Page 82 of 107 Days

I knew it was going to be a long day. I just didn’t know quite how long.

There had been a lot of news from the Trump campaign that day.

For several weeks, as well as my off-the-record sessions when I boarded Air Force Two, I’d been having a daily press gaggle, on the record, planeside, usually when we landed at our first stop.

The press would deplane through the rear door and wait for me under the shade of the wing.

When we arrived at Dane County Regional Airport in Wisconsin, I responded to Trump’s comments that Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. would have “a big role in health care.”

I pushed back on how irresponsible it would be to give such a role to someone who had promoted junk science, opposed vaccines, embraced conspiracy theories, and vacillated on abortion rights.

Then I lit into Trump’s remarks that Liz Cheney was a “war hawk” who should be fired upon “with nine barrels shooting at her.” How a man who had been shot once and narrowly missed being fired upon a second time could be using such irresponsible rhetoric appalled me.

He, of all people, knew the kind of violent undercurrents that could be so quickly roused by his words.

I told the press it “must be disqualifying” as people considered their vote.

I also shared that what I was enjoying most in the last days of campaigning was that “in spite of how my opponent spends full time trying to divide the American people, what I am seeing is people coming together under one roof who seemingly have nothing in common and know they have everything in common.”

My first stop in Wisconsin was a union hall in Janesville.

One of my favorite unions is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

I’ve set myself a lofty goal to visit every IBEW local in the country.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’ve made a big dent.

The IBEW is a union that values workers as whole human beings and knows that their lives outside of work, with their families and their communities, also matter.

Their apprenticeship program is a model of excellence that includes mentoring young people in and out of the workplace as they learn high-level skills and get paid to do it.

They have encouraged and increased women’s participation in the trades.

And their members are increasingly the workers at the forefront of the clean energy transition.

Without their skills and dedication, we will never come close to net zero.

The IBEW Hall in Janesville was packed. People stood shoulder to shoulder on the floor and filled an upper level, leaning over the railings.

I talked about how we’d designed the Inflation Reduction Act to support good union jobs building the energy technologies of the future, such as batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines.

I promised that we would retool existing factories, so that communities didn’t get ripped apart by people having to move away to find work in manufacturing.

In so many places, young people are forced to leave for lack of work.

They shouldn’t have to leave their hometown, their grandparents, the high school football team that they love to watch on Friday nights.

It is much quicker and more efficient to retool an existing factory and keep the community intact than it is to break ground someplace else and build a new one.

From Janesville we made a quick flight to Green Bay for a community rally in the Little Chute High School gym, and then on to a big rally in Milwaukee.

As we rolled up to the Wisconsin State Fair Park Exposition Center, Flo Milli was performing to a high-energy crowd of more than twelve thousand people.

Most of them were on their feet, dancing, screaming, cheering.

Earlier they’d heard from actor-comedian Keegan-Michael Key, who’d likened the choice between me and Trump to a choice of how to get from Canada to the United States: “Take the train to get over the border, or you can take a barrel over Niagara Falls.”

I was lucky to have on my team Kelsey Smith, who worked closely with my advance, media, and political teams to make sure the schedules they proposed for each day were actually something that was logistically—and humanly—possible.

On Kelsey’s carefully constructed schedule it showed I would have a minute to myself to make some calls and read through important briefing papers before going onstage right after Grammy winner Cardi B.

But Kirsten informed me that JOD had scheduled a last-minute interview with Doctor Mike, a podcaster.

“Don’t worry,” Kirsten said. “Won’t take long.

It’s just a brief thing on the RFK appointment. ”

The campaign in Wilmington tended to choose my interviewers on various subjects by asking, Who has the biggest audience, the widest reach?

But it was up to my team, who knew I insisted on being well prepped, to inquire into the style of the show, the nature of the interviews the host did, the areas of likely questioning.

Then they’d give me a briefing sheet so I could knock it out of the park. But that hadn’t happened this time.

They ushered me into a room where the Zoom was set up on a laptop.

Doctor Mike was all ready to go. He launched into his introduction.

“Welcome to the Checkup podcast where today I have the pleasure of speaking to Vice President Kamala Harris. I was curious to know her plans surrounding health care costs. Anti-science rhetoric. Barriers to primary care. Women’s health.

And the risks children face while eating overly processed foods for lunch. ”

WTF?! This is clearly NOT “a brief thing on RFK.”

Doctor Mike was deeply knowledgeable, warmed up on all these issues, and raring to go.

As I would have been, had I not just been ambushed by an unscheduled in-depth interview, with no notice, at the end of a nineteen-hour day.

I slid a scribbled note across the table: Where’s my briefing?

The staff looked at each other. They had nothing.

When Doctor Mike asked, “Are you getting your seven to nine hours of sleep these days?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

At the end of the interview, I sent the junior staffers out, leaving just Kirsten, Brian, Ike, and Sheila.

“What the fuck was that?” I said, my voice reaching a crescendo.

Brian, trying to channel JOD’s thinking, launched into a detailed explanation about the rationale behind doing the podcast. I raised my hand and stopped him midsentence.

“Brian,” I said through gritted teeth, “that was a rhetorical question.”

Unbeknownst to me, for the next few days, any time any of those team members asked each other anything at all, “That was a rhetorical question” would be the lighthearted response.

Cardi B was delivering her speech by then.

When a technical glitch caused her teleprompter to fail, she bravely called for her cell phone so she could read the heartfelt speech she’d written.

“I took my time writing this speech, so I’m gonna make sure I deliver it right,” she said, determined.

She was so genuine and passionate as she spoke about being underestimated and, as a woman, having to have twice the talent and work twice as hard, only to be questioned when she got to the top as to what she’d done to get there. I know many women can relate to that.

She said she’d learned to stand up to bullies and took Trump to task for his creepy remark that he would protect women whether they liked it or not.

“If his definition of protection is not the freedom of choice, if his definition of protection is making sure our daughters have fewer rights than our mothers, then I don’t want it. ”

For security reasons, the hotels where we stay are never named on the schedule. It is referred to as the RON—short for “rest overnight.” After the rally, I was very much looking forward to my overnight rest. That day had started for me in Vegas at the local time equivalent of three a.m.

We reached the RON at 10:11 p.m. Central Daylight Time. In the motorcade, I’d notice that my hands were scratched up from people enthusiastically grabbing them on rope lines. My feet ached. I couldn’t wait to get out of my high heels, sink into a hot bath, and sip a cup of chamomile tea.

At 10:29 p.m. CDT, we finally had a lid.