Sen. Kamala Harris has decided to run for president in 2020 and will announce her candidacy on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, probably at a campaign rally in Oakland, sources close to the freshman senator from California tell KCBS Radio.

Harris, 54, has been making the rounds of television talk shows and appearing at several events this week as part of a brief tour to promote her new book, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey."

At every stop, when asked about running for president, Harris has answered with some variation of "I'm not ready yet" to announce her decision, citing family considerations. But several sources knowledgeable about her plans say she is ready, and has in fact decided to run, with the enthusiastic blessing of her husband and two stepchildren.

The debate within her camp is how, and where, to launch her campaign. The tentative plan is for Harris to enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination with a campaign rally, most likely in Oakland, where she was born and began her legal career.

Harris risks appearing indecisive, or worse, disingenuous, if she demurs about her plans much longer, warns veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, the publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, who teaches political science at USC.

"If she really has decided to run," said Sragow, "my advice would be, announce. Don't drag this out."

Harris' team wants maximum exposure for her campaign kickoff, and has been scouting for a telegenic location that could give her a "Springfield moment" akin to Barack Obama's campaign launch in 2007 at the Old State Capitol in Illinois.

Harris' advisors want to avoid identifying her too closely with San Francisco, where she first made her political mark as a two-term district attorney.

"San Francisco is viewed as a very nutty place by people outside of California, and frankly, by a lot of people inside California," Sragow said.

Berkeley, where Harris was raised before her parents divorced and she moved with her mother and sister to Montreal, Canada, has also been dismissed by her strategists as not projecting the image they're looking for. That leaves Oakland, where Harris was born, and where she returned after law school to become a deputy district attorney for Alameda County.

"I'm not sure what Oakland's image is around the country these days," said Sragow, but the city, one of the nation's most diverse, is seen as on the rise. Launching her national campaign there would let Harris emphasize her roots and identify with the hardscrabble city's gritty energy, creativity and even the Golden State Warriors, who've won three NBA championships since 2015.

The sources caution that Harris' planned rollout is still being finalized. The location and timing could change. But the current plan is for Harris to throw her hat into the ring sometime over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, perhaps even on MLK Day itself, which is Monday, January 21.

Sragow notes that as a statewide official whose husband is a prominent Los Angeles attorney, Harris could announce her candidacy anywhere in the state, from L.A. to Sacramento to Silicon Valley.

But the sources tell KCBS Radio the Bay Area is the preferred backdrop. The next stop would probably be Iowa, where Harris would go on an introductory campaign swing to begin in earnest her quest for the White House.</s>Kamala Harris, the first-term U.S. Senator from California, has decided to run for president as a Democrat in 2020, CBS News reported Thursday, citing affiliate KCBS. Harris will announce her run, most likely in Oakland, California, on or around Martin Luther King Day, which is January 21. Harris was born in Oakland.

Harris, who would be the first woman and the second African-American elected president, was previously the district attorney of San Francisco and the state attorney general of California prior to her election to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

The 54-year-old senator recently published a campaign-style book, called The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, and has been promoting the book in interviews this week despite not having yet declared that she’s officially running for president.

Harris will join what’s expected to be a crowded field of Democratic contenders for 2020. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has already launched an exploratory committee for a run. Other potential candidates include former Vice President Joseph Biden, former Texas Congressman and Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and donor Tom Steyer are among the Democrats who have announced that they’re not running in 2020.

The senator serves on the Judiciary, Budget, and Intelligence Committees.

While Harris has been praised for her policy competence and charismatic speaking style, concerns have been raised by some of on the left side of the Democratic party for her record as a prosecutor, which is seen as out of step with the emerging consensus on the left in regards to criminal justice.

“Harris has emulated the Obama approach, delivering a combination of some notable progressive victories and pleasant rhetoric and a steadfast avoidance of structural change — paired, in some cases, with far-from-progressive policies,” the journal Jacobin wrote in 2017 about a potential Harris presidential candidacy.

The senator, however, has been seeking to establish her progressive credentials as she’s ramped up towards a run. Harris voted for the criminal justice reform bill that passed at the end of last year, per The Hill, while she has also announced her support for Medicare For All.

Politico reported last fall that Harris will focus on Iowa first, before later concentrating strongly on Nevada, South Carolina and her home state of California.

Harris would be the first U.S. president from California since Ronald Reagan.</s>When Kamala Harris was growing up in Oakland, California, her mother would warn her not to run too far at the park. But her father took a different position.

“Run as far as you want,” he told her. “Be fearless – and run.”

The story, which Harris shared with an audience in Washington on Wednesday night, invited speculation that the freshman senator from California may be taking her father’s advice literally as she contemplates a run for president in 2020.

At the event – the first formal stop on a book tour promoting her new memoir, The Truths We Hold – she promised to make her decision “soon” but otherwise revealed nothing more about her intentions. Outside the venue, a huckster sold pink “Kamala 2020” T-shirts and hats.

During the breezy, hour-long discussion with Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, Harris set the record straight about the pronunciation of her first name (“Kamala – like comma-la”), defended her career as a prosecutor against criticism from progressive quarters, and assailed Donald Trump for forcing a partial shutdown of the federal government over his demand for funds for a border wall.

“You cannot hold the American people hostage over your vanity project,” the 54-year-old former attorney general for California told the receptive audience at George Washington University.

Harris compared the president’s behavior to the way her godson might act when deprived of his toy train.

“Any good parent would tell you that you don’t listen to those kinds of tantrums, and you don’t reward that kind of behavior,” she said.

“Did you watch his speech last night?” Harris asked of the president’s primetime address from the Oval Office. She accused Trump of a “blatant” attempt to stoke racial division.

“What was that supposed to be about?” she asked. “Tell me that – if not about inserting race in a way that was intended to create fear and division. That’s not what a leader does.”

The interview lingered on Harris’s upbringing as the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica and her career path from courtroom prosecutor to California’s “top cop”.

Harris described herself as a “progressive prosecutor” who supported in equal measure harsh punishments for violent offenders and large-scale reforms of the criminal justice system. She pointed to her efforts to reduce recidivism and implement implicit bias training.

She also recounted a “shouting match” with JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon in the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown in 2012. The exchange was so tense, Harris wrote, that she removed her earrings because “I’m a girl from Oakland”.

Should Harris run, the anecdote about fighting for California homeowners against the big banks may help establish her progressive credentials in a wide Democratic primary race that will feature senator Elizabeth Warren, a sharp critic of Wall Street, and possibly senator Bernie Sanders, who has condemned corporate greed.

Though Harris has not officially launched a campaign, the book tour and media blitz has been described as a “soft” campaign launch. In an earlier interview on CNN, Harris said she believed the country was absolutely ready from a woman of color as president.

At the end of the event on Wednesday night, Capehart asked Harris to read a passage from her book, which imagines future generations asking someone alive at this political moment: “Where were you at that inflection point?” The senator recited the excerpt mostly from memory.

“So,” Capehart said, “When your time comes, when your godchildren, grandchildren ask you what did you do, will your response be, I ran for president?”

Harris erupted in laughter as the crowd cheered and whooped wildly.

“Did you say maybe?” he tried again.</s>WASHINGTON: As she nears a decision on whether to seek the presidency, Sen. Kamala Harris is taking on what could be a hurdle in a Democratic primary: her past as a prosecutor.

In her memoir published Tuesday, the California Democrat describes herself as a "progressive prosecutor" and says it's a "false choice" to decide between supporting the police and advocating for greater scrutiny of law enforcement. The argument is aimed at liberal critics of her record who argue she was sometimes too quick to side with the police and too slow to adopt sentencing reforms.

"I know that most police officers deserve to be proud of their public service and commended for the way they do their jobs," Harris writes in "The Truths We Hold." ''I know how difficult and dangerous the job is, day in and day out, and I know how hard it is for the officers' families, who have to wonder if the person they love will be coming home at the end of each shift."

But, she continues, "I also know this: it is a false choice to suggest you must either be for the police or for police accountability. I am for both. Most people I know are for both. Let's speak some truth about that, too."

After high-profile fatal shootings involving police officers and unarmed people of color, the criminal justice system's treatment of minorities is a top issue among Democratic voters. The passage suggests Harris is aware that her seven years as the district attorney in San Francisco, followed by six years as California's attorney general, is something she will have to explain and signals how she may frame her law enforcement career if she decides to run for the White House.

"It's a presidential campaign, and every aspect of a candidate's record is going to be scrutinized and they're going to have to answer for it," said Mo Elleithee, a longtime Democratic operative who leads Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service. "She knows that this is something that's heading her way and a good candidate is one who doesn't wait for it to hit them. A good candidate is someone who addresses it proactively, and she appears to be doing that."

Beyond the book, Harris supported legislation that passed the Senate late last year and overhauls the criminal justice system, especially when it comes to sentencing rules.

In the book, Harris recounts an instance when she was an intern at the Alameda County district attorney's office and an innocent bystander was one of many people arrested during a drug raid. Harris said she "begged" and "pleaded" on a late Friday afternoon for a judge to hear the case so the woman could avoid spending the weekend in jail.

Kate Chatfield, the policy director of the California-based criminal justice reform group Re:store Justice, said Harris did do "some good" when she was in law enforcement, but that it was "incumbent on the public to hold her accountable for the ways in which she either didn't do enough or actually did some harm."

"When the conversation shifts, one should be expected to be questioned about those choices," Chatfield said, noting among other issues Harris's advocacy for tougher truancy laws.

By addressing policing in the book, Harris is taking on an issue that confronted Democrats and some Republicans in 2016. Democrat Hillary Clinton was criticized for her husband's role in passing the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which created stricter penalties for drug offenders and funneled billions of dollars toward more police and new prisons.

The issue is likely to be the subject of fierce debate in 2020 as well and could expose divisions among the wide field of candidates — presenting hurdles for some and opportunity for others.

Former Vice President Joe Biden was the head of the Senate's Judiciary Committee when the 1994 crime bill — which is now criticized as having helped create an era of mass incarceration — was passed and signed into law, which could be an obstacle for him. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was central to the passage of the Senate's criminal justice overhaul package and is certain to tout it if he decides to launch a presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is also considering a 2020 bid, often refers to her own prosecutorial past.

The memoir — and the publicity surrounding it — will shift the 2020 campaign spotlight to Harris this week after much of the focus has been on her Senate colleague Elizabeth Warren. Last week, the Massachusetts Democrat became the most prominent person yet to take steps toward a presidential run by forming an exploratory committee. Her weekend trip to the leadoff caucus state of Iowa also generated largely flattering headlines.

Some criminal justice advocates said they were happy the issue would get more attention in 2020.

"When we had the 2016 elections, it was at the height of Ferguson and Baltimore, and we still didn't have serious engagement with criminal justice reform," said Phillip Atiba Goff, the president of the Center for Policing Equity, referring to the protests that followed the deaths of black men at the hands of police officers in Missouri and Maryland. "My hope is that we require candidates to demonstrate that they know more than the catchphrases of the activists in their bases."

Surveys underscore the potency of criminal justice issues among Democrats. A February 2018 poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that majorities of Democrats — but far fewer Republicans — think there's been little progress for African-Americans on criminal justice or policing issues over the past 50 years. The poll showed that 45 percent of Americans, including 62 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of Republicans, thought there had been little to no progress on fair treatment for black Americans by the criminal justice system. Similarly, 46 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Democrats and 23 percent of Republicans, said there's been little to no progress for African-Americans on fair treatment by police.

While it's not yet clear how Harris' prosecutorial background could affect her primary bid, it could help her if she faces President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.

"He ran as the law-and-order president," Elleithee said of Trump. "Being able to go toe-to-toe with him on law and order in a smarter way, I think, is going to be important. Should she win the nomination and does it by navigating this topic well, then I think she would be a strong voice and a force to be reckoned with when it comes to issues of law and order, criminal justice and civil rights as they collide in a general election."</s>At least one pundit has proclaimed Indian American Sen. Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.

After blasting President Donald Trump for not being strong enough on building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, radical conservative rabble-rouser Ann Coulter wrote in her online column that because of Trump's (in her eyes) waffling on the border issue, she "absolutely" guarantees "that the next president is a Democrat. And given today's Democratic Party, that president will be Kamala Harris."

Considering the source, I'm pretty sure that's more of a threat intended to stir up conservative voters and certainly not an endorsement.

As we await Harris' expected announcement after the holidays, more and more signs point towards her candidacy. The No. 1 sign? Conservatives are stepping up their attacks on the California senator.

Harris' critics don't like what she is saying: When she praises Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for coming forward to accuse Judge Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct; when she says that Trump's policies against immigrants is not representing America; when she tells Democrats to not shirk from talking about the far right's racism; when she says America's criminal justice system is weighed against the poor, the voiceless and especially against African American males, when she tells women to run for office.

Her recent trip to Afghanistan – with two Republican peers, no less – appears to be an attempt to bolster Harris' foreign policy credentials.

Her trips to Iowa and New Hampshire introduced her to Democratic or liberal activists in those early primary states.

A very prominent endorsement of Stacey Abrams in her campaign for Georgia's governor made a strong statement to African American women, one of the steadiest, reliable voting blocs.

In fact, criss-crossing across the country endorsing candidates here and there, win or lose, stashed away a bunch of political IOUs that she can draw on during the brutal Democratic endorsement campaign that will weed out the almost two dozen Democrats who want to challenge Donald Trump.

Harris has placed No. 1 in CNN's 2020 power rankings for the last few months even though recent polls show her behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders and newcomer to the national scene Beto O'Roarke, who almost upset Texas Senator Ted Cruz last November.

However, Harris virtually swept the field of would-be candidates in the She the People. poll, claiming more than 71 percent support. Trailing in second place was O'Rourke with a little more than 38 percent, the survey found.

The straw poll released Dec.18 of politically involved women of color by the group She the People cannot be ignored.

It's hard to find a more important primary group than women of color, reports CNN. They are by far the most Democratic aligned major demographic group. Women of color powered Hillary Clinton's sweep of the Southeast in the 2016 primary. Just last year, they were the base for Democrat Doug Jones's shocking victory in the Alabama special Senate election.

Those survey results are encouraging for Harris and sets the stage expected soon. She said she would announce her decision after the holidays after discussing with her family the pros and cons of a campaign in the context of a country driven to the extremes by the current administration.

As a woman of color – Asian and black – and the daughter of Indian immigrants, running in a campaign against mainly white men (although we shouldn't discount the handful of other women who have expressed interest in joining the fray, including Hawaii's Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu American), her gender and her race will likely be targets by her opponents. Watch for code words if not outright sexist or racist statements from those rivals and from the White House.

In the era of a growing awareness of women to take charge in order to create the necessary changes we need to make government work for the people, not just the privileged few, and with the demographics that show that women and people of color when joined together could be a formidable force if not the majority of voters, sooner than the mid-century predictions by demographers, her gender and her racial heritage could be seen more as assets rather than liabilities.

She is not naive. Harris expects a difficult race to garner the Democratic nomination given the number of aspirants, and if she gets the nomination, the contest vs. the Republican candidate will likely be even bloodier.

Harris is no pushover and has shown she knows how to punch as well as to weather blows. She will likely be pressured by liberal interest groups to forego money from special interest PACs, so her ability to raise funds from the traditional Democratic donors, labor and a talent for generating millions of dollars from small online donations from ordinary voters will be even more important in order to run not only against a Republican candidate but also against her Democratic rivals.

The advantage of being the first out of the gate is first dibs on asking donors for their support, securing important endorsements from local and nationally known politicians, and commitments from activists who will form the infastructure and boots-on-the-ground needed for a national campaign.

The disadvantage is that the candidate becomes an easy target for Democratic rivals and the effective Republican hit machine, led by Fox News and the First Twitterer, which is far better than the Democrats at exaggerating flaws and just outright making things up.

Let's also not discount the Russian Internet strategy and the U.S. citizens who assist them in magnifying issues, real or fictional, and misleading and firing up conservative-leaning voters and racists and confusing American voters on both sides of the political spectrum.

"I always start my campaigns early, and I run hard," said Harris. "Maybe it comes from the rough-and-tumble world of San Francisco politics, where it's not even a contact sport — it's a blood sport. This is how I am as a candidate. This is how I run campaigns."

If she chooses to join the scramble for the White House, Harris will need that determination and endurance for the upcoming gauntlet. The Iowa Caucuses are a little more than a year away and we will learn the decision from Kamala Devi Harris soon enough.</s>WASHINGTON—California Sen. Kamala Harris, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, engaged in an intense back-and-forth with JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon in 2012 as she pressed for a more comprehensive settlement for states in the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown.

Ms. Harris describes her role in the multistate mortgage settlement in her new book, “The Truths We Hold,” which was released Tuesday. The senator, who was serving as California’s attorney general at the time, describes a series of hardball...</s>WASHINGTON -- California Sen. Kamala Harris, a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, engaged in an intense back-and-forth with JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon in 2012 as she pressed for a more comprehensive settlement for states in the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown.

Ms. Harris describes her role in the multistate mortgage settlement in her new book, "The Truths We Hold," which was released Tuesday. The senator, who was serving as California's attorney general at the time, describes a series of hardball negotiations aimed at holding the nation's five largest mortgage lenders accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis.

Ms. Harris writes that under the initial settlement offer, California would have received between $2 billion and $4 billion, calling it "crumbs on the table" that would have failed to properly compensate homeowners. She eventually pulled her state out of the settlement negotiations, a decision that prompted then California Gov. Jerry Brown to tell her: "I hope you know what you're doing."

Ms. Harris describes a testy phone call in early 2012 with Mr. Dimon as they discussed the deal. "We were like dogs in a fight," she writes.

"'You're trying to steal from my shareholders!' he yelled, almost as soon as he heard my voice," Ms. Harris writes of Mr. Dimon. "I gave it right back. 'Your shareholders? Your shareholders? My shareholders are the homeowners of California! You come and see them. Talk to them about who got robbed.'"

Ms. Harris writes that once temperatures cooled, she explained to Mr. Dimon why the terms of the deal were unacceptable. She says that Mr. Dimon told her he would follow up with his board of directors.

Two weeks later, Ms. Harris writes, the five banks relented and eventually agreed to a settlement that year of $26 billion, which ultimately provided about $50 billion in gross relief to homeowners. California's share of the deal reached $20 billion in aid to the homeowners, a significant increase over the original settlement offer. The agreement involved 49 states and the District of Columbia and five major banks: Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co. and Ally Financial Inc

California had more foreclosures than any other state and Ms. Harris notes in her book that seven of the 10 cities hit hardest by foreclosures were located in her state, making the settlement an important milestone. "It was a tremendous victory for the people of California," she writes.

Ms. Harris is among a number of Senate Democrats weighing a possible 2020 campaign. The field already includes Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro but is expected to grow in the coming weeks.

In her book, Ms. Harris signals that she would seek accountability involving the nation's leading financial institutions, warning that "the banks are waging a full-scale battle to repeal the Obama-era Wall Street reforms that have helped hold them in check."

"Where they have failed to repeal them, they have done everything they can to get around them."

She notes that Congress voted in 2018 to roll back some of the Dodd-Frank provisions related to midsize banks, calling it "more than unacceptable. It's outrageous."

Ms. Harris concludes: "If we agree that we are tired of banks getting away with such reckless behavior, if we agree that we can't let the banks drag us into another recession, if we agree that homeowners deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, not as lines on a balance sheet to be packaged and sold, then there's only one way to achieve the change we seek: with our voices and our votes."</s>Now joint favourite for the Democratic nomination

This is from my post under the heading “My 66/1 long-shot bet for the 2020 White House race: Democratic Senator Kamala Harris from California” from January 18th 2017 – two days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President.

“..With Trump’s inauguration taking place on Friday there’s been a flurry of betting activity on the newly elected Senator from California, Kamala Harris, for the next White House Race in 2020. This followed a lot of coverage of her part in fighting against Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions. In November she became the second black woman and first Indian American elected to serve in the Senate. She’s a former Attorney-General for California and is the daughter of an Indian-American mother and Jamaican-American father… My reading of the Democratic party 2020 race is that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will simply be too old to contemplate running. Massachusetts Senator, Elizabeth Warren (15/2) is currently favourite and she’s likely to play a big part in her party’s opposition to the incoming president. She was strongly tipped to run last year but didn’t. Maybe 2016 was her best chance.”

That was written nearly two years and it has aged well. Harris was only then starting her first term in the US Senate and has made a big mark. She featured a lot three months ago during the process to validate Judge Kavanagh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. This is from The Hill.

“Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will formally announce her bid for the White House on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, sources told KCBS Radio, a station in her home state of California. Harris has long been considered a possible frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic nomination and speculation that she would enter the race continued to mount this week when she launched a book tour and media blitz to promote her memoir that was published Tuesday…”

My reading of her is that she’s better equipped for a battle with Trump than her Senate colleague, Elizabeth Warren, who put her hat into the ring on New Year’s Eve.</s>If you have any doubt that Kamala Harris’ new autobiography, out today, might be related to the upcoming presidential election, it should be well over by the time you get to the minor anecdote on page five.

“I remember that when I was a little girl, my father wanted me to run free,” the California Senator recalls. “He would turn to my mother and say, ‘Just let her run, Shyamala.’ And then he’d turn to me and say, ‘Run, Kamala. As fast as you can. Run!’ I would take off, the wind in my face, with the feeling that I could do anything.”

The book, , reads exactly like the kind of campaign memoir that you expect it to be. In this case, it has an unexpected twist: It’s not aimed at voters in the general election; it’s aimed at winning the Democratic primary. But along the way, it also reveals what she thinks it will take to win the general election, provided she gets the nomination.

These books are never great literature. Harris moves through the steps of her own life at a dizzying pace, like a harried screenwriter trying to cram a 1,000-page novel into an hour and a half movie. But if books like this aren’t great for readers, they are helpful for voters, who can gain some insight through seeing which issues and personal stories their authors deems important enough to highlight. (One helpful point in Harris’ case: her name is pronounced )

Harris alternates between personal anecdotes that humanize her — the first section of the book might as well be called “Dreams From My Mother” — and sharp asides about the Trump Administration’s policies and her own political ideas that could come right from a pit stop at Pizza Ranch.

She opens the book with the perfect blend of the personal and political, recounting the tears that welled up in her 9-year-old godson’s face on Election Night in 2016 when it started to look like Trump was going to win and how she ate an entire family-sized bag of Doritos later that night to cope. (“Didn’t share a single chip.”) She simultaneously tells the story of her own historic win that night as she became only the second black woman elected Senator.

These stories are targeted directly at the Democratic base, the grassroots volunteers who will start deciding the party’s nominee in the coming months. The book lays out a roadmap to winning over those voters: Supporting immigration and marijuana legalization; opposing police brutality and mass incarceration; highlighting income inequality, rising college tuition and health care costs and the opioid crisis; and criticizing pharmaceutical companies, payday lenders and “greedy predatory corporations.”

On another level, the book makes clear that while Harris was mostly raised by her mother, an Indian immigrant, she feels strong ties to her father’s African-American roots, from the community where she was raised to her experiences at historically black college Howard University and her time as district attorney in San Francisco.

In a potent metaphor, she notes that she loved how “okra could be soul food or Indian food, depending on what spices you chose.”

Highlighting these ties is both personal and political for Harris. Black voters may very well decide the Democratic nominee. As one of the most loyal constituencies of the Democratic Party, they play a key role in several early states, including her home of California, which moved up its primary to play a more influential role.

She gives subtle nods to her experiences as a woman, noting how refreshing it was to have a female colleague in the “male-dominated environment” of her summer internship in a district attorney’s office, recalling the skirt suit she wore to her first trial “back before women were permitted to wear pants in the courtroom” and talking about her work with survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The path she is following in the book is clear, and it was blazed by Barack Obama in 2008. But where the then-Senator from Illinois sought from the start to stress that there was not a red America and a blue America, the Senator from California is banking on outrage from blue America to fuel turnout in 2020 the way that it did in the 2018 midterms.

To that end, she highlights Trump Administration policies that have drawn ire on the left: the travel ban, the family separation policy at the border, attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the 2017 tax cut, the proposal for a border wall, opposition to efforts to address climate change and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Although she never connects the issue to President Trump, she spends several pages discussing election security and Russian attempts to influence U.S. politics, highlighting a bill she coauthored with Republican Sen. James Lankford that stalled in the Senate.

Still, Harris shows a cautious streak that is reminiscent of Obama’s approach to politics. Although she endorses Medicare for All, she talks about it more as a long-term aspiration. “Even if we could snap our fingers and make Medicare for All a reality, this alone would not alleviate the problems in the system,” she notes.

Elsewhere, she praises the idea of a jobs guarantee program, while raising pragmatic, almost Obamaesque, doubts.

“Rather than guarantee a base cash payment, a federal jobs guarantee would ensure that anyone who wants to work will have a good-paying job with dignity,” she writes. “It’s an idea straight out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights. Is it possible? Would it work? If it’s part of ‘the Plan’ you’re running on, you’re compelled to say yes. But the better answer is ‘Let’s find out.'”

In the end, “let’s find out” may be less inspiring than “run, Kamala,” but it is a mark of a decent campaign book that it provides the reader with both. Will it be enough for voters? We’ll find out soon enough.</s>Sen. @KamalaHarris to @GStephanopoulos on if she will run for president in 2020: "I'm not going to decide right now"; says what we need "is leadership that has a vision of the future in which everyone can see themselves." pic.twitter.com/b2MQUT5Y2C — Good Morning America (@GMA) January 8, 2019

Will she or won't she? A new report says California Sen. Kamala Harris will run for President in 2020.According to the San Francisco Chronicle , Harris will announce she's running for president either on or shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 21. The 54-year-old Bay Area native is seen by many as a rising star within the Democratic party.Just this week, Harris spoke to ABC'S George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America about a potential run for office."Anyone who runs has to answer this, what can I bring to the White House that no one else can bring," Stephanopoulos asked Harris."There is so much happening in our world right now and there are a lot of people who rightly feel displaced and are wondering where do they belong? Are they relevant? Are we thinking about them and I think it is clearly to me that what we need in this country is leadership that has a vision of the future in which everyone can see themselves," said Harris.Harris also made an appearance on " The View ," Harris demurred when asked if she had reached a final decision on running, saying she wasn't quite ready to make an announcement.She did not hesitate, however, when responding to a question about whether the nation was ready for a woman of color such as herself to be president."Absolutely," Harris said, adding, "We need to give the American public more credit ... we have so much more in common than what separates us."
Joining several other Democrats in the race, Senator Kamala Harris of California announces her intention for running in the 2020 United States presidential election.