On Saturday afternoon, Kamala Harris was on the marketing campaign path for Joe Biden, telling a room of about 1,000 Democratic donors in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that the US president would defeat Donald Trump on the poll field in November.
“We’re going to win,” she mentioned to roaring applause. “It’s not going to be simple . . . it takes believing in one thing after which going for it.”
At some point later, Biden introduced he was suspending his re-election marketing campaign and placing his religion in Harris. Inside hours, the vice-president confirmed her personal bid for the White Home.
“I’ll do the whole lot in my energy to unite the Democratic occasion — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump,” Harris mentioned. “We’ve 107 days till Election Day. Collectively, we’ll battle. And collectively, we’ll win.”
Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and subsequent endorsement of Harris, ended greater than three weeks of Democrats hand-wringing over whether or not their candidate was as much as the job.
Nevertheless it additionally marked the most recent stage in a meteoric rise for Harris, the 59-year-old daughter of immigrants who, if elected, could be the primary feminine president of america.
Biden’s endorsement — and statements of help from former president Invoice Clinton and his spouse, Hillary Clinton, in addition to a number of dozen members of Congress and a number of state governors — solidified Harris’s standing because the overwhelming frontrunner to be the Democratic occasion’s nominee for president. However her choice is certainly not a completed deal.
A number of high-profile Democrats, notably former president Barack Obama, didn’t instantly again her on Sunday. It stays unclear whether or not she is going to face challengers, or what guidelines the Democratic Nationwide Committee will put in place to lock in a alternative for Biden forward of subsequent month’s Democratic Nationwide Conference.
But Biden’s nod places Harris in pole place for the nomination and the presidency, setting the vice-president on target to as soon as once more make historical past. If elected in November, she wouldn’t solely be the primary feminine president, but in addition the primary Asian-American and solely the second Black president, after Obama.
The daughter of an Indian-American mom and a Jamaican-American father, Harris spent her early childhood in Oakland, California. Her dad and mom divorced when she was younger, and she or he and sister Maya had been raised by their mom, a most cancers researcher.
Harris graduated from Howard College, a traditionally Black college in Washington, DC, earlier than incomes a legislation diploma from the College of California, Hastings, and changing into a prosecutor.
Harris’s elevation to the vice-presidency capped a speedy rise via the political ranks, which started when she was elected district lawyer of San Francisco in 2003. Seven years later, she was elected attorney-general of California. She was re-elected to that place in 2014 and elected to the US Senate two years after that.
When she was attorney-general, Harris met Douglas Emhoff, a company lawyer, whom she married in 2015, changing into stepmother to his two grown youngsters. Emhoff has used the title “Second Gentleman” and been a fixture on the Biden marketing campaign path in current months.
Harris launched her personal bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to nice fanfare and enthusiasm. However her marketing campaign didn’t take off — progressives particularly took subject along with her time as a “powerful on crime” prosecutor — and she or he suspended her bid earlier than that 12 months’s Iowa caucuses. Eight months later, Biden chosen her as his operating mate, describing the then-senator as a “fearless fighter for the little man and one of many nation’s best public servants”.
Harris bought off to a tough begin as vice-president. She was given the thorny portfolio of tackling the causes of unlawful immigration to the US from Latin America. On this manner she turned related to considered one of Biden’s largest issues: the rising circulate of undocumented immigrants to the US from the border with Mexico.
Considered one of her lowest factors within the job got here throughout an NBC Information interview in June 2021, when she was requested why she had not visited the US southern border. She responded that she would go “sooner or later” however added she had not been to Europe, both.
Harris’s ballot numbers languished all through Biden’s presidency, and there was even some hypothesis that Biden may drop her from the ticket to enhance his re-election possibilities. White Home officers say he by no means thought-about it.
The political circumstances additionally gave her profession a second wind. After the US Supreme Court docket struck down the constitutional proper to an abortion in 2022, Harris turned the White Home’s main voice in defending reproductive freedoms and different points, reminiscent of gun management, that energise important components of the Democratic base, particularly ladies, youthful voters and minority teams.
As Biden’s dealing with of the warfare in Gaza divided the Democratic occasion, Harris backed the White Home’s coverage of supporting Israel, however with a barely extra crucial eye.
“Given the immense scale of struggling in Gaza, there should be a direct ceasefire,” she mentioned in considered one of her most emphatic interventions on the disaster within the Center East in March, throughout a speech in Selma, Alabama, a landmark of the US civil rights motion.
Extra lately, amid Democratic occasion panic over Biden’s age and health for workplace within the wake of his disastrous debate efficiency final month, many Democratic lawmakers, donors and influential operatives started to present Harris a re-assessment.
With a number of private and non-private opinion polls suggesting she would fare higher towards Trump than Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up, the guess amongst many occasion insiders has been that Harris has rather more potential to enhance her standing than Biden did, each nationwide and in crucial battleground states.
Harris nonetheless faces a big uphill battle, each to lock in her occasion’s nomination and defeat Trump in November. However for now, the vice-president appears to be racking up the help of former and attainable future rivals, as Democrats clamour to unite round a candidate.
“The very best path ahead for the Democratic occasion is to shortly unite behind vice-president Harris and refocus on successful the presidency,” mentioned Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania who’s seen as a attainable operating mate for Harris ought to she win the occasion’s nomination.
Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been seen as a future presidential candidate, likewise threw his weight behind Harris on Sunday, calling her “powerful,” “fearless” and “tenacious”.
“With our democracy at stake and our future on the road, nobody is best to prosecute the case towards Donald Trump’s darkish imaginative and prescient and information our nation in a more healthy course than America’s vice-president,” Newsom mentioned.