‘So uniquely her’: where did Kamala Harris’s self-help speaking style come from?

The vice-president blends a prosecutor’s precision with pearls of wisdom. Experts shed light on her language

“What can be, unburdened by what has been” is a phrase Kamala Harris uses so often there are minutes-long supercuts available to watch on YouTube. It even has its own Wikipedia page. In other speeches, Harris has also expressed a belief in “the significance of the passage of time” and a desire to “honor the women who made history throughout history”.

Since becoming the presumptive nominee, Harris has invigorated the Democratic party. It’s not only that she’s a much younger candidate than Biden; she also has a stump speech style that embraces metaphor and a new age vernacular not often heard in national politics. The meme accounts love to quote it. It’s even led some to draw comparisons with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s portrayal of Selina Meyer, the frothy politician in Veep. (In one episode, Meyer stumbles through a speech saying: “We are the United States of America because we are united … and we are states.”)