Two chairs have been set up, angled toward each other, with flags between them.
Im shown to one, then the other.
I am fussed over by aides, who readjust the draping of the flags.
COVER LOOKVice President Kamala Harris, photographed at her official residence in Washington, DC, on October 7, 2024, wearing her own Gabriela Hearst suit and Tiffany earrings. Sittings Editor: Leslie Fremar. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz,Vogue, October 2024.
Photographers file in and take their positions, training their lenses on the chairs.
I feel Im entering bilateral talks on behalf of a small, wayward nation.
MOMENT TO MOMENTHarris with Liz Cheney at Ripon College in Wisconsin on October 3, 2024.
MOMENT TO MOMENTHarris with Liz Cheney at Ripon College in Wisconsin on October 3, 2024. Cheney, who has endorsed Harris, has never voted Democrat for president in her life.
Cheney, who has endorsed Harris, has never voted Democrat for president in her life.
Then the vice president enters amid a rain-like patter of footfalls, and the energy in the room changes.
Good to see you again!
IN THE WINGSHarris with Cheney before the event at Ripon College in Wisconsin.
Harris says, grabbing my hand and folding down into the opposite seat.
I ask what her first call would be on reaching the Oval Office.
Its not just about publishing something in a respected journal.
THE MIDDLEHarris, here in Wisconsin, is often described by those who’ve worked with her as a results-oriented, roll-up-the-sleeves leader.
Its not about a speech.
Its literally about, How does this hit the streets?
How do people actuallyfeelthe work in a way that benefits them?
FACES IN THE CROWD“You’renevergoing to have a complete agreement on all the issues. But you can find common ground—and expand that,” says Harris, here seen campaigning in Wisconsin.
Thats going to take some work, she says.
But work cant resolve every crisis.
I cant anticipate what the circumstances will be four months from now.
GROUND GAMEHarris at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on October 4, 2024.
Complexity and nuance, meaning what?
Harris starts a couple of sentences, abandons them, and starts again.
Its not, she tells me.
FIRED UPHarris at the Redford Fire Department in Michigan, a state that is widely seen as key to an Electoral College victory.
Youre not either for this one or for that one.
A better conversation, she thinks, is about the region and its interlocking crises.
On October 7, 1,200 people were massacred, including hundreds of young people at a concert.
FROM ME TO YOUHarris’s campaign has treaded lightly on the “historic” elements of her run.
Women were horribly raped, she says, and pauses for emphasis.
Andfar too many Palestinians have been killed.
Yourenevergoing to have a complete agreement on all the issues.
But you’re able to find common groundand expand that.
IN THE WINGSHarris with Cheney before the event at Ripon College in Wisconsin.
The presidential race had taken shape as one of the most consequential in history.
On June 27, President Biden debated Trump in a performance many viewers found depleted.
Within a day, donors, journalists, and elected leaders were calling for Biden to leave the race.
The president, for weeks, said he would hold his course.
We were the first ones to wake up in the house, she explains.
They were talking with me while I was working out, and I had a cooking show on.
Thats my way of getting away from politicswatching the food channel.
Its Joe Biden, Harris recalls.
He told her he was leaving the race, and hoping to endorse her in his place.
As she dryly puts it, This was a dramatic turn to the day.
Im like, Where is he?
Why isnt he answering?
He had left his phone in the car with his Secret Service detail.
Suddenly his friends partner lifted his phone: I think you should probably see this, Emhoff recalls.
The second gentleman sprinted back to the car.
There was, like, steam coming out of my phone, he says.
There were so many messages, and all the same message, which was:Call Kamala.
She literally just said, Where the eff were you?
Her day had become an industrious blur.
The big joke around the table was, Who here had actually showered?
We brought in pizza, she says.
Everyone was just around the table doing some aspect of everything that needed to be done.
Because, of course, theworldwas aware of what happened that day.
Across the globe, alliances, markets, and lives rely on the steady pulse of the American presidency.
She was a leader of widespread support but no especial following.
Her first run for the presidency, five years earlier, had foundered out of the gate.
FACES IN THE CROWDYourenevergoing to have a complete agreement on all the issues.
That was two months ago, but it seems like an eon.
The groundswell of energy that emerged over the next weeks has defined this moment.
She was like, Well, why dont we bring in labor?
Where are the womens organizations focused on paid leave?
What about the orgs that are focused on, like, the Divine Nine sororities?
What about women in faith?
Usually, she had just five minutes of floor time.
So she would get back to,Why are we here?
The mood inside was vaporous.
It brought back a feeling thats been gone for me since Donald Trump came down the escalator.
A woman named Julie Sandler sporting chartreuse-colored hair and a chartreuse romper told me, Im a fashion girlie!
I thought the path to victory was getting narrower and narrower, but with Kamala its expanding.
Shared ideology bound the audience less than shared will.
The right-wing former congressman Joe Walsh was roaming.
Hes an existential threat to our democracy.
As soon as the switch was made, there was an electric charge.
Onstage, Pennsylvania leaders worked the crowd to higher voltage.
The hall was stacked 12,000 people high.
She pushed through with a grin.
Were doing this, she said.
Last night, the delegates to the Democratic National Convention finished voting.
GROUND GAMEHarris at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on October 4, 2024.
Chasing the future often casts Americans back on their pasts.
He produced a swab and held it reverently aloft.
Im intimately familiar with the nasal swab, the vice president said.
Her wry conviviality covered other emotions.
Harris met with Etienne-Emile Baulieu, a 90-something endocrinologist with whom her mother had published.
It was an emotionally meaningful meeting for her, Emhoff remembers.
It was a way to honor her mother in a place where she achieved so much.
What is that characteristic some people have that youre just proud to be their friend?
Harris, even at five, fascinated her.
I had never seen anybody else my age wearing such an abundance of beautiful bracelets, Johnson-Batiste writes.
(Shewantedher daughters to grow up as Black women, Rothschild says.)
Harris made the division her own, prosecuting elder financial abuse and the sex trafficking of teens.
When the judge at his first jury trial chewed him out, Wiener stumbled into Harriss office for advice.
Her opponents were a powerful incumbent on the left and a well-known law-and-order candidate in the center.
She came up the middle, which is a hard thing to do, Wiener says.
She met with people one by one.
As that election drew near, the campaign formed advisory groups: Filipinas for Kamala, LGBT for Kamala.
I can remember doing postcards to people who requested their ballots in Vietnamese, in Russian, in Tagalog.
It was all very finely targeted.
It was quite remarkable, Pelosi tells me.
She had a fresh approach, a new approach, and shewon.
She is said to have an eye for the long game.
Her judgment in most things, her colleagues say, has directed intent.
(Rothschild: I remember one time I saw her coming out of adentalsurgery and she looked great.)
Im like, Oh, hey, Kamala!
In Wieners telling, Harris looked him up and down, gym top to gym bottom.
It left a psychological imprint on me.
Literally to this day.
And that was 17 years ago.
The look was military, judicial, stabilizing, powerful: an advance vision of the commander in chief.
The set behind her had been lighted to an institutional wood-panel brown.
Pundits admired the speech for walking the tightrope of a fraught momentcoming up the middlewith confidence and control.
The care and restraint of the vice presidents address stood in contrast to the conventions festival mood.
It was the second couples anniversary.
Speakers described the ticket as a breezy relief from bitter Trumpism.
Yet one noticed the difference between their long-ago campaign and Harriss.
Harriss speech was different, and announced a new era.
I stood proudly before a judge, and I said five words: Kamala Harris, for the people.
Yourenevergoing to have a complete agreement on all the issues.
But you could find common groundand expand that.
Also different: She wore no white.
And yet offering herself as an emblem, as Obama had done, brought her up short.
But she didnt have a solidified base.
Banking on identity wasnt enough, Ibrahim wrote.
She dropped out before the first primary.
Kamala Harris saidnothing, and Donald Trump is already making fun of, Is she Indian?
Its a useless, unhelpful discussion for her to have when she is exceptionally overqualified for the presidents job.
Others describe the diplomacy with which she sewed up her partys nomination as classically Harris-esque.
And then sheboom!one, two, three, wrapped it all up.
It was a beautiful thing.
Anyone elsecouldhave gotten in the race.
But by then they knew that she was on a path: an expedient route to a clear outcome.
The audiences energy has begun to overflow its container, something hard to imagine two months earlier.
Sign-counting is his effort to gauge Nashua-area residents enthusiasm and social confidence in their choices.
When I drove around two months ago, I counted 35 signs for Trump and one for Biden.
New Hampshire is presumed to be an election bellwetherbut the mood was far from settled.
I have daughters, and I have granddaughters, Tracy Janelle, from nearby Newmarket, tells me.
But Id like to hear .
Behind closed doors, some say, Harriss methods and her policy have long been intertwined.
And what shes really saying is, You guys are talking to me theoretically.
Lets play it out with a case study.
And then sheboom!one, two, three, wrapped it all up.
It was a beautiful thing.
At the start of the campaign, most of Harriss policy was inherited from Biden.
(His emphasis on infrastructure and clean energy remains.)
More recent focus points, however, have been hers.
(On the trail, she says she wants to bring it to $6,000.)
Our team had to come up with ideas for executive actions before we could get into our office.
I love apprenticeship programs, she says.
Or the local dry cleaner.
You having a bad day?
Today, the backdrop of the New Hampshire stage reads Opportunity Economy: Supporting Small Businesses in giant letters.
Alsothe Harris touchsimplified tax paperwork: Kind of like the 1040EZ, she says.
There is a cheer.
Most of its employees are disabled.
We started with 500 square feet, Suzanne Foley, the co-owner, says.
Itsgoodwork, the vice president says.
The press pool leaves.
I would love to give you a bag of pretzels, Foley says.
Give me a bag of pretzelsto give Doug, Harris says.
He secretly eats pretzels at night.
The vice president examines the bag with studious attention.
Oh, thats She seems for a moment at a loss, or maybe overcome.
The pretzels are of Tasty Ranch Dill flavor.
You have a lot of people behind you, Foley says, still eyeing the pretzels.
Sixty-two days, Marousek notes.
you’ve got the option to do it.
Fifteen days later, in a place called Farmington Hills, Michigan, Harris recalls the pretzel factory.
Harris wears an eggplant-colored suit and a black pinstripe blouse.
Oprah wears burnt orange on burnt orange.
A boy welcomed her Peter Panstyle, hands at his hips.
She admired a girls glasses and marveled at the accomplishments of a young man.
Okay, she said.
Small businesses help local economies but also the cultural fabric, Harris says.
Now, alongside Oprah, perched between two draped flags, she poses with her adult supporters.
I met you in Chicago!
I was only prepared for one!
The debate with Trump was only days behind her.
Shed offered the former president bait, and he had taken it.
When she suggested that people were bored at his rallies, he used time to insist otherwise.
He concluded, of immigrants, apropos of nothing, In Springfield, theyre eating the dogs!
Theyre eating the cats!
Some California papers called the election for the opposition.
Wait, her campaign said.
Harris had carried her San Francisco coalition-building strategy statewide.
On January 3, 2010, Latinos for Kamala had been founded out of Los Angeles.
In the primary, in some largely South Asian counties, she ended up with a double-digit lead.
Her statewide margin grew as tallies continued.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, her opponent conceded.
Winning that election changed her future.
And it was the start of her national political legacy.
FROM ME TO YOUHarriss campaign has treaded lightly on the historic elements of her run.
At the same time, her life was changing from within.
Because youre president for four or eight years, and then what?
Youre back to your familyfor life.
By the time I got back, they were laughing.
Pretty soon after that Kamala became Mamala, Emhoff says.
If its the season, Emhoff will be watching football.
Ive got some music going, she says: Beyonce, Bob Marley.
Maybe shes making her world-famous roast chicken, as the family wryly calls it.
Or her world-famous Bolognese, which cooks for five hours.
Its just the family there, she says.
Thats my very happy place.
Backstage, theres silence; Oprahs makeup artist passes with her kit.
Oprah looksgood, someone whispers.
The artist nods with quiet pride, and moves on.
It is the vice president.
Soon enough, the world rushes in.
A couple of Harriss top advisers take the folding seats beside her and begin whispering in her ear.
When Gretchen Whitmer, the governor, speaks, Harris nods gratefully.
The Secret Service clears a path, and leads Harris to a dark wing.
In no other country on this earth could her story unfold the way it has, Oprah is saying.
In this story: hair, Breanna Jaggers; makeup, Marquia James; tailor, Joel Diaz.
Get unlimited access to the October digital cover featuring Vice President Kamala Harris.
