WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala HarrisA daughter of immigrants who rose through the political and police ranks in California to become the first female vice president in U.S. history officially secured the Democratic presidential nomination Monday — becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.
More than four years later his first attempt After the collapse of the presidency, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenzied period for Democrats sparked by the resignation of President Joe Biden. disastrous performance in June debate which shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his re-election prospects and sparked an extraordinary internal war over whether he should stay in the race.
As soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacyHarris and her team worked quickly to secure the support of the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll-call vote. She reached that threshold with lightning speed, with the Associated Press reporting Delegate Survey nationwide, showing that it has secured the necessary commitments just 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after five days of online voting by delegates to the Democratic National Convention that ended Monday night, with the party saying in a statement released just before midnight that 99 percent of delegates who voted had cast their ballots for Harris. The party had long considered an early nomination. virtual call The party said it would then formally certify the vote before conducting a celebratory roll call at the party convention later this month in Chicago.
A poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted after Biden withdrew found that 46% of Americans had a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share had an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are satisfied with her candidacy than with Biden’s, energizing a party that had long resigned itself to Biden, 81, as its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.
Harris has already telegraphed that she has no intention of deviating much from the themes and policies that have framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her speech can be much more fiery, particularly when she invokes her experience as a prosecutor to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business documents in connection with a bribery scam.
“Given the unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and of a woman when fundamental rights, particularly reproductive rights, are at stake, it’s almost as if the stars aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was chosen to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
Washington’s coup before 2020 primary collapse
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, Shyamala Gopalana breast cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from India at age 19, and Donald Harris, a Stanford University professor emeritus and a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jamaica. Her parents’ civil rights advocacy gave her what she describes as a “light-hearted view” of the movement.
She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before being appointed state attorney general in 2010 and then elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.
Harris was sworn in as San Francisco district attorney with her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, holding a copy of the Bill of Rights in January 2004. AP Photo/George Nikitin, File)
Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the dawn of the Trump era, where she quickly established herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the new president’s personnel and policies, and sparked speculation about a possible presidential bid. Her appointment to the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her national visibility to question Trump’s top nominees, such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I can’t afford to rush this forward that quickly,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a 2017 hearing as Harris repeatedly pressed him to talk to Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris questions Sessions during testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, June 13, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with much promise, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and drawing more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary race before the first nomination contest in Iowa, plagued by staff dissension that spilled over into the open and an inability to raise enough money for her campaign.
Harris has struggled to appeal to Democratic voters in a coherent way and has wavered on key issues like health care. She suggested she supported eliminating private insurance for a fully government-run system — “Medicare for All” coverage — before introducing her own health care plan that preserved private insurance. Now, in her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as the ban on hydraulic fracturing which it approved in 2019.
And while Harris tried to deploy her law enforcement experience as an asset in her 2020 presidential campaign, she never attracted enough support in a party that has struggled to reconcile some of its past tough-on-crime stances with an era of increased focus on police brutality.
Joining Biden’s team and growing as vice president
Yet Harris was at the top of Biden’s running mate list as he considered his running mate, after he pledged in early 2020 to pick a Black woman as his No. 2. He was fond of Harris, who had formed a close friendship with his late son Beau, who had served as Delaware’s attorney general when she served as California’s attorney general.
Her first months as vice president have not been smooth sailing. Biden has asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which has sparked attacks from Republicans over border security and remains a political vulnerability. It hasn’t helped that Harris has stumbled during major interviews, such as in a 2021 interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, when she dismissively responded that she “hasn’t been to Europe” when the host pointed out that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
President Joe Biden walks with Harris in the Rose Garden of the White House, May 13, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
During her first two years, Harris was also often tied to Washington so she could decide the tie in an evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats historic victories on climate and health care but also limited her ability to travel the country and meet with voters.
Its visibility has become much more important after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that dismantled Roe v. Wadebecause she became the administration’s leading spokesperson on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who had previously 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, particularly for Black women.
Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she would be ready to step in if necessary. That dramatic transition began in late June after the first Biden-Trump debate, where the president’s missteps were so cataclysmic that he was never able to reverse the loss of confidence among other Democrats.
On the way to the top of the ticket
After ending his candidacy on July 21, Biden quickly threw his support behind Harris. And in the first two weeks of his 2024 presidential campaign, enthusiasm among the Democratic base grew, donations poured in, dozens of volunteers showed up at campaign offices, and supporters grew so large that event organizers had to change venues.
Harris’ campaign now believes it has a new opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden had begun to abandon in favor of strengthening the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The country is getting to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t let the country see her” four years ago. “We had her in bubble wrap,” Sellers said. “What people are seeing now is that she’s real, she’s talented.”
Harris speaks at a campaign rally, July 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
Democrats, however, expect Harris’ political honeymoon to end and she will inevitably face increased scrutiny due to the Biden administration’s positions, the state of the economy and the volatile situation abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer in-depth questions from reporters or grant a formal interview since she began her campaign.
The Trump campaign has been keen to define Kamala Harris as she continues to pitch to voters across the country, running an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal border crossings during the Biden administration and calling her “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
Supporters of the Republican candidate have also denigrated Harris as a diversity recruit, while Trump himself has engaged in his own ugly racial attacks, falsely claiming that Harris has in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and has only recently highlighted her black identity.
Her comments foreshadow a season of racist and sexist accusations against the woman who would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian descent to become president.
“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. addressing the annual convention of 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 story — divisiveness and disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who doesn’t react with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority rally in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences don’t divide us.”
