Kamala Harris thinks Joe Biden had too much faith in Republicans, and she’s jabbing at him for it.
“We cannot sit around hoping Republicans will have an ‘epiphany’ and do the right thing,” the former vice president will say in a speech Friday night in New Orleans, “because the American people can’t afford to wait.”
Beyond eventually writing in her post-election memoir that leaving the decision to run for re-election to the former president and his wife was “recklessness,” Harris has been careful in distancing herself from her former boss since she took over the Democratic nomination from him in 2024. But as she mulls whether to run for president again in 2028, she is pushing for a much harder tack than the one epitomized in Biden’s well-known 2019 prediction that “You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends” once he beat Donald Trump.
As Democrats look forward, Harris will say, they need to be ready for a much fiercer fight. “The good news is Donald Trump will be term limited out. However, please let us be clear: there is no term limit on this new Republican Party built in his image — and folks, there is a deep moral corruption about this new Republican Party,” she will say, according to excerpts of the speech shared with CNN. “Their ideology is clearly to create a smash-and-grab world. To sow chaos, grab wealth and abuse power.”
