Kamala Harris crashed through one of the world’s tallest glass ceilings on Saturday to be elected America’s first female vice president, making history and helping end the turbulent government of Donald Trump.
Harris came into Tuesday’s election as a repeat trailblazer as California’s first black attorney general and the first woman of South Asian descent elected to the United States Senate.
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By winning the vice presidency, you will be one step away from leading the United States and one step toward the ultimate award.
Given that the 77-year-old Biden is expected to serve just one term, Harris would be the frontrunner to win the Democratic presidential nomination within four years.
Read also | Democratic nominee Joe Biden beats Trump in White House race
That could give her a chance to make more history, as the first female president of the United States.
“This election is much more than Joe Biden or me,” he wrote on Twitter after the US media rated the election in his favor based on state results.
“It is about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let us begin.”
Read also | ‘A lot of work ahead,’ says Kamala Harris after her historic victory
Since she was named Biden’s running mate in August, she has criticized Trump for his chaotic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also for racism, the economy and the president’s crackdown on immigration.
Harris, 56, was born to immigrants in the United States – his father from Jamaica, his mother from India – and their lives and his own have somehow embodied the American dream.
– ‘I’m talking’ –
He was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, then a center for civil rights and anti-war activism.
Her diploma from historically Black Howard University in Washington was the beginning of a steady rise that led her from prosecutor to two elected terms as San Francisco district attorney and then California attorney general in 2010.
Read also | President-elect Joe Biden: stumbles, tragedies, and now, delayed triumph
However, Harris’s self-description as a “progressive prosecutor” has been seized upon by critics who say she fought to defend wrongful convictions and opposed certain reforms in California, such as a bill that requires the attorney general to investigate shootings involving to the police.
“Over and over again, when progressives urged her to adopt criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and later as a state attorney general, Harris opposed them or remained silent,” wrote law professor Lara Bazelon in The New York Times last year.
However, Harris’s work was key in forging a platform and profile from which she launched a successful campaign for the Senate in 2016, becoming the second black female senator in history.
Her stint as attorney general also helped her forge a connection with Biden’s son Beau, who held the same position in the state of Delaware and died of cancer at the age of 46 in 2015.
“I know how much Beau respected Kamala and her work, and that mattered a lot to me, to be honest with you, as I made this decision,” Biden said during their first appearance with Harris as fellow racers.
Harris, a veteran activist, oozes charisma, but can quickly go from her megawatt grin to her prosecutor persona of relentless interrogations and cutting retorts.
Clips went viral from his pointed 2017 questioning of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a Capitol hearing on Russia.
“I can’t be rushed that fast! It makes me nervous, ”Sessions replied in exasperation at one point.
Harris also clashed with Biden during the first Democratic debate, berating the former senator for his opposition to the bus transportation programs of the 1970s that forced the integration of segregated schools.
“There was a girl in California who was part of the second class to make up her public school, and she was taken by bus to school every day,” she said. “And that girl was me.”
That clash didn’t stop him from choosing Harris, who has brought that fighting energy to Biden’s carefully managed campaign.
During her only debate against Vice President Mike Pence, Harris raised her hand as he tried to interrupt her.
“Sir. Vice President, I’m talking. I’m talking,” he said with a furious look, silencing Pence.
Within hours of the debate, T-shirts bearing his words were being offered for sale online.
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