Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, is poised to secure the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday.
More than four years after her first attempt at the presidency collapsed, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer will cap a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by President Biden’s disastrous June debate performance that shattered his supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and spurred extraordinary intraparty warfare about whether he should stay in the race.
Just as soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination will become official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ends Monday at 3 p.m. PDT and the party announces the results. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share has an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are satisfied with her candidacy compared with that of Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being its nominee against former President Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.
Already Harris has telegraphed that she doesn’t plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
“Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
The Harris campaign now believes it has a renewed opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden had started to abandon in favor of shoring up 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 a national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t allow the country to see her” four years ago. Sellers said: “We had her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she’s real, she’s talented.”
Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris’ political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists nor sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.
The Trump campaign has been eager to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters nationwide, 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 nominee’s supporters have also derisively branded Harris as a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in ugly racial attacks of his own, wrongly asserting that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently played up her Black identity.
Kim writes for the Associated Press.