WASHINGTON – vice president Kamala Harrisdaughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday — becoming the first black woman to lead a party ticket important.
More than four years later your first attempt in the collapse of the presidency, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer ends a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats, driven by President Joe Biden’s decision disastrous performance in June debate It shook his own supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and spurred an extraordinary intraparty war over whether he should stay in the race.
As soon as Biden abruptly closed your candidacy, Harris and her team worked quickly to secure the support of the 1,976 party delegates needed to secure the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at high speed, with an Associated Press delegate search across the country, showing she secured the necessary commitments just 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online voting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday night, with the party saying in a statement released shortly before midnight that 99% of Delegates who voted did so for Harris. The party had long contemplated the beginning virtual call to ensure Biden appeared on the ballot in every state. He said he would then formally certify the vote before holding a roll call vote at the party convention later this month in Chicago.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden’s withdrawal found that 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share have an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are pleased with her candidacy compared with Biden’s, energizing a party that has long resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being their candidate against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they see as an existential threat.
Harris has already telegraphed that he does not plan to deviate too much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, prevention of armed violence and the right to abortion. But her speech can be much fiercer, especially when she invokes her experience as a prosecutor to criticize Trump and his 34 criminal convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a secret money scheme.
“Given the unique voice of a new generation, a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are at stake, it is almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said the Democratic senator. Alex Padilla of California, who was chosen to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, daughter Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated from India to the United States when she was 19, and Stanford University professor emeritus Donald Harris, a naturalized American citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents’ civil rights advocacy gave her what she described as a “bird’s eye view” of the movement.
She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before being promoted to state attorney general in 2010 and then being elected U.S. senator in 2016.
Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the start of the volatile Trump era, quickly establishing herself as a credible liberal opponent of the new president’s personnel and policies and fueling speculation about a presidential bid of her own. Securing a spot on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave him national prominence to grill prominent Trump appointees such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I can’t be rushed so quickly,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 hearing, as Harris repeatedly pressed him about possible conversations with Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with plenty of promises, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and drawing more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris dropped out of the primary race before the first nominating contest in Iowa, plagued by staff dissent that spread openly and an inability to attract enough campaign money.
Harris struggled to present a consistent proposition to Democratic voters and faltered on key issues such as health care. She suggested supporting the elimination of private insurance for a fully government-run system — “Medicare for All” coverage — before launching her own health plan that would preserve private insurance. Now, during her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, like the ban on fracking which she endorsed in 2019.
And although Harris tried to use her law enforcement experience as an asset in her 2020 presidential campaign, it never attracted enough support in a party that has failed to reconcile some of its previous tough-on-crime stances at a time of increased focus on police. brutality.
Still, Harris was at the top of the list of vice presidential candidates when Biden was considering his running mate, following his promise in early 2020 that he would choose a Black woman as his No. 2. He liked Harris, who had forged a close relationship. friendship with her now-deceased son Beau, who had been attorney general of Delaware when she was in that position in California.
His first months as vice president were anything but smooth. Biden asked him to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which has triggered Republican attacks on border security and remains a political vulnerability. It didn’t help that Harris has stumbled in big interviews, like in a 2021 sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt, when she dismissively responded that “I haven’t been to Europe” when the anchor noted that she hadn’t visited the border. USA-Mexico.
During her first two years, Harris was also frequently tied to Washington so she could break tie votes in the evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats historic victories on climate and health issues but also restricted opportunities for her to travel the country and meet with voters. .
Its visibility became much more prominent following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled Roe v., as she became the administration’s top spokesperson on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a longtime Catholic who had in the past favored restrictions on the procedure. She is the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic and talks about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, especially for women of color.
Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while also emphasizing that she would be ready to intervene if necessary. This dramatic transition began in late June, after the first debate between Biden and Trump, where the president’s stumbles were so cataclysmic that he was never able to reverse the loss of confidence among other Democrats.
After Biden ended his candidacy on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. And during the first two weeks of his 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base grew, with donations pouring in, dozens of volunteers showing up at local offices and the number of supporters growing so much that event organizers had to change location.
Harris’ campaign now believes it has a renewed opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden began abandoning in favor of bolstering the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really haven’t allowed the country to see her” four years ago. Sellers said, “We had her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she is real, she is talented.”
However, Democrats anticipate that Harris’s political honeymoon will pass and that she will inevitably be subjected to heightened scrutiny regarding her Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad. particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer lengthy questions from journalists or sit down for a formal interview since her candidacy began.
The Trump campaign is eager to profile Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters across the country, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and dubbing her “Failed.” Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
The Republican candidate’s supporters have also mockingly labeled Harris a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in horrific racial attacks, wrongly claiming that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently emphasized her identity black.
His remarks anticipate a time of racist and sexist claims against the person who would be the first woman and first person of South Asian origin in the presidency.
“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said while speaking at the annual convention from the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or black?”
In her response, Harris called it “the same old show — the division and the disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when faced with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority meeting in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”
