and bring the party down with him.

Clinton, who worked through her searing defeat with hikes in the woods with her dogs and bingeing on bad television, has assumed a place as an admired stateswoman in her party. She is planning a 10-city national book tour starting in September for her latest book, Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty, which will serve as a way to speak to large audiences as an unofficial surrogate for the Harris campaign.

“She wants to help, she wants to win, and she’s ready to do whatever the campaign asks,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesperson for Clinton.

The two women didn’t have much of a relationship before 2020 and Harris’ ascension to the vice presidency. They were on opposite sides of the 2008 presidential primary between Barack Obama and Clinton. Harris was among the first Democratic elected officials to endorse the Illinois senator and worked hard for his election.

Still, Clinton has said that she feels a particular kinship with Harris because they are both lawyers who chose to work on issues related to families and children at the beginning of their careers. Clinton’s first job after law school was as a staff lawyer for the Children’s Defence Fund, while Harris worked in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, specialising in prosecuting child sexual assault cases.

And since the beginning of the Biden administration, Clinton has used her stature to quietly bolster Harris. She blames many things for her 2016 defeat. But after James Comey, the former FBI director, sexism ranks high on the list. In Clinton’s view, to be a woman in the top tier of national politics is to, at times, be undervalued and underestimated.

Harris, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Clinton at a rally in Manhattan in 2022.Credit: New York Times

When she witnessed it happening to Harris, she hosted dinners for her at Whitehaven, the Clintons’ mansion just a stone’s throw from the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory. The dinners were casual buffet-style affairs but also strategic.

Clinton invited Washington veterans whom she trusted and who could talk with Harris – like Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff; Jennifer Palmieri, the longtime political operative who worked for both Clintons and is now advising Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff; veteran Democratic strategists Paul Begala and Karen Finney; and Douglas Elmendorf, the former dean at Harvard Kennedy School.

That helped cement the relationship, which continued in other ways. Clinton visited Harris at the White House, and they spoke on the phone to discuss foreign policy before the vice president’s first international trip.

When the two saw each other most recently at the Houston funeral for representative Sheila Jackson Lee, they discussed Harris’ decision on a running mate. Harris called Clinton the next weekend to continue the conversation, according to a person briefed on the call.

And they have increasingly relied on an overlapping set of aides. Harris’ chief of staff, Lorraine Voles, worked for Clinton in the Senate. The debate prep sessions that include Reines are being overseen by Karen Dunn, another longtime “Hillary world” figure who ran Clinton’s debate prep. Harris’ communications director, Brian Fallon, served in the same role for Clinton on her 2016 bid, and Harris’ sister and adviser, Maya Harris, worked for the Clinton campaign as a top policy aide.

Clinton’s allies say she has also helped Harris in a less tangible way: by helping Americans imagine a woman president.

“It helped open doors and change perceptions,” said Democrat senator Debbie Stabenow. “Every time a woman does that, it just makes it easier for the next woman to be able to be judged on her own merits.”

If Clinton and her allies see this moment as, in some ways, an extension of her own rise, there are limits to the parallels.

Clinton, now 76, has long been aligned with the political establishment. Harris, 59, is seeking to build a campaign focused on the future and represents a generational change from Biden and Trump, who, along with Clinton, were born in the 1940s.

While Clinton leaned into the historical significance of her candidacy (one 2016 campaign slogan was “I’m With Her”), Harris, who as a black and South Asian woman is a barrier breaker several times over, has rarely emphasised her identity, playing up her credentials as a former prosecutor instead.

Their paths to elected office were also starkly different. Before Clinton became the first woman elected senator from New York, she was best known nationally as a first lady — first of Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was governor – and then of the country.

Harris, by contrast, did not marry until she was nearly 50 and serving as California’s attorney-general. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, would become the nation’s first “first gentleman” if she wins.

Still, the through line from one candidacy to the other is hard to deny.

Last week, Megan Rooney, a speechwriter, left her job at the White House to join Harris’ team and will help draft her convention address for Thursday night.

It was Rooney who, in 2016, stayed up all night to help write Clinton’s painful concession speech after her stunning defeat.

“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling,” she wrote for Clinton eight years ago, “but someday someone will – and hopefully sooner than we might think.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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