2026-10-26 / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
密西西比州克拉克斯代尔讯——
“很高兴认识您，总统女士。”周四下午，卡玛拉·哈里斯突然造访科ahoma社区学院，在校学生代表与她握手时，哈里斯如是说。
这个消解戒备的玩笑很对哈里斯的胃口。她是密西西比三角洲这所资金短缺的学校迎来的最知名政治人物，草地十分干燥，她和一群目瞪口呆的学生合影时，脚步下的草叶发出嘎吱声。
“你不知道这给多少人带来了鼓舞。”唐·格林说，他当天下午跟着哈里斯从学院来到克拉克斯代尔的一家乡村健康诊所，该诊所因是传奇布鲁斯“交叉路口”所在地而闻名。
密西西比大学大二学生、该校民主党大学生社团主席迈克·卡瓦诺当天在哈里斯造势集会上发言，合影间隙与她简短交谈时，他回答了关于选民登记的问题。“年轻人都特别兴奋，”他说。
“本不必走到这一步”，这是哈里斯在密西西比为民主党人斯科特·科洛姆助选时多次使用的台词。科洛姆挑战 incumbent 参议员辛迪·海德-史密斯的竞选引发了全国关注和外部资金注入。
“有很多人对选举结果感到痛心——理由非常充分，”哈里斯在造势集会上发表演讲前，于后台接受CNN采访时如是说，当时距离她62岁生日刚过去两天。“那种痛感挥之不去，因为我们每天都在目睹本不必发生的事，本可以有不同的结果。”
采访结束后，哈里斯要求公开发言。
“美国民众想要的领导人不是只盯着镜子自我欣赏，他们想要的是关注民众的领导人，”她说，“民众能分清差别。”
多数政治圈内部人士态度明确：不希望哈里斯参选2028年总统，甚至不希望她再发声。早在民主党人因乔·拜登竞选失败遭遇“恐怖年份”、她仍在应对加沙问题带来的舆论压力、唐纳德·特朗普重返政坛之前，哈里斯就不擅长培育捐款人，也无法阻止助手因她过度谨慎的风格和接连不断的内斗而离职。
但在密西西比及全美各地的行程中，她听到许多民主党竞选团队表示，她的助阵助力良多，还有大量选民踊跃到场表达支持。总体而言，她将以比巴拉克·奥巴马更多的助选场次结束中期选举，本周在威斯康星州和佐治亚州的最后一轮助选，让她的场次超过几乎所有2028年总统竞选热门人选。
这位前副总统、2024年民主党总统候选人的多位亲信告诉CNN，她反复表示“考虑再次参选”，实则是在经历数月陪伴购买她售书巡演门票的狂热粉丝后，并未排除参选可能。
“保留参选选项”与“推进参选筹备”是两回事，无论是组建团队还是制定新议程，哈里斯也承认，关于“尚未做出决定”的含糊答案无法持续太久。但当被问及这种状态会持续六个月还是一年时，她答道：“我不知道。”
“我反复纠结，真的很纠结，”被问及倾向哪一方时，哈里斯说，“因素太多了。”
距离竞选失败两年后，哈里斯明确的一点是，她对总统初选常见的“寸土必争”的博弈越来越没兴趣。
“我会说得很明确，”她表示，“如果参选，我的动力不是击败其他民主党人，而是真正胜任这份工作。”
私下里，面对其他民主党人“不该参选”的言论，她会露出讽刺的凝视——这很方便，她说，因为那意味着他们不必与她竞争。
“我相信很多人觉得我该待在家里吃点心、做道格爱吃的菜，”她对《华尔街日报》的报道不屑一顾，该报道称，她丈夫道格·埃姆霍夫曾私下告诉一些人，他更希望她不要参选。“我既可以做道格爱吃的菜，也能做这件事。”
哈里斯表示，埃姆霍夫对“自己的感受被不准确描述”感到不满。据一位直接与他交谈过的人士透露，他更准确的感受是，两人目前的行动并非为再次参选做准备。
“我信念坚定，因此必须、甚至是被驱使着去做这件事，因为我知道自己能提供帮助，”她补充道，“我怎么能安心待在舒适的家中，明明知道有事情可以做来提供帮助？我除了这样的生活，不知道别的生活是什么样的——这就是重点。我所知道的生活都是‘出现问题，我能做什么来解决它？’”
哈里斯所说的“将痛苦转化为目标”，对中期竞选最后日子里沮丧的选民而言，意味着不同的解读：比如哥伦布高中体育馆里，那位退休水管工在她抨击特朗普政绩时高喊“你早说过！”
对另一位在新罕布什尔州某酒吧帮客人倒酒、始终保持笑容的女性而言，她就是两年来击败特朗普的候选人。大约两年前的这个时候，哈里斯还在挨个致电确认旧友会来霍华德大学的校园为她庆祝。周四她结束演讲后特意回电给一位男士：“是的，兄弟，我记得。”
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哈里斯并未像宾夕法尼亚州州长乔什·夏皮罗、伊利诺伊州州长JB·普利茨克和佐治亚州参议员乔恩·奥索夫那样，今年夏天前往汉普顿参加筹款活动。她也没有按照助手内部备忘录的提议，在最高法院裁定“卡莱斯案”后，发起一场推广黑人选票权利的大规模宣传巡演。
过去一年，她主要进行了为期27个州的售书巡演，收入远超预期。她将自己控制的一个X（原推特）账号出售给一家合作方，获得了可观收益。
但她仍坚持打电话沟通，一方面致电各类权益倡导者，询问她在那次短暂的总统竞选期间本可以做出哪些改变；另一方面也关心得克萨斯州参议院民主党候选人詹姆斯·塔拉利科等候选人的情况，给他提供了应对前对手众议员贾丝明·克罗克特持续批评的建议，而克罗克特在他胜出前就已获得哈里斯的背书。
她的潜在对手们并未坐等她做出决定。
肯塔基州州长安迪·贝希尔已计划在民主党州长协会12月会议后立即启动竞选，届时他将正式结束协会主席任期。此前数月他虽公开否认参选，但始终保持全国行程，如今马里兰州州长韦斯·穆尔开始告诉身边人，11月大选后他将再次考虑参选总统。
亚利桑那州参议员马克·凯利和前交通部长皮特·布蒂吉格已在全国各地为候选人站台，包括在初选早期州的行程中，助手每次增加场次都会提醒记者。新泽西州参议员科里·布克悄悄储备了2000万美元，开始制定聚焦南卡罗来纳州和超级星期二的竞选策略。
多位有望参选的幕僚正在汇编预期对手的反对研究档案，并咨询招聘员工的建议。她的前竞选搭档、明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹已表示，他对民主党未来的建议是“推举皮特·布蒂吉格”（哈里斯称她并未看到这番言论）。
哈里斯的车队现在只有两辆车，没有警笛。她乘坐商务航班。她用旧竞选邮件列表筹集的有限资金支付员工和安保费用，这使得她和助手不得不在受邀行程中做出选择，本周她不得不把多个线上活动塞进一天，在酒店房间对着电脑度过。
“我有更多渠道，你知道吗？就像圈子变小了，这很好。或者说根本没有圈子，”她说。
对于爱荷华州州长候选人罗布·桑德、堪萨斯州参议院候选人亚当·汉密尔顿等表示不希望她助阵的候选人，哈里斯说她不觉得被针对。
“哦，我希望他们做任何需要做的事来取胜。我是认真的，”哈里斯告诉CNN，“我竞选过地方、州和全国公职，并非天真，我想赢，也尊重他们为了取胜必须做出的任何决定。”
她也无意与佛罗里达州参议院民主党提名人安吉·尼克松等候选人划清界限，尼克松表示自己加入民主社会党（DSA）是为了助力竞选，本周她将参加哈里斯的一场线上活动。
被问及DSA应在民主党未来中扮演多大角色时，哈里斯说：“正如我们所说，我们是一个大帐篷，任何人都不应被排除在外。”
密西西比并非2028年总统竞选的早期停靠点，但该州选民或许能预示哈里斯在南卡罗来纳州可能面临的局面——南卡罗来纳州将再次举办民主党首场总统初选，黑人选民起着关键作用。
“传统观点认为，‘那些是红州，我们赢不了，所以不去那里’，”她在密西西比州表示，“而不是重新调整思路，意识到住在那里的很多人实际上关心我们关心的问题，理应得到倾听，理应让我们花时间与他们共处、聆听他们。”
哈里斯最初在1月与科洛姆建立联系，当时密西西比州唯一的民主党众议员本尼·汤普森在哈里斯售书巡演杰克逊站时帮他们通了电话。科洛姆挑战海德-史密斯的竞选在哈里斯输给特朗普23个百分点的州引发了越来越多的关注，现在得到了民主党和共和党阵营的外部资金支持。
最初几位科洛姆的竞选顾问反对邀请哈里斯助选，担心会使竞选全国化，并且这位候选人以败选闻名。在一些鼓励下，科洛姆否决了顾问的意见，直接致电哈里斯提出邀请。
佐治亚州参议员拉斐尔·沃诺克告诉CNN，他正在考虑参选总统，数月来一直推动民主党关注科洛姆的竞选，两周前他前往该州的活动吸引了100人。而哈里斯在当地体育馆的活动有1000人到场，消防队长不得不关闭RSVP名单——此前因当地学院突然决定禁止举办活动，活动被迫临时更换场地。
“在这个社区，大家在意的是她上次竞选失利的事实之外的东西，”汤普森在等待哈里斯抵达社区学院时告诉CNN。
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黑人孕产妇死亡率曾是哈里斯任副总统时关注的核心议题。科洛姆在竞选时聚焦该州40万无医保民众、农村医院关闭、母亲因等待有限救护车而丧生的问题。他表示，哈里斯帮助吸引了全州十几名记者关注一家难以覆盖成本的孕产妇健康诊所，这非常有价值。
“问题在于，为什么副总统哈里斯比我们的资深参议员更关心我们医院的医疗保健问题？如果她比我们的资深参议员更关心，我就要让大家关注这个问题，因为这至关重要，”科洛姆在造势集会后告诉CNN，“你看来了多少人，看这份热情。民众关心那些会为他们而战的人。”
在密西西比州，以及哈里斯的其他行程中，败选的记忆都有两面性。
“有些人觉得她吃了亏，”内华达州克拉克县民主党前主席克里斯·米勒说，他早年支持她2020年总统竞选，还参加了她为长期支持者、该州总检察长亚伦·福特（竞选州长）与强大的烹饪工人工会共同举办的造势集会，“有种想法是，如果她想参选，就应该参选。”
帕特里克·加斯帕德曾是奥巴马在白宫的首任政治主任，最近非正式地为多位民主党新星提供建议，其中包括纽约市市长佐兰·马姆达尼，他是科洛姆核心幕僚的一员，鼓励科洛姆邀请哈里斯助阵。
周四晚上在哥伦布，加斯帕德用iPhone拍摄舞台上观众对哈里斯的反应，称这必须纳入2028年的竞选考量，尤其是当下全国选民明确表示，他们感到被那些在贵宾室里阅读内部简报的人抛弃了。
“当穆罕默德·阿里试图夺回重量级拳王头衔时，很多人说不想让他再战，不想让他上台，”加斯帕德告诉CNN，“他们这么说不是担心穆罕默德·阿里会一败涂地——他们担心他会赢。”
Kamala Harris isn’t going away
2026-10-26 / CNN
Clarksdale, Mississippi—
“Nice to meet you, Madam President,” Kamala Harris said, shaking hands with the Coahoma Community College student body representative on her surprise stop by the campus on Thursday afternoon.
Harris likes that disarming joke. She was the biggest political figure to come across this underfunded school in the Mississippi Delta, the grass so dry it crunched as she walked with a gathering of stunned students for a group picture.
“You don’t know how many people this uplifts,” said Don Green, who followed Harris that afternoon from the college to a rural health clinic in Clarksdale, most famous for being the site of the legendary Crossroads of the Blues.
Mike Cavanaugh, a sophomore at the University of Mississippi and president of the campus’ College Democrats, spoke ahead of Harris at a rally that day and answered her questions about voter registration during his brief chat with her on the photo line. “Young people are very excited,” he said.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” is one of the lines Harris used several times on the stump in Mississippi as she campaigned for Democrat Scott Colom, whose challenge to Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is drawing a new burst of national attention and outside money.
“There are so many people who were devastated with the outcome of that election — for good reason, for really good reason,” Harris told CNN backstage before her speech at the rally and two days after her 62nd birthday. “That pain, it lingers, because every day we are witnessing events that we know didn’t have to happen. Could have been different.”
After the interview ended, Harris asked to go back on the record.
“The American people want leaders who aren’t just occupied with looking in the mirror. They want leaders who are looking at the people, you know?” she said. “And they can tell the difference.”
Much of the political insider world has been clear in not wanting Harris to run for president in 2028, or really not wanting to hear from her again, ever. Even before Democrats’ horror year of Joe Biden’s collapse, the contortions over Gaza that she’s still struggling with and Donald Trump’s return, Harris was never good about cultivating donors or keeping aides from fleeing her overly cautious style and the constant infighting that followed.
Yet with her stops in Mississippi and across the country, she’s hearing from many Democratic campaigns who believe having her around helps — and lots of voters who are turning out to show they agree. All told, she’ll end the midterms with more campaign appearances than Barack Obama, and after a late flurry that includes Wisconsin and Georgia this week, more than almost any potential top-tier 2028 candidate.
Several close to the former vice president and 2024 presidential nominee told CNN they believe when she keeps saying she’s thinking about running again, what that means is that after months of soaking up the superfans who bought tickets to her book tour, she hasn’t ruled it out.
But not killing the option is different from pursuing it, whether lining up staff or crafting a new agenda, and Harris acknowledged that her time-treading answers about not having made up her mind can only go on so long. But asked if that means six months or even a year, she said, “I don’t know.”
“I go back and forth. I honestly go back and forth,” Harris said of which way she’s leaning. “There’s so many factors.”
What Harris does know, two years after losing, is that she’s less interested in the game of inches that presidential primaries tend to be.
“I’ll be very specific,” she said. “If I run, my motivation is not to beat other Democrats. It’s to actually do the job.”
Privately, she’s been known to do her wry stare at comments from other Democrats who say she shouldn’t run – convenient, she says, since that would mean they didn’t have to run against her.
“I’m sure there are many who think that I should just sit at home and eat bonbons and cook Doug’s favorite foods,” she said, brushing off the Wall Street Journal article reporting that her husband, Doug Emhoff, had privately told some people that he preferred she didn’t run. “I could cook Doug’s favorite foods and do this.”
Harris said Emhoff was upset at his feelings being portrayed inaccurately. According to one person who has spoken directly with him, his more precise feeling is that the moves the two of them have been making were not done with a plan to run again.
“I feel so strongly and therefore am compelled, and maybe propelled, into doing this, because I know that I can help,” she added. “And how can I sit at home in the comfort of my home when I know there are things I can do to help? I don’t know any other life but that – that’s my point. I don’t know any life that is not about, ‘There’s a problem, what can I do to fix it?’”
When Harris talks about “turning pain into purpose,” that means one thing to frustrated voters in the final days of these midterm campaigns, like the retired plumber who shouted “You told us so!” as she ripped Trump’s record in the gym at Columbus High School.
It can mean another to the woman who was herself the candidate Trump beat, even as she kept up the smiles pouring drinks behind the bar at another stop in New Hampshire on Saturday. Around this time two years ago, Harris was calling around to make sure old friends would be with her to celebrate back on the quad at Howard University. She stopped her remarks on Thursday to call back to the man, “Yes, brother, I did.”
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Harris did not, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, hit the Hamptons fundraising circuit this summer. She has not, as had been proposed in an internal memo circulated among her advisers, launched an extensive engagement tour championing Black voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision.
She spent much of the last year on an extended book tour that took her to 27 states and made her millions more than expected. She sold one of the X accounts she controlled to a partnership that netted her more money.
Yet she kept working the phones, whether calling a range of advocates and asking what she could have done differently in her abbreviated presidential run, or checking in with candidates like Texas Senate Democratic nominee James Talarico, to whom she offered some advice over how to manage the ongoing criticism from his former primary opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, whom she endorsed before he won.
Her prospective opponents aren’t waiting on her.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has discussed a plan to launch his campaign shortly after the December meeting of the Democratic Governors Association, when he’ll officially wrap up his stint as its chair. After months of public denials while maintaining a national travel schedule, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has started telling people that after November he’s going to take another look at running for president.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have been all over the country stumping for candidates, including in early states, as aides make sure to remind reporters each time they add more stops. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has quietly banked $20 million and started thinking through a South Carolina and Super Tuesday-focused strategy.
Operatives associated with multiple likely contenders are assembling opposition research files on expected opponents and asking around for suggestions of staff to hire. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her former running mate, is already saying his advice for the future of the Democratic Party is “pick Pete Buttigieg” (which Harris said she hadn’t seen).
Harris’ motorcade is now just two cars, no sirens. She flies commercial. She pays for staff and security out of the limited fundraising she’s still doing off her old campaign email list, which left her and advisers having to pick between stops she was asked to make and forcing her to stack several virtual appearances into a day she’ll spend this week holed up in a hotel room with a computer instead.
“I have more access, you know? It’s like, the bubble is smaller, and that’s nice. Or there’s not a bubble,” she said.
As for candidates like Rob Sand, running for governor in Iowa, or Adam Hamilton, running for Senate in Kansas, who’ve said they don’t want her to come, Harris says she doesn’t take that personally.
“ Oh, I want them to do whatever they need to do to win. I mean that sincerely,” Harris told CNN. “I have run for local, state, and national office. I am not naïve. And I want to win, and I respect whatever decisions they need to make in order to do that.”
Nor was she interested in drawing a line against candidates like Angie Nixon, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida who said she joined the Democratic Socialists of America specifically as part of launching her campaign, and who will be part of one of Harris’s virtual events this week.
Asked how big of a role the DSA should have in Democrats’ future, Harris said, “We are, as we say, a big tent, and I don’t think anybody should be kicked out.”
Mississippi won’t be an early stop on the 2028 presidential calendar. But its electorate could offer a preview of what might await Harris in South Carolina, which is set to host the first Democratic primary again and where Black voters are critical.
“The conventional wisdom,” she said in Mississippi, is, “‘Those are red states, we can’t win there, therefore we won’t go there,’ as opposed to reconditioning ourselves to think about the fact that there are a lot of people who live here who actually care about the things we care about and deserve to be heard and deserve to have us spend our time and resources sitting with them and listening to them.”
Harris first connected with Colom in January, after Rep. Bennie Thompson, the lone Democrat sent to Washington from Mississippi, got them on the phone when she brought her book tour to Jackson. Colom’s campaign to unseat Hyde-Smith, in a state Harris lost to Trump by 23 points, has drawn increasing buzz and now outside spending from both Democratic- and GOP-aligned groups.
Still several Colom consultants initially opposed having Harris join campaign events, worried about nationalizing the race and bringing in a candidate known for losing. With some encouragement, Colom overruled them and called her directly to ask.
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who told CNN that he’s considering a presidential run and for months was a main engine of getting Democrats to focus on Colom’s race, drew 100 people when he came to the state two weeks ago. Harris had over 1,000 on their feet in the gym, with an RSVP list that had to be closed because of the fire marshal – even after a sudden decision to bar holding the event at a local college forced a last-minute venue change.
“In this community, it transcends the fact that she lost the last election,” Thompson told CNN while waiting for her to arrive at the community college.
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Black maternal mortality was a top issue for Harris when she was vice president. But when he’s campaigning with a focus on 400,000 people in the state without health insurance, rural hospitals closing and mothers dying waiting for a limited number of ambulances to be able to get them, Colom said he saw enormous value having Harris help draw a dozen reporters from across the state to a maternal health care clinic that’s struggling to cover costs.
“The question is: why does Vice President Harris care more about healthcare in our hospitals than our junior senator? If she cares more than our junior senator, I want to bring attention to that issue because that matters,” Colom told CNN after the rally. “You see how many people showed up, you see the excitement. People care about folks that are going to fight for the people.”
In Mississippi, as in Harris’ other stops, the memory of her loss cuts two ways.
“There’s people that think that she got the raw end of the deal,” said Chris Miller, the former chair of the Clark County Democrats in Nevada, who was an early supporter of her 2020 presidential campaign and attended the rally she did with the powerful Culinary Workers Union on behalf of her longtime supporter, state Attorney General Aaron Ford, running for governor. “There’s a feeling that if she wants to run, she should run.”
Patrick Gaspard, who was Obama’s first political director at the White House and has recently been informally advising a number of rising new voices in the Democratic Party including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, was part of the Colom kitchen cabinet encouraging him to bring Harris in.
Videoing the crowd’s reaction to her on stage on his iPhone in Columbus on Thursday night, Gaspard said that has to be factored into any 2028 math, especially at a moment when voters around the country are making clear that they feel abandoned by the people who read tipsheets in green rooms.
“When Muhammad Ali was trying to regain the heavyweight crown, there were a lot of people who were saying they didn’t want him fighting again, they didn’t want him in the ring,” Gaspard told CNN. “They were saying that not because they were worried that Muhammad Ali would fall flat on his face — they were worried he would win.”