In her longest podcast interview to date, former Vice President Kamala Harris told The Diary of a CEO podcaster Steven Bartlett on Thursday that sixteen-year-olds should be able to vote.
The episode, titled “America Is At Breaking Point & I’m Deeply Concerned About The State Of The Country!”, explored Harris’s views on rebuilding the Democratic Party, planning for 2028, how the former Vice President manages her stress, and more.
“I think we must invest in them,” Harris said while discussing the younger generation. “I think that they are rightly impatient with a lot of what is the tradition of leadership right now. And if they were able to vote right now, they’d be talking about the importance of climate.”
The former vice president described Gen Z as the generation that has “only known” the climate crisis, “missed substantial parts of their education because of the pandemic,” and are very likely to have chosen a college major that may not result in a living wage.
“They’ve coined the term climate anxiety to describe fear of not only being able to buy a home but fear of being wiped out by extreme weather, [and] fear of having children,” she continued.
Harris argued that because younger Americans will live with the consequences of today’s policies for decades to come, they deserve a say in decisions that will have long-lasting impact.
However, while serving as California’s Attorney General in 2014, Harris once argued against that very idea. She advocated that poor decisions made by 18-24-year-olds should be viewed in a different light, given that they are in a developmental stage.
“And it’s a specific phase of life, remember, age is more than a chronological fact. What else do we know about this population, 18-24?” Harris argued at the time. “They are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories and they have a resident assistant. They make really bad decisions!”
“Since 2008, winning Democratic candidates have received at least 60% support from young voters,” NPR reported in 2024.
In the 2024 Presidential election, young voters favored Kamala Harris 52% to 46%, but these numbers were down from the 2020 election.
Harris won the youth female vote but lost the youth male vote. One of Kamala’s regrets was not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“Trump got about 100 million views on Joe Rogan’s Show. Do you, in hindsight, wish you just put your foot down and said, ‘I’m going to go do it?’” Bartlett asked Harris during the podcast.
Kamala Harris claimed she wanted to do the podcast, but the tradeoff was losing campaign time in a swing state, as Joe Rogan wanted Kamala to come to his set in Austin. Rogan also wanted Kamala to do a three-hour interview, but Harris’s team only wanted to do one hour.
Also, for the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast. They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just…
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) October 29, 2024
Harris said she would do Joe Rogan’s podcast if she were to run again. When asked if she would run again, Harris responded, “I think the case for running again is if I can make a difference. If I feel that I can offer something as president of the United States that would not only be uplifting to the American people, but would be about getting us on a correct trajectory.”
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