Senator Kamala Harris warned Monday, as she campaigned in New Hampshire, that that Russia is likely to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
The Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee member said that the public should be worried about voter manipulation, as well as ‘classic’ voter suppression tactics.
‘Let’s get ready,’ the Democratic presidential candidate said of potential election meddling by Russia in next year’s race. ‘Let’s get ready for that.’
Senator Kamala Harris warned Monday, as she campaigned in New Hampshire, that that Russia is likely to interfere in the 2020 presidential election
On her first trip to New Hampshire as a candidate for her party’s nomination, Harris proudly declared her support for the ultra-progressive Green New Deal, but characterized it as a ‘goal’ rather that set of specific policies that she’d seek to implement.
She did not shy away from taking on Donald Trump directly, calling his border wall a ‘vanity project’ before a crowd of a thousand when the topic of immigration came up.
Harris also endorsed a national movement to make Election Day a federal holiday and offered her support to a local proposition to recycle Columbus Day and make it a holiday for indigenous peoples.
Her town hall hit capacity with an estimated 1,000 people inside and 500 people still waiting in line amid a storm in New England that doubled transit times and blanketed attendee with snow, many of whom waited an hour or more in the cold to see her.
Competitor Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, was making her first pitch to New Hampshire voters elsewhere in the state. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker had just finished his first swing through the state as a candidate earlier in the day.
‘I plan on spending time in New Hampshire. I plan on competing in New Hampshire. I plan on doing very well in New Hampshire,’ Harris said of her ambition to win the state that historically holds first presidential primary. ‘That is my intention.’
A former attorney general of California, Harris said she would put her background as a prosecutor to work over the next year as she campaigns for the Democratic nomination.
‘I plan on prosecuting the case against people who do not tell the truth,’ she said in a slap at Trump and Republicans. ‘In that case, we’ll be successful prosecuting, because there’s a lot of evidence of injustice, and a lack of truth, and a lack of commitment to working people.’
Voter suppression was among the first topics that came up at the town hall, her first publicly disclosed event in the state. An attendee affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union pressed her to support same-day, automatic voter registration, expand early and mail-in ballot opportunities and make Election Day a federal holiday.
‘Absolutely,’ Harris replied to cheers.
Tacking on to the woman’s statement about voter suppression, which she said that New Hampshire was ‘ground zero’ for in the last presidential election, Harris said, ‘In the 2018 election cycle, we saw massive voter suppression.
She said Democratic groups would litigate it but lawsuits are mainly effective after the fact.
‘The other voter manipulation is Russia,’ she said. ‘Let’s get ready. Let’s get ready for that.’
Harris said the ‘best and smartest way to conduct voting’ is paper ballots: ‘Russia can’t hack a piece of paper.’
In response to a question on climate change, she brought up the Green New Deal, saying, ‘Climate change is real, and it poses an existential threat to us as human beings, and it is in our power to do something about it.’
‘We;re not talking about a meteor that might hit the planet, we’re talking about human behaviors,’ she said, calling it ‘outrageous that this administration would have you believing science fiction instead of science fact.’
Without any prompting from the audience, she asserted, ‘I am supporting the Green New Deal.’
The declaration drew thunderous applause clapping and a standing ovation from some.
‘It’s a resolution that requires us to have goals,’ she said. ‘Some of them we’ll achieve, and some of them we won’t.’
She said that climate change requires leadership – ‘and clearly we don’t have a leader in the White House on this.’
‘I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but it is very real and it is within our power,’ she said.
Harris also reiterated her support for Medicare for All program, saying it would help bring down pharmaceutical prices.
‘When it would be achieved, we would be able to negotiate on behalf of all of us against the pharmaceutical companies,’ she said, ‘which means that we would be able to bring down prices, and have more influence around … what we also need, which is to have greater access to generics,’ she said. ‘So I’m all on board with that.’
She further took on Trump’s claim that there’s a national emergency at the southern border.
‘We have a president of the United States who has created a fiction about a crisis at the border, and he has held up the United States government and its workers around his vanity project,’ she said of his border wall. ‘And it’s a distraction from the real issues.’
The California senator whose state will be immediately affected by Trump’s national emergency said she supports comprehensive reform and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.