Former Vice President Kamala Harris used a Nashville speech to embrace abolishing the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court with additional justices, positions she avoided during her failed 2024 campaign and ones that would require rewriting foundational American governing structures.
Harris told attendees at the National Urban League Conference on Friday that the country needs to "revisit" both the Electoral College system and the size of the nation's highest court, calling for an expansion to 13 justices. She also pushed for Puerto Rico statehood, broadening a prior stance that had been limited to Washington, D.C. None of these proposals appeared in her 2024 presidential platform, when she lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote to President Donald Trump.
The shift marks a clear leftward lurch as Harris positions herself for what Democratic insiders widely expect to be a 2028 presidential bid. Multiple Democratic aides and strategists have described her as the party's leading contender for the nomination, Fox News Digital reported. She leads the 2028 Democratic primary field by double digits over California Governor Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to RealClearPolitics polling averages cited by the New York Post.
Harris acknowledged the proposals would draw fire. She prefaced her Electoral College remarks with a telling qualifier:
"I know this is gonna be controversial coming from me, in particular. We need to revisit the Electoral College."
That "in particular" is worth pausing on. Harris did not merely lose the Electoral College in 2024, she lost the popular vote, too. Calling to scrap the system after losing under it invites an obvious question about whether this is principle or convenience.
On the Supreme Court, Harris framed her expansion proposal around the structure of the federal judiciary:
"We need to revisit the point of expanding the court to 13 justices like we have 13 district courts."
The current Supreme Court has nine seats. Adding four justices would hand any sitting president the power to reshape the court's ideological balance in a single term. Harris had previously supported term limits for Supreme Court justices, a more modest reform, but had not publicly endorsed court expansion during her 2024 campaign.
The distinction matters. Term limits require a constitutional amendment, a process that demands broad national consensus. Court packing, adding seats by statute, can be done with a simple act of Congress. It is a faster, blunter instrument, and one that Franklin Roosevelt tried and failed to use in 1937 when the court blocked his New Deal programs. That episode is still taught as a cautionary tale about executive overreach. Harris is now openly endorsing what Roosevelt could not pull off.
Her proposals track closely with positions held by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Washington Examiner noted, a detail that underscores the ideological lane Harris appears to be staking out.
The Nashville speech did not happen in a vacuum. Harris has spent months courting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party through private outreach. In May, she called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has drawn national attention for his ties to the progressive movement. She also met privately with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a Black women's empowerment summit in Chicago.
Mamdani has been a polarizing figure in his own right. His tenure as New York City mayor has generated controversy on multiple fronts, from questions about his political associations to a widely mocked directive telling sweltering New Yorkers to set their air conditioning to 78 degrees.
That Harris is building a relationship with Mamdani, and doing so months before any formal campaign announcement, tells voters something about where she intends to plant her flag. A recent poll found that most Democrats now say they would vote for a Democratic Socialist, a shift in the party's base that Harris appears eager to ride rather than resist.
Asked directly about a 2028 bid at the Nashville conference, Harris offered a carefully worded non-denial:
"I have not made a decision. I am fully, sincerely, focused on these midterms."
But her actions over the past several months tell a different story. At the National Action Network's 35th Anniversary Convention in April, Rev. Al Sharpton asked Harris whether she planned to run again. Her answer was coy but unmistakable:
"I might. I might. I'm thinking about it... I'll keep you posted."
Since then, she has spoken at the Michigan Democratic Women's Caucus Legacy Luncheon in Detroit, built relationships with high-profile progressives, and now rolled out a set of policy positions that read like a campaign platform. Every signal points toward a run. The only thing missing is the formal announcement.
Harris also called for revisiting statehood for Puerto Rico, expanding beyond her earlier support for D.C. statehood. Adding two new states, each of which would send two senators to Washington, would almost certainly benefit Democrats, given the voting patterns of both territories. Harris framed the proposals broadly, telling the Nashville audience that the country must "allow for a real conversation about revisiting certain things."
The framing is revealing. During her 2024 campaign, Harris avoided these positions. She ran as a candidate trying to hold the center. She lost anyway. Now, with the progressive base energized and figures like Mamdani wielding growing influence in Democratic politics, Harris has evidently concluded that the path to the nomination runs through the left, not the middle.
That calculation carries risks. Court packing and abolishing the Electoral College poll poorly with general-election voters and independents. Both proposals require either constitutional amendments or acts of Congress that would face fierce opposition. And Harris's 2024 loss, in which she failed to carry even the popular vote, undercuts the argument that the Electoral College is the obstacle standing between Democrats and the White House.
But primary voters are not general-election voters. And Harris appears to be building her coalition accordingly: progressive allies, socialist-aligned mayors, and policy positions that would have been unthinkable in a mainstream Democratic campaign a decade ago.
When a candidate who lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College decides the problem was the system itself, voters should pay close attention to what kind of power she's really after.
