Cover girl: Kamala Harris makes cover of Essence and Time magazines

Vice President Kamala Harris has scored two prominent magazine covers, Essence and Time, only weeks after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election.

Time magazine’s cover shows a black-and-white drawing of the vice president’s head surrounded by blue signs. The title on the Time cover is “Her Moment,” written by Charlotte Alter, and is set to be the magazine’s Aug. 26 issue.

The magazine posted the cover on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with the description “The reintroduction of Kamala Harris,” which is the same title as the online version of Alter’s article.

“The soundtrack suggested a Beyoncé concert. The light-up bracelets evoked the Eras Tour. And the exuberant crowd—more than 14,000 strong, lining up in the rain—resembled the early days of Barack Obama,” Alter wrote in the opening of the article describing the high energy of a recent Harris campaign rally.

She continued, “Inside a Philadelphia arena on Aug. 6, Vice President Kamala Harris was greeted with a kind of reception a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t gotten in years. Fans packed into overflow spaces, waving homemade signs made of glitter and glue as drumlines roared.”

Alter analyzed the transformation of Harris from vice president to the leading Democratic candidate in the 2024 election.

“Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history. A contest that revolved around the cognitive decline of a geriatric President has been transformed: Joe Biden is out, Harris is in,” she wrote.

“Where has this Kamala Harris been all along?” Alter asked.

She added, “For years, Democratic officials questioned her political chops, pundits mocked her word salads, and her polling suggested limited appeal. Her performance in the 2020 presidential primary was wooden, and her turn as Biden’s No. 2 did little to inspire confidence.”

“She may seem like an overnight sensation, but Harris’ moment was years in the making,” Alter wrote.

One political observer called the cover story a rewrite of a New York Times piece on Harris in July.

“The Time Magazine piece is almost a beat for beat rewriting from this NY Times piece from July 22nd. It’s even the identical title and uses same design of full splash. No actual work went into it,” a social media user responded.

Another social media account called out the magazine for writing a “fawning cover” even though she “REFUSED TO BE INTERVIEWED.”

Essence magazine announced the cover of the September-October issue and placed the vice president as its cover photograph. It features a sit-down interview that Harris had done last month during Essence Fest before Biden had stepped down from the presidential election.

The Essence story will share the vice president’s views on the Supreme Court, abortion access, and her thoughts on former President Donald Trump.

Essence Ventures’s Caroline Wanga told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Harris was their choice for a special feature, called “Chief to Chief,” that inspires black women about black women leaders.

“We welcome her into the Essence cover girl community,” Wanga said on MSNBC.

Harris’s Essence cover issue will be a special collector’s edition.