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DEMOCRAT KAMALA HARRIS is poised to make history by becoming the first woman elected Vice President of the United States.
Joe Biden is set to win the presidency and become the 46th president of the United States after expanding his lead in Pennsylvania against Donald Trump, securing the state’s 20 electoral votes and surpassing the 270 needed to win.
Harris, Biden’s running mate, will join him in the White House as the first woman elected vice president in the country’s history.
Harris (56) has already blazed a trail as California’s first black attorney general and the first woman of South Asian descent elected to the United States Senate.
But winning the vice presidency, one step away from leading the United States, is the most important barrier he has broken so far.
If the 77-year-old Biden chooses to serve only a four-year term in office, Harris would be the front-runner to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024.
That could give her a chance to continue making history, this time as the first female president of the United States.
“My mother raised me to see what could be, without the burden of what has been,” Harris wrote in Twitter last month.
Since she was chosen as Biden’s running mate in August, she has criticized President Donald Trump for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also for his racism and handling of issues like the economy and immigration.
Background
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in Delaware yesterday.
Source: Carolyn Kaster
Harris was born in California in 1964 to parents who immigrated to the United States: his father from Jamaica and his mother from India.
Her historically black Howard University diploma 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.
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 she was urged by progressives to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and later as a state attorney general, Harris either opposed or kept silent,” wrote law professor Lara Bazelon in the New York Times last year.
People wearing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris masks in Washington DC Wednesday.
Source: SIPA USA / PA Images
However, Harris’s work was key in forging a platform and profile from which she launched a successful Senate campaign 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, when I made this decision,” Biden said during his first appearance with Harris as his running mate.
Harris, a veteran activist, seems charismatic, but can quickly change her prosecutor persona from relentless questioning 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 at one point.
Source: Los Angeles Times / YouTube
Harris also took on 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.
Harris was selected as Biden’s running mate in August of this year. At the time, Donald Trump said he was “a little surprised” by the selection.
Trump said Harris “was very disrespectful to Joe Biden” during the Democratic primary and said “it’s hard to pick someone who is so disrespectful.”
He also said Harris “did a terrible job” when he ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
Kamala Harris speaking during a rally earlier this week.
Source: AP / PA Images
Harris announced that he would run for the Democratic presidential nomination in early 2019. He officially withdrew his candidacy, citing lack of funds, in December.
Harris has brought his fiery energy to Biden’s carefully organized campaign.
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During her only debate against current Vice President Mike Pence last month, Harris raised her hand while trying to interrupt her.
“Mr. Vice President, I am speaking. I’m talking, ”he said, silencing Pence.
During this debate, Harris went on the attack against Donald Trump, saying that his actions during the pandemic had lost the right to re-election.
Vice-presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence last month.
Source: SIPA USA / PA Images
She said, “The American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.”
Harris also condemned the murders of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minnesota and spoke about protests against racial injustice in the policing that followed, which Trump described as “riots” when he called for law and order.
“We will never tolerate violence, but we must always fight for the values that we hold dear,” he said.
I am a former career prosecutor. I know what I’m talking about. Bad cops are bad for good cops.
Additional reporting by Orla Dwyer
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