New Delhi: Following a myriad controversies surrounding his age and alleged ill health, 81-year-old US President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he would be stepping down “in the interest of his party” and not seek re-election in the upcoming presidential elections, endorsing his former running mate and vice-president — Kamala Harris — for the top job.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats, it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” said Joe Biden in a tweet endorsing Harris.
Harris, 59, now awaits the Democratic convention’s support for her bid to be President.
Harris, who made history as the world’s most developed country’s first female vice-president, has now vowed to “earn and win” the nomination from fellow Democrats. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” she wrote on X.
On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country.
I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 21, 2024
This isn’t Harris’s first attempt to be president. The former California Senator was an opponent of Joe Biden in the Democratic primary in 2019. In December of that year, she suspended her campaign to support Joe Biden. Citing a lack of financial resources, she called stepping down from the contest, the “hardest decision of her life”. However, Harris did become president for a little less than 90 minutes when she became the first woman to serve as acting president when Biden was placed under anesthesia for a colonoscopy procedure in 2021.
While the president thanked Harris for being “an extraordinary partner” and called choosing her as vice-president his “best decision”, their tenure together was not without controversy. Almost less than a year into Joe Biden’s first term as president, his popularity had started to fall, and so did Biden-Harris’ joint appearances. Newspapers and experts alike started calling a rift between the two “inevitable” as Harris, although popular, was not given “an all-star portfolio”.
A career marked by significant roles
The daughter of immigrant parents — an Indian woman and doctor Shyamala Gopalan and Jamaican-born Donald Harris — both supporters of civil rights, Kamala Harris was the first woman in the US to become vice-president. She was also the first vice-president of Asian and African origin to hold the position.
After the Biden-Harris team won the 2020 elections, Harris in a speech said that she might be the first woman to hold the position but she won’t be the last, gaining applause from listeners around the world.
Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career as a prosecutor, eventually becoming the first woman elected as District Attorney of San Francisco. In 2010, she was elected Attorney General of California, and in 2016, she became a US Senator. Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2014, making him the first Second Gentleman of the United States upon her election as vice-president.
As attorney general, Harris led the largest state justice department, securing a $20 billion settlement for homeowners and a $1.1 billion settlement for defrauded students and veterans. She also defended the Affordable Care Act and enforced environmental laws. As vice-president, she alongside Biden focused on capping insulin costs, reducing prescription prices, improving maternal health, enacting gun safety legislation, and overseeing a $1 trillion infrastructure investment.
What are Harris’s chances?
Joe Biden’s campaign page on X, BidenHQ, has been renamed as ‘KamalaHQ’ and while Biden cannot legally transfer money raised for his campaign nor the endorsements he received to Harris, donations for Harris’ campaign have already started pouring in. Reports suggest Kamala Harris is securing endorsements from various Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Biden-Harris’s competitors in the 2020 primaries, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, have also endorsed Harris’ candidacy. The ‘All state Democratic party chairs’, too, endorsed Harris in a conference held between the 50 chairs soon after Biden announced that he was stepping down.
Donald Trump’s team has already started attacking the Harris campaign with the former president’s running mate J.D. Vance said at a rally, “What the hell has Kamala Harris done other than collect a check?”
According to CNN, Harris was considered the heir-apparent to Biden and was the second most criticised Democrat.
While numerous polls suggest that Trump might still be in a slightly advantageous position against Harris, they also point out that Harris’s popularity would be more than any of the other candidates commonly floated as Biden’s replacement, Forbes reported.
Of all the candidates probable to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate – Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — Harris is the most well-known and has the highest approval ratings.
While Newsom has endorsed Harris and Beshear has had an informal call with the vice-president, Whitmer does not intend to compete for the Democratic nomination. “My job in this election will remain the same,” she wrote on X.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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DEI candidate, let’s see how far one can go with such puffed up credentials.