Midterm elections are a fight against ‘extremist, so-called leaders,’ Vice President Kamala Harris tells NAACP members

Speaking to hundreds of civil rights activists gathered in Atlantic City, Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday framed the November midterm elections as an existential fight for liberty and progress, saying “extremist so-called leaders [are] attempting to undermine our democracy and assault our most fundamental freedoms.”

Harris, who delivered the 30-minute remarks to the 113th NAACP National Convention at the Atlantic City Convention Center, said the Biden administration’s positions on abortion, guns, and voting rights stem from a civil rights movement that “remains unfinished.”

“We need people who will defend our rights up and down the ballot,” she said. “We have been called to create a more fair, more equal, and more just America, so today let us recommit to answering the call.”

The vice president’s visit to the Jersey Shore was her second to the region in three days. On Saturday, she traveled to Philadelphia and met with Democratic lawmakers at a union hall in the Spring Garden section, and then accompanied state attorney general Josh Shapiro — the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor — on a stop in North Philadelphia.

Harris’ trip is part of the Biden administration’s push to energize its base ahead of the November midterm elections, when Democrats will try to grow narrow majorities in Congress. The president, amid stubborn inflation and an abysmal approval rating, suffered another setback last week when Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) signaled he wouldn’t support key climate-related elements of Biden’s economic plan.

But the vice president touted the administration’s accomplishments and said it shares in the civil-rights vision of the NAACP. She vowed the president would support exceptions to the Senate filibuster rule to protect “fundamental freedoms,” and she called for the passage of legislation that expands voting rights.

And Harris, who has led the administration’s communications on the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, spoke about the rollback of abortion access in stark terms.

“We know, NAACP, that our country has a history of claiming ownership over human bodies,” Harris said. “And today, extremist so-called leaders are criminalizing doctors and punishing women for making health-care decisions for themselves.”

After delivering the convention’s keynote speech, Harris met with New Jersey state lawmakers in a roundtable discussion to strategize on abortion access. The right to an abortion is codified in the New Jersey state constitution, and lawmakers this month passed new provisions aimed at protecting out-of-state patients seeking abortion care.

During the conversation, which was attended by Matthew Platkin, New Jersey’s acting attorney general, and Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, Harris said New Jersey is a “national model of what is working.”

But she cast the overturning of Roe as “just the beginning of what is an agenda that is also about attacking other rights that flow from the right to privacy, including access to contraception and same-sex marriage.”

In a speech before Harris’, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said while the Biden administration has not delivered on some of its economic priorities, he described American democracy as under threat, imploring the membership to vote and fight against “anti-democratic forces.”

He said white supremacy and domestic terrorism are on the rise, praised the work of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, and referred to former President Donald Trump as “the criminal who just exited the White House.”

“We have saved America in the past, and we must do it again,” Johnson said. “Cynicism is not an option. The only way to lift up our nation and fulfill the promise of America is if we unleash the power of democracy that is alive in this room.”

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge also spoke Monday morning, rattling off the administration’s pandemic-related accomplishments and emphasizing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the high court.

But she acknowledged the administration’s struggles even beyond its biggest spending proposals, saying major voting rights and police reform legislation backed by civil-rights activists failed to garner enough support in Congress.

“And,” she said, “I’m just as upset about it as you.”

Fudge also highlighted gun-safety legislation enacted last month that includes funding for mental health resources and incentivizes states to pass red-flag laws, which aim to keep people who may harm themselves or others from obtaining firearms.

Harris said of the legislation: “We need to do more.” She called on Congress to repeal liability shields that protect gun manufacturers and advocated for a federal assault-weapons ban.

“This issue of the need for reasonable gun-safety laws is a real issue when we are talking about the civil right,” she said. “The right that all communities should have to live in a place that is safe without weapons of war running the streets.”