Therapy-speak and 80s hairstyles: will Harris’s Brené Brown sit-down swing white female voters?

The Democrat's cozy chat with the vulnerability expert was largely apolitical - which could play well with a key demographic

In the quest to win over white female voters - 53% of whom showed up for Donald Trump in 2020 - Kamala Harris made her case on a podcast hosted by one of their beloved avatars, the vulnerability researcher Brene Brown. The episode, released on Monday, was a mostly fluffy discussion about leadership, trauma and the notion of voting as agency in an uncontrollable news cycle.

Brown, a University of Houston professor and bestselling author who has spent two decades studying social sciences, became an overnight celebrity after giving a 2010 Ted Talk called the power of vulnerability". One could argue the talk, which birthed Brown's Oprah-approved speaking empire, also spawned our culture's current obsession with therapy-speak.