Sen. Cory Booker Reflects on the Stakes in This Election

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, you mentioned Senator Harris as one of your colleagues in the Senate, but you have also said she’s more than a senator, she’s more than my colleague, she’s my sister. It appears you’re very close. You have sort of kind of grown up together along your political trajectories. Tell me what it is about her that makes you so confident. And just give us some anecdotes about her as a person.

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Well, understand, this is somebody that I think people in the African-American community especially can relate to. She’s an AKA, a great black fraternity, part of the Divine Nine. She’s graduated from Howard University, which has legions of great graduates that we know in American history, but none has ever ascended to this position. So she has been somebody who’s been having to be a trailblazer every single point of her life. But I know her as the full, textured, incredible person that she is, from someone who can tell you how to make some great lentils, which makes this vegan really happy…

(LAUGHTER)

BOOKER: … all the way to somebody that can sit with you in the rooms where the sausage is being made, and her fine attention to detail, knowing that a line here or a comma here can make a difference for a lot of people.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you, because that’s a great image you just conjured up. It’s very difficult for women in American politics. As we have seen, they have not yet been able to shatter that final glass ceiling. And, in any event, no matter what stage of their life, a competent, ambitious, feisty woman like Kamala Harris can always be called too ambitious or have derogatory comments thrown away. It’s already happening. How difficult is it? And how will she insulate herself in a way that perhaps Hillary Clinton couldn’t? And particularly as a black woman, it must be doubly, doubly difficult.

BOOKER: Well, I — again, Kamala Harris eats difficult for breakfast. I mean, she has — there’s only been two black women senators in the history of the United States of America. She did that. She was the first African-American woman statewide in the office that she held for the most populous state in the nation. She did that. I can go through her career, that she keeps doing things. And then, in worlds where people say, oh, well, how is she going to do, how she’s going to make it, well, she has distinguished herself, continuing to be elevated by the communities in which she served. So, I already know who she is. I’m just excited, really excited, to see America discover her, to get to know her better, and really rejoice. And is it going to be hard, is it going to be difficult? Nothing worthwhile is easy. Every stride on the road to justice in this nation had to be paid for in sweat and struggle and sometimes blood. Kamala comes from that tradition, and she is going to advance the torch of promise and possibility in America.