US Vice President Kamala Harris wins the most delegates ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month.
The Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, promised to take the fight to Donald Trump as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, invoking her former career as a prosecutor who faced “predators” and “fraudsters”.
Rallying supporters in her first campaign appearance since her boss Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race, Harris said Monday that she faced “perpetrators of all types” while serving as a prosecutor and attorney general in her home state, to California.
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who deceived consumers, con artists who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” Harris told campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware.
Harris, 59, previously leaned on her record as a prosecutor during her unsuccessful bid during the 2020 Democratic primary, which featured the slogan “Kamala Harris, for the people.”
Since then, Republican presidential candidate Trump has been convicted of falsifying business records, found civilly liable for sexually abusing a magazine columnist and indicted in two criminal cases related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Harris’s combative campaign speech came as she cemented her status as the de facto Democratic candidate amid a wave of support from senior party figures, including former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the governor of Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Donors have also backed Harris, contributing a record $81 million in the 24 hours since she announced her candidacy for the White House, according to her campaign.
Although Democrats won’t officially choose their candidate until next month’s national convention, Harris has already won the support of far more than the necessary number of delegates to win the nomination.
Harris had more than 2,500 delegates, well beyond the 1,976 needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot Monday night, according to an Associated Press tally.
In his first public comments since leaving office amid concerns about his age and physical condition, Biden, 81, attended Harris’ event to pledge his support for her campaign.
“The name changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission didn’t change at all,” he said, adding that quitting was “the right thing to do.”
While Democrats hope Harris will energize voters demoralized after weeks of turmoil over Biden’s faltering candidacy, she faces lingering questions about her electability.
The former senator trailed Trump in most opinion polls – only doing as well as or slightly better than Biden – and struggled to gain momentum in her 2020 presidential run, dropping out of the race after falling behind Biden. Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren in their home state.
In her speech, Harris, who would be the first black woman president if elected in November, classified the election as a choice between the future and the past.
“Our campaign has always been about two different versions of what we see as the future of the country — two different visions of our country: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” Harris said.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time when many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights.”
Harris said Trump would put Social Security at risk and treat health care as “a privilege for the rich.”
“America has tried these economic policies before. They don’t lead to ownership, they lead to inequality and economic injustice, and we won’t go back,” she said.
“We are not going back. They won’t take us back.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
