Washington.-Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the ranks of California politics and law enforcement to become the first woman to hold that office in the United States, has secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, becoming the first nonwhite woman to be nominated for president by either major party.
More than four years after her first failed bid for the presidency, Harris’s coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats, sparked by President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the June presidential debate that shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and sparked an extraordinary intraparty fight over whether he should remain in the race.
As soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked to secure the support of the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. An Associated Press poll of delegates nationwide showed Harris secured the necessary commitments just 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online voting for Democratic National Convention delegates concluded Monday night. In a statement released shortly before midnight, the party said 99% of delegates had cast their ballots in favor of Harris.
The party had long contemplated early virtual voting to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state. It said it will now formally certify the vote before holding a celebratory roll call at the party convention later this month in Chicago.
An AP/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden dropped out of the race 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 said they are satisfied with her candidacy than Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden as its nominee over former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.
Harris has already hinted that she doesn’t plan to stray far from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her pitch could be much firmer, especially when she invokes her experience as a prosecutor to attack Trump and his 34 guilty pleas to falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to conceal damaging information.
“Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and of a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are at stake, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from India when she was 19, and Donald Harris, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and a naturalized American citizen born in Jamaica. The fact that her parents were civil rights activists gave her what she said was a “baby carriage view” of what the movement was all about.
She spent years serving as a prosecutor in the San Francisco Bay Area before being appointed state attorney general in 2010 and then elected to the Senate in 2016.
Harris arrived in Washington as a senator in the early part of the Trump administration, quickly establishing herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the new president’s policies and personnel and fueling speculation about a possible presidential bid of her own. Securing a spot on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her a high-profile national position to question prominent Trump nominees such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I lack the ability to be rushed that quickly,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 hearing as Harris repeatedly pressed him on potential conversations with Russians. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris launched a promising presidential campaign that drew parallels to former President Barack Obama and drew more than 20,000 people to an initial rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary before the first nominating contest in Iowa, marred by public discontent among her staff and an inability to attract enough money to the campaign.
Harris struggled to provide Democratic voters with a consistent pitch and stumbled on crucial issues like health care. She hinted that she supported eliminating private insurance in favor of implementing a fully government-run, “Medicare for All” coverage system before unveiling her own health care plan that did keep private insurance. Now, during her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as a ban on fracking that she backed in 2019.Infobae.
#Kamala #Harris #officially #presidential #candidate #Democratic #Party
2024-08-11 21:18:08
