The leadership of the Democratic Party announced that Harris had officially reached the threshold of votes needed for the nomination in an online vote. Harris will therefore run against former Republican President Donald Trump in the election in November.
The Democrats had brought forward their nominations because of deadlines for printing ballots in certain states and scheduled them before the start of a major party convention in Chicago in mid-August.
“It will not be easy”
Voting began on Thursday via the party’s online platform, where convention delegates from all states could cast their votes. Voting will continue until Monday evening (local time/CEST night to Tuesday). However, Harris has already secured the necessary majority of votes from the approximately 4,000 delegates. She was the only candidate in the digital vote – her nomination was therefore considered a formality.
Photo gallery: This is Kamala Harris
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The 59-year-old said she felt honored. “It won’t be easy, but we will do it,” she said, looking ahead to the rest of the election campaign and the actual election on November 5. “I know we are up to this fight.”
The party leadership appealed to all delegates who had not yet voted to do so in the coming days. The exact result would be announced after the official end of voting.
Party convention in Chicago
The Democratic Party Convention in Chicago is scheduled for August 19-22. The nomination of candidates for the presidential election was supposed to have taken place there – just as the Republicans officially nominated Trump as their presidential candidate at a party convention in Milwaukee in July.
However, the leadership of the Democratic Party had already started the process months ago to bring the nomination forward and handle it digitally. This has to do with the deadlines in the states by which the parties have to have confirmed their candidates in order to be on the ballot. In particular, a deadline in the state of Ohio, which expired before the party convention, was behind this.
Tailwind at breakneck speed
Harris became the front woman of the Democrats in a dramatic turnaround after US President Joe Biden withdrew from the election campaign. The 81-year-old had come under pressure from within his own ranks because of his age and doubts about his mental fitness and had finally announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. Biden immediately proposed his deputy as a replacement candidate when he dropped out, and the party quickly rallied behind her.
The Democrat is now entering the rest of the election campaign against Trump with the wind in her sails. She has already raised millions in donations and is doing better in the first polls than Biden recently. How Harris will actually be received by the US electorate will become clear in the coming weeks.
For example, 59-year-old Harris could score points with younger people who have recently shown little enthusiasm for the 81-year-old incumbent Biden. And women and people of color could also be more attracted to the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother than to Biden or Trump – who, at 78, is now the only “old white man” in the race.
Attacks by Republicans
Trump and his Republicans have, however, begun to portray Harris as a “quota candidate” because of her gender and skin color, and to otherwise verbally attack her in racist or sexist terms. Harris, in turn, emphasizes her contrast to the conservatives, for example by highlighting her support for liberal abortion rights.
On a substantive level, Harris must primarily defend herself against accusations from the other side that she is partly responsible for the Biden administration’s migration policy. As vice president, Biden gave her the task of “combating the causes of flight.”
The number of illegal border crossings into the USA has recently fallen – but from a record level. The controversial issue is central to the US election campaign and is used as material for attacks on billboards and in television commercials, particularly in the so-called swing states. Because of the electoral system in the USA, the result in November ultimately depends on relatively few votes from these states.