It can be hard for a losing presidential candidate to reenter political life. The topic of one’s first public speech, the venue, and the audience are all usually carefully chosen.
With this in mind, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s first public address since losing the 2024 presidential election to President Donald Trump was perhaps more telling than she intended.
The content of Harris’s speech was largely forgettable boilerplate, including false claims that Trump was “disappearing American citizens without due process” and creating a “constitutional crisis.”
But one moment did break through, and it was later clipped and shared on social media.
“Who saw that video from a couple of weeks ago?” Harris asked the audience. “The one of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo during the earthquake. Google it if you have not seen it.”
In the video, three elephants are in their enclosure when the camera starts shaking. Two other elephants are then seen running on screen, and the four larger elephants form a circle around the smaller elephant.
“Everybody has been asking what are you thinking about these days?” Harris continued. “For those who haven’t seen it, here those elephants were, and as soon as they felt the earth shaking beneath their feet, they got in a circle and stood next to each other to protect the most vulnerable. Think about it. What a powerful metaphor.”
“Because we know those who try to incite fear are most effective when they divide and conquer,” Harris continued. “When they separate the herd, when they try to make everyone think they are alone. But in the face of crisis, the lesson is don’t scatter. The instinct has to be to immediately find and connect with each other, and to know that the circle will be stronger,” she concluded.
While Harris is correct that the video is cute, it may fail to inspire Democrats for several reasons. First, the elephants were not in any actual danger from the earthquake. Second, the earthquake was not trying to divide anyone, especially an elephant herd. It was just a random release of tension between two tectonic plates.
However, the audience for Harris’s remarks does make the elephant comparison a bit more on point. Harris’s elephant story was told at the Emerge annual gala. Emerge describes itself as “the nation’s premier organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office.” Men, apparently, need not apply for help from Emerge’s “alert circle.”
Coincidentally, male elephants are not invited into African elephants’ “alert circles” either. African elephants are a matriarchal species in which a dominant female, typically the oldest, makes all the major decisions for the group, such as when and where to forage and sleep.
HARRIS WARNS OF CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS WITH CHECKS AND BALANCES BEGINNING TO ‘BUCKLE’
Such matriarchal herds typically only have one male bull elephant who enjoys a sexual monopoly on all the females. All other males are chased off at sexual maturity. These adult males are then left to live alone as bachelors, except for the lucky few who are able to establish dominance over a female herd.
Harris’s comparison of the Democratic Party to African elephants is a powerful metaphor indeed.
