Kamala Harris repeated a mangled motivational quote to a silent Mississippi crowd after her first attempt landed with no applause.
The former vice president, 60, delivered the fumbled line Thursday at a Democratic rally inside a sparsely filled high school gym in Columbus, Miss., where she appeared on behalf of Scott Colom, a district attorney running for U.S. Senate. Colom, who is challenging Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in the midterms, had faced questions about inviting Harris to the deep-red state.
“Why would you do that?” Colom said he was asked beforehand.
“You know what I told them, ‘Why not?'” the Senate hopeful told the audience before Harris took the stage.
Harris framed her remarks around mentoring young people, drawing from conversations she claimed to have had with those she advises. She told rally-goers that she sometimes offers guidance about not allowing others to restrict their potential.
“You know, I mentor a lot of young people, and I talk to them sometimes and part of the advice I give them is, you know, never let someone else with limited ability to see your capacity be a limitation on your ambition,” Harris said.
The line died in the room. No applause came. Harris paused, then tried again.
“Let me repeat that: Never let anybody else’s, somebody else’s limited ability to see your capacity to be a limitation on your ambition,” she said, according to the source text.
The second attempt drew a slightly better response from those gathered.
“That’s their limitation. That’s not our limitation. That’s their limitation,” Harris continued.
She pressed forward with additional remarks that the source characterized as more of her typical rhetorical style. “We are not limited in our ambition and desire and ability to see what is possible and what can be,” she told the crowd.
Colom’s decision to bring in Harris, the failed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, to boost his Senate bid against Hyde-Smith highlighted the party’s ongoing efforts to compete in Republican-dominated territory. Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.
The rally’s setting—a high school gym that was far from full—underscored the uphill climb Colom faces in a state that former President Donald Trump carried by roughly 16 points in 2024. Harris’ presence there represented a calculated gamble by the candidate, who dismissed skeptics with his blunt “Why not?” rationale.
The quote Harris mangled appeared to be an adaptation of a common motivational saying, though her version twisted the syntax into near-incoherence. The original expression typically warns against letting others’ limited perceptions constrain one’s own potential; Harris’ rendering inverted and garbled the construction, leaving the audience apparently confused enough that silence followed.
Harris has developed a reputation for convoluted remarks during her political career, with critics frequently seizing on her meandering syntax and circular phrasing. The Mississippi incident offered fresh material for that narrative, with the former vice president not only producing a garbled aphorism but feeling compelled to restate it verbatim in hopes of salvaging the moment.
Colom did not address the crowd’s muted reaction to Harris’ remarks during his own time on stage, focusing instead on his rationale for bringing the national figure to Mississippi despite her electoral defeat last year.
Harris continues her post-2024 political activities with upcoming appearances scheduled for Democratic candidates in competitive races.