Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris denounced D.C. pundits for "simplistic" descriptions of what it takes to win in the Midwest. | Seth Wenig/AP Photo 2020 Elections Kamala Harris unloads on pundits who say only a white man can beat Trump The California senator says Democrats will make a big mistake if they accept conventional wisdom on what it takes to win the Rust Belt.

Kamala Harris is waging war on the chattering class.

The California senator and 2020 Democratic hopeful believes the media narrative taking shape in the presidential race over who is best positioned to reclaim the Midwest for Democrats —essentially that only certain voters will back certain candidates, regardless of where they stand on issues — ignores big swathes of the electorate that she can excite, namely African Americans and women.


Harris made clear during a two-day swing through urban and suburban Detroit ending Monday that she thinks the talking heads who draw conclusions from their desks in Washington and New York are ill-informed at best.

“There has been a lot of conversation by pundits about ‘electability’ and ‘who can speak to the Midwest?’ But when they say that, they usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative, and too often their definition of the Midwest leaves people out,” Harris said in an opening salvo during the trip. “It leaves out people in this room who helped build cities like Detroit. It leaves out working women who are on their feet all day—many of them working without equal pay.”

This isn't the first time Harris has taken on the D.C. punditry.

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Last fall, the California senator accused critics of “identity politics” of weaponizing the term to minimize issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, part of a call from within her own Democratic Party to forcefully confront the issues, however uncomfortable that it may be. In a speech she gave to a Netroots Nation convention in August, Harris said the term "identity politics" is often used to divide and distract.

“Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us. It is used to try and shut us up,” she told the progressive gathering. "We're talking about those issues and we won't be shut up and we won't be silenced."

Harris' latest appraisal comes amid growing perception reflected in media that it will take a white man—perhaps former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders—to defeat Trump in battleground states where he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Polling of the contest, with Biden and Sanders leading a historically diverse field of candidates, is reinforcing the early belief—and prompting Harris' calls for broadening the discussion.

"This 'electability' argument is bullshit," said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representatives who appears on CNN and supports Harris. "It's the biggest faux pas that Democrats are making this election cycle. It disregards the fact that the only Democratic candidate to win the presidency in the last two decades was a black guy. And, second, we've allowed 'working class' to enter our lexicon and only mean white working class — and totally disregard a whole other swath of voters.

"What we saw in Milwaukee, in Detroit and Philadelphia, we lost the presidency where we probably could have focused on those working-class voters of color just a little bit more" in 2016, Sellers added.

A Harris campaign official told POLITICO the goal is to reframe the electability debate away from an "artificial undercurrent" in the Midwest electorate and instead direct attention to the voters that Democrats will need to turn out to win, and then focus on who can excite those voters in a matchup with Trump. Harris' approach is not to write off white, working-class voters, they said, but to ensure that important and large voting blocs don't have their voices drowned out.

"It is meant to reshape people’s thinking about an issue that has been dominating the pundit sphere for a while in a way that more accurately reflects the electoral map and the reality that we have going in to 2020," the Harris official said. "We're not going to attack other Democratic candidates based on this," the official added, stressing Harris' respect and endearment for Biden as a person.

But Harris' campaign sees a need to disrupt the coverage, which it views as a product of the 24-hour news cycle often fueled by talking heads.

"You create this echo chamber of analysis that does a disservice, frankly, to the actual voter — and the actual mechanics of the way things work," the official said, describing the decision to hit on the topic as "a marker of the moment that we're in right now" rather than a recurring theme.

Harris herself had mostly refrained from engaging when asked how Democrats should approach the national map and win back Trump voters. On occasion, she's even ceded to “the pundits” she takes issue with. In Iowa earlier this year, Harris told reporters that people want to talk about "real issues—and they don't want to talk about it through the lens of political talk and partisanship and from an ideological perspective."

"I think it's really important that we give the American public more credit," Harris said. "And understand that they, at the bottom line, are going to make decisions based on who speaks to their issues, and the things that keep them up at night."

Yet, she’s increasingly been using speeches to sketch out what’s lacking in the larger 2020 debate.

Embedded in her criticism is a call for solidarity across all races. "Our party is not white or black, Hispanic or Asian, immigrant or indigenous," she said in Detroit. "As a party, we cannot let ourselves be drawn into thinking in those boxes or falling into those assumptions. We cannot get dragged into simplistic narratives."