Harris’s tastiest word salads on the campaign trail

By Washington Examiner
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Vice President Kamala Harris became closely associated with the term “word salad” during the 2024 election cycle, frequently serving up large blocks of terms and phrases that didn’t seem to go anywhere.

Harris had a way with words, or at least a way of speaking them, that often left her audience confused and wondering what exactly she meant to say.

Her aides went to great lengths early in the campaign to keep her out of unscripted moments and on point, but that couldn’t be done for the entirety of the run, leaving us with many tasty morsels remaining on our palates today.

With all of that said, here are Harris’s top word salads of her 2024 campaign.

‘Significance of the passage of time’

One of Harris’s signature phrases, “significance of the passage of time,” was a favorite even before she became the de facto Democratic presidential nominee on July 21.

Here, she uses the phrase multiple times in 2022 during a speech about expanding broadband access.

“Talking about the significance of the passage of time,” she said. “Right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires.”

Exactly.

‘The power of diplomacy’

Just days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, he and Harris appeared together to celebrate the return of Americans who had been detained in Russia.

Harris was asked to elaborate as well and gave the following response.

“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy,” she said. “This is an incredible day.”

‘Unburdened by what has been’

Perhaps Harris’s most famous phrase over the years is “what can be, unburdened by what has been,” often raising her right hand to symbolize “what can be,” then making a sweeping motion with her left hand to emphasize “what has been.”

This phrase appeared on the campaign trail, for better or worse, including in this clip from September, in which Harris used the slightly altered “what is possible” in place of “what can be.”

“We have dreams. We can see what is possible unburned by what has been,” she said. “We have aspirations. We have ambitions, and the system that is a good system is one that supports that and allows people the opportunity to go where they can see and imagine themselves to be.”

“That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about an opportunity economy,” she concluded.

If you want more, the Republican National Committee released a four-minute supercut of “unburdened” moments accompanied by soothing music. Enjoy.

‘We believe in all that’

Harris got a big assist in her campaign from media superstar Oprah Winfrey, who hosted her for a town hall toward the end of September.

During that event, Harris launched into a two-minute stemwinder that must be seen and heard to be believed.

“And that’s who we are,” Harris said as she concluded her remarks. “We believe in all that. And so this is a moment where we stand knowing what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting against, it’s what we’re fighting for.”

Even her host seemed a bit lost.

‘So 32 days … 32 days’

Harris faced some trouble with 32 days left before Election Day when her teleprompter appeared to malfunction at a Michigan rally, leaving her scrambling to fill the space before it returned.

“So 32 days … 32 days … OK,” she said, looking from side to side. “We’ve got some business to do. We’ve got some business to do. All right, 32 days. And we know we will do it, and, and, this is going to be a very tight race until the very end.”

She recovered, perhaps with the screen returning, “We are the underdog, and we know we have some hard work ahead.”

It was around this point that her campaign began having her do more unscripted interviews, which led to its own round of salads in those 32 days.

‘Let’s talk about Donald Trump and that border wall’

Harris made a high-risk town hall appearance on CNN in late October, hoping to shore up her numbers as polls looked to be deadlocked.

However, facing difficult questions was not something she’d done very often during her abbreviated campaign, which showed more than once during the CNN spot. For example, when she was asked about an apparent flip-flop on border wall funding, she served up a salad.

“Is a border wall stupid?” the network’s Anderson Cooper asked, referencing some of Harris’s previous comments on the topic.

“Well, let’s talk about Donald Trump and that border wall,” Harris said before breaking into a laugh. “So remember, Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it? Come on, they didn’t!”

What followed was 90 seconds of supremely well-tossed words and phrases.

“So you don’t think it’s stupid anymore?” Cooper asked again, trying to divine a core message.

“I think what he did, and how he did it, did not make much sense,” Harris said. “Because he actually didn’t do much of anything. I just talked about that wall. Right? We just talked about it. He didn’t actually do much of anything.”

‘Understand the difference here’

One last election-season word salad came on Nov. 1, when Harris admonished her supporters to understand the difference between herself and Trump.

“And understand the difference here,” she said as the crowd roared. “Understand the difference here, moving forward. Moving forward, understand the difference here. What we are looking at is a difference in this election. Let’s move forward and see where we are.”

Where are we again?

‘Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you’

Harris, of course, did not convince quite enough voters to understand the difference here in order to win the election, though she did haul in an impressive 75 million votes nationwide, good for 48.4% of the total.

However, she wasn’t quite done serving up word salad.

“I just have to remind you,” she said in a postelection video message to Democrats. “Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before Nov. 5. And you have the same purpose that you did. And you have the same ability to engage and inspire. So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.”

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With Harris now serving out her final days as vice president, rumors hold that she’s planning a comeback, which could include a run for California governor in two years or even another shot at the White House.

However, after what voters, including Democrats, saw from July 21 through Nov. 5 of presidential candidate Harris, most seem to be pushing the plate away, saying, “I’m full.” A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that just 32% of Democrats want her to run again in 2028.

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