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This article is more than 1 year old ‘A weight has been lifted’: Washington locals express hope as Biden sworn in This article is more than 1 year old Residents in eerily quiet Washington DC relieved to see Trump leave while 25,000 national guard troops on patrol Biden inauguration – live updates As she watched […] More
As she watched Donald Trump’s helicopter lift away from the White House on Wednesday morning, Nadine Seiler said, she gave it the finger.
“I’ve been protesting him for four years,” the 55-year-old said. “I can exhale now that he’s gone.”
Seiler was standing in Black Lives Matter Plaza, outside the heavily barricaded White House, wearing an outfit that captured the arc of the last four years of protest. She had donned a pink knit pussy hat, a symbol of the Women’s March, the first major demonstration of Trump’s tenure, and a face mask painted with the words “Madam VP”, in honor of the country’s first Black, south Asian and female vice-president, who would be inaugurated later that day.
“I can’t let my guard down,” she added. “His supporters are going to be terrorizing America for the next four years.”
Even as he left Washington, Seiler said, Trump was “giving them dog whistles”, telling supporters their movement was not over.
Still, across an eerily quiet Washington, with streets blocked with fences and checkpoints, and 25,000 national guard troops – more than the number of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined – on patrol, local residents said they felt tentatively hopeful. More
Kamala Harris has been sworn in as vice-president, becoming the first woman in American history – as well as the first woman of African American and south Asian descent – to hold the post.The former California senator was sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the supreme court. Harris chose to be sworn in using two Bibles, one from the late Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, and one from Regina Shelton, a close family friend who was something like a surrogate mother for Harris and her sister when they were growing up.“Ready to serve,” Harris tweeted from her new vice-presidential Twitter account shortly after being sworn in.Harris’s inauguration marks a turning point in American history. Women have run on presidential tickets as would-be vice-presidents but until Joe Biden’s win, none were victorious.Wearing a face mask, Harris was escorted through the Capitol by Eugene Goodman, the African American Capitol police officer who was hailed as a hero for helping to distract rioters from invading the Senate floor during the attack this month.As the newly sworn-in vice-president left the Capitol, she mingled with attendees and gave a hug to Barack Obama.Harris’s elevation fulfills a major a goal of Biden’s presidential arc: to install people of color and women in powerful positions in his administration, oftentimes where, historically, only white men have been.Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who offered introductory remarks before Harris took the oath of office, noted that Harris “stands on the shoulders of so many on this platform”.Klobuchar added that with Harris as vice-president, “little girls and little boys across the world will know that anything and everything is possible. And in the end, that is America.”Harris spoke with the now former vice-president, Mike Pence, earlier this week and Pence left a note in the vice-president’s office for his successor. Pence sat feet away from Harris as she took the oath of office.Madam Vice President Kamala Devi Harris!!!— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 20, 2021
Harris’s congressional and California colleagues, as well as fellow Howard University alumnae, hailed her new job. Democrat Karen Carter Peterson, a Louisiana state senator running for Congress who also attended the university, tweeted: “Madam Vice President Harris!”“In many folks’ lifetimes, we experienced a segregated United States,” said Lateefah Simon, a civil rights advocate and longtime Harris friend and mentee. “You will now have a Black woman who will walk into the White House not as a guest but as a second in command of the free world.”Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and sometime Democratic rival to Harris, said: “History made.”Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio noted the momentous nature of Harris’s new position for Americans and especially young Black people.“American workers will finally have someone on their side in the White House, and millions of girls – especially Black and brown girls – all over the country are seeing that there is no limit to their dreams, and they belong in every room where decisions are made,” Brown said in a statement.Oprah Winfrey said she was in tears over Harris.Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, also offered felicitations.Congratulations to @KamalaHarris on being sworn-in as @VP. It is a historic occasion. Looking forward to interacting with her to make India-USA relations more robust. The India-USA partnership is beneficial for our planet.— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2021
Republicans offered cautious greetings to Harris and the new Biden administration.Congratulations to President @JoeBiden and VP @KamalaHarris. I’m glad to have joined in the peaceful transition of power today. I look forward to working with the Biden administration when it is good for Montana and will vigorously push back when necessary.— Steve Daines (@SteveDaines) January 20, 2021
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, said Wednesday marked a peaceful transition of power. He did not mention Harris directly.Today we witnessed a central tenet of American democracy: the peaceful transition of power. We are one nation under God, and it is time for all of us to unite as one American family. (1/2)— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) January 20, 2021
Brandon Davis, a veteran Democratic political strategist who runs a firm specializing in working for Black candidates, said Harris “will likely have a larger profile given the historic nature and her high profile, but she will be able to learn and strengthen her personal politics from a key position”.It “will be interesting to see how she tacks her politics on issues of race, particularly criminal justice reform, and how she builds a record on the economy,” Davis added in an email. “No matter what, she is a HUGE player in the Democratic Party / Left for the next decade.”Harris often says that she wants to be a “person that sees everyone”, said the Democratic strategist Minyon Moore, who had been advising Harris when she became vice-president-elect and helped set up the staffing for her office. “I think what the president did by appointing her as his nominee at the time, he was signaling to the world: we see everyone in America.”Governor Phil Scott of Vermont, a Republican and one of the most popular governors in the country, issued a statement extending “my sincere congratulations and best wishes to the president and vice-president on their swearing-in to lead our nation.”“The challenges we face are great: confronting a global pandemic and its economic fallout; strengthening America’s position in the world and our alliances; combating systemic racism; addressing climate change; building a stronger and more diverse economy that reduces economic inequality for all Americans in every community; and so much more,” Scott said.Even as she becomes vice-president, Harris’s portfolio remains unclear. Biden and Harris have described their ideal relationship as similar to that between Biden and Barack Obama when the latter was president. Biden was to be the last voice in the room on any major decision.But that dynamic will not be perfectly replicated. Biden spent decades in the Senate while Harris was in her first term when she first ran unsuccessfully for president and then was selected as Biden’s running mate.Unlike recent vice-presidents, though, Harris is expected to often play a deciding role in the Senate because of the 50-50 split.Harris will reside at the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of the vice-president. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, will join her there and become the first man married to a vice-president. He will be referred to as the second gentleman.Harris, a lawyer, is the former attorney general for California. She attended Howard University in Washington DC for her undergraduate degree and often references her time there.Harris becomes vice-president with a relatively new team in her office. Her chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, was not a member of her campaign staff. Harris’s chief spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, also a woman of color, served as a top adviser to Biden throughout his successful presidential campaign. Sanders began traveling with Harris near the end of the campaign and stayed on with Harris through the transition. More
It was a moment of immense relief across the world, rather than unbridled celebration. Washington saw an orderly transition of power at the Capitol, just two weeks after the attack on it; the departure of a man who has thrived on division and the anointment of Joe Biden, who pledges unity; the arrival of Kamala Harris – the first female vice-president and a woman of colour – after the racism and misogyny of Donald Trump. Yet there were no cheering crowds to greet the new president, and 25,000 members of the National Guard stood watch, thanks to his predecessor’s legacy: the deadly toll of the pandemic and the political violence epitomised by this month’s insurrection. That threat did not recede when the 46th president took his oath of office. It is part of America’s body politic, as are the bitter political forces that birthed it. Though Mr Trump was resoundingly defeated, more than 70 million Americans voted for him and a huge number of those now believe that President Biden stole his job. One in five voters supported the storming of the Capitol.Mr Trump, petty to the last, slunk away to Florida rather than face his defeat. But whether or not the twice-impeached ex-president can maintain political momentum, Trumpism in the broader sense is thriving. Its next standard bearer – there are plenty of hopefuls – could well be smarter and more dangerous. So the sombre mood was not only inevitable but apt. The perils facing the republic have rarely been greater. Mr Biden’s speech rose to the moment. He acknowledged the constant struggles of his nation, and the current dangers. But he also promised: “Democracy has prevailed … Our better angels have always prevailed.”The new president has promised a flurry of action, expecting little honeymoon. He must tackle the pandemic that has taken 400,000 American lives – a quarter of those in the past month – and the economic crisis, with 10 million fewer employed than a year ago; he plans a $1.9tn stimulus package. A slew of executive orders on his first afternoon – axing the Muslim travel ban; rejoining the Paris climate agreement – are set to reverse some of Mr Trump’s most egregious acts. But erasing the last four years is impossible. Only some policies can be enacted at the stroke of a pen. An ambitious legislative agenda must force its way through a 50/50 Senate. The Trump administration scrapped regulation and stacked courts. Above all, it tore apart the social and political fabric of the United States, making brazen lies, naked cruelty and hatred commonplace. Mr Trump was the product of his country’s failures, but further exposed and exacerbated them. Europe and other allies are breathing easier, but America’s standing cannot truly be restored until its domestic crises are resolved. At best, Mr Biden will begin to address them. He reminded his listeners that politics “does not have to be a raging fire destroying everything in its path”, in a call for honesty and decency that should be heard not only in the US, but across the Atlantic. Yet others are still pouring on the fuel. While some Republicans belatedly scramble for the vestiges of respectability, others continue to foment lies. Facts have become optional in the age of disinformation.Changing the president, as hard as it has been, was an easy task set against the challenge of binding up the nation’s wounds. But this is, at least, the removal of a dangerous man and the arrival of a president who believes in his oath of office. This inauguration brings hope, however tentative, at a time when the US desperately needs it. More
In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end”.•••The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.Polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short termCan Bideneven hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.Biden is likely to be judged swiftly on his ability to accelerate the pace of inoculations, presenting the opportunity to create early goodwill and momentum.In an early sign that he wants to be seen to act decisively, Biden on Thursday outlined $1.9tn in emergency relief, called the American Rescue Plan, including $400bn to deliver 100m vaccines in his first 100 days. The plan also directs more than $1tn to Americans through individual economic stimulus payments of $1,400 and increased unemployment benefits. It proposes more than doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour alongside other measure to alleviate child poverty.Biden has said the plan is only an interim measure and that more money will come. But even the present proposal will be too much for most Republicans in Congress and the bill will provide an early test of how far they are prepared to cooperate or if they will pursue the same obstructionist strategy deployed against Obama.Biden has the advantage of control but only by a slim margin in the House of Representatives and by relying on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote in the Senate. A lack of votes for the full package may force Biden to scale back his proposals but with them the incoming president put down a marker.David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, about the Democrats’ loss of their traditional blue collar base, said the incoming president has spoken more clearly about the struggle of working class communities than any since Bill Clinton in the 1990s.“Biden’s done a good job in sounding measured in a hyper-polarised environment, and that’s really important,” he said. “He gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgotten and that he sees them now. Those were comments that we haven’t heard from any Democrat, like on the dignity of work, since Clinton. It was a significant step in the right direction.”Biden’s ability to deliver across a range of issues is something that preoccupies his supporters. Some Democrats are haunted by what they regard as a central lesson from the Obama years – the failure to seize the opportunities offered by the Great Recession when he took office in 2009, to reform an economic system that has worked against most Americans for at least four decades. To a part of America, Obama lookedto have rescued the banks while abandoning millions of ordinary people who lost their homes to foreclosure – helping drive some of the shift to Trump in 2016.Biden gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgottenKuhn said Biden would do well to heed the lesson: “Barack Obama was talking about a new New Deal leading into December 2008 but there was no new New Deal. When Joe Biden was vice-president, there are the voters who lost the most jobs during the Great Recession while they saw stimulus payments going to the fat cats on Wall Street.”The pandemic has helped lay the ground for bold policies by once again exposing deep economic inequalities and the precarious financial position of large numbers of Americans. But Biden will have to tread carefully over key legislation pushed by the left of his party, particularly the green new deal which is hugely popular among some Democrats but reviled in parts of the country. Some Democrats think a relatively easy path would be a major spending bill to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, such as dangerously old bridges and dams, as well as new projects like high-speed rail. It would not only offer a vehicle to address some environmental issues but provide jobs and investment in some of the most neglected parts of the country.“An infrastructure bill might include a lot of clean energy but it would not be mistaken for the green new deal. It’s a good compromise that’s actually conceivably possible,” said Franklin.“I think infrastructure, of all the issues we deal with, it’s one that most easily resonates with working people, whether it’s construction work or highways, or water mains or electrical utilities. The irony is Trump talked a lot about infrastructure but never put forward a bill, when his own party probably would have thought it was pretty good.”•••Another challenge for Biden is to develop policies to address a sense of abandonment felt in mostly white rust belt and midwestern rural communities that were once solidly Democratwhile also addressing racial inequality and discrimination.“Biden talked about blue collar workers in his background, the people he grew up with,” said Franklin. “I thought that was an attempt to reach that disaffected blue collar, but not theneo-nazi Klan racist segment of the population. He tried to speak directly to those folks in a way that many see the Democratic party more generally is failing to do.”Kuhn said Biden should go further: “If he’s talking about common cause, he can push back against this fashionable notion in the United States that these families living pay cheque to pay cheque, that their struggle through life is actually a ‘privilege’ because they are white. Clearly, some portion of the American right feel that their frustrations don’t matter, because they happen also be white. ”Lilliana Mason, a professor of politics and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity disagrees. She sees communities that provided bedrock support for Trump’s white nationalism and questions whether Biden will find backing even for programmes that help them.“There’s this increasing inequality which has created this kind of rural white Republican identity that’s based on white rural people feeling condescended to and that no one really listens to their needs,” she said. “But there’s also this resentment that their tax dollars go to the cities and to black people. They don’t want their tax dollars to help other people, meaning black people, even while it helps them.”The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressedThose resentments may run even deeper if Biden follows through on promises to confront the challenge of building racial reconciliation in the age of resurgent white nationalism.Any incoming Democratic president faces pressure to address the legacy of centuries of systematic racism. The killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed and Trump’s feeding of hate has given an added urgency to demands for action.In his victory speech after beating Trump, Biden said he would “battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country”. His choice of Kamala Harris as vice-president was read as a statement that he will take racial equality seriously and he has nominated the most diverse cabinet in US history.But Biden failed to heed a call from the National Association for the Advancement Colored People to go further and create a new cabinet post “for racial justice, equity and advancement”. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, called the move a “bold action” that would demonstrate the incoming president’s commitment to elevating racial justice as a priority.“The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressed, and after four years of regression on social, civil, and political matters that profoundly impact the American people, specifically, black people, we must prioritise the transformation of our nation into a more just, equal society in which all Americans can succeed and thrive,” he said.Biden has promised a raft of investments in creating in creating business opportunities, promoting homeownership and giving more education and training opportunities to underserved communities.But the new president remains cautious about how police reform will be read in the rest of the country. He told civil rights leaders that the cry to “defund the police” after Floyd’s death was misunderstood and damaging to the Democratic party, particularly candidates for Congress and in state races. Organisers in the rural midwest said the slogan, and the violence around some protests, was a major reason Trump’s vote went up in November, even in swing counties twice won by Obama.“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said last month according to an audio recording of a meeting published by the Intercept.He promised that there will be significant changes to the police but said how they are framed is important in winning broader public support. Franklin said there is a path that could unite not divide Americans.“When you ask about defund the police, it’s about 20% that favour of that. But when you talk about reform the police and hold police accountable, it’s like 70% or 80% in favour. Policing is very high on everybody’s list.”Biden will remain under pressure from black voters who were instrumental in his defeat of Trump, turning out in large numbers in midwestern cities to offset the white rural vote. They will want to know that their concerns are not just being heard but addressed, and that police reforms run deep as a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to racial reconciliation.Biden will also be under pressure from African American members of Congress, not least the majority whip, James Clyburn, who rescued the new president’s primary campaign a year ago.At the time Clyburn spoke of his own fears a year ago as he urged primary voters in South Carolina to back Biden who was on the back foot after a humiliating defeat in Iowa. “We are at an inflection point. I’m fearful for my daughters and their future and their children and their children’s future,” he saidThat speech helped Biden win South Carolina. A year later, it gives Clyburn leverage and the new president’s ear in ensuring the promise of racial reconciliation is not compromised by the desire to win over discontented whites.Biden’s criminal justice plan includes scrapping disparate sentencing for drug crimes that frequently results in longer sentences for African Americans for similar offences to those committed by whites, and for decriminalising marijuana.Biden also has a political incentive to confront voting rights for minorities given the escalation in Republican-controlled states of voter suppression which disproportionately keeps black people away from the polls.•••There are other policies likely to win support among large numbers of Americans, including some Trump voters, that would benefit underserved communities in particular.Biden has promised to write off up to $10,000 in student debt owed to the federal government. Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the issue was a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to helping the working poor.“There are a lot of people who came out to vote in this election who frankly did it as their last shot at seeing whether the government can really work for them,” she told the New York Times. “If we don’t deliver quick relief, it’s going to be very difficult to get them back.”Biden will be attempting to heal the divide in the face of what is expected to be a drumbeat of hostility from Trump who shows every intention of continuing to whip up anger and hate. At the core will be the claim that Biden stole the election, a powerful mantra among a section of voters that will keep the pressure on Republican legislators not to cooperate with the new president.Mason said whatever Biden does, the divisions in the country will remain stark.“It’s not just that those Trump supporters don’t like it that Biden’s president,” she said, “it’s that they fully believe that the election was stolen and he’s an illegitimate president. And as long as there are Republican leaders who are going to keep telling them that lie, they’re going to keep believing it. So to that extent, I don’t see any way to get away from a whole bunch of domestic terrorism happening during Biden’s term.” More
The president of the United States spent weeks recruiting then inciting a mob to invade Congress and prevent the certification of his opponent’s victory. The intruders killed one police officer and injured more than a dozen, pummeling them with everything from flagstaffs to fire extinguishers.Democratic House members talked openly about feeling threatened in the presence of newly-elected white supremacist, QAnon-friendly colleagues across the aisle, as evidence grew that several such gun-toting Republicans may have directly collaborated with the lovely people who tried to destroy their workspace.All this after the president issued waves of pardons for war criminals and stock manipulators – and, perhaps, just before a new wave of pardons for himself, his family and everyone he incited to destroy the Capitol.After being assaulted for four long years with so much evidence of American venality, now more than ever we need to remind ourselves that a new and hopeful era will begin just three days from now – thanks to the extraordinary hard work of a majority of decent, voting Americans.Yes, 74 million inexplicably voted to re-elect the most corrupt and incompetent president in American history. But surely this is the more important fact: 81 million chose Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, thereby giving us the first woman, the first African American and the first Indian American ever to serve as vice-president.She’s prepared, she’s focused, she’s smart, she’s effective, she does her homework. And that’s the coin of the realmThe good news from the author of this new biography of Harris is that even a former editorial writer who endorsed Harris’ opponent when she ran for California attorney general now recognizes she is supremely qualified to be Biden’s governing partner.“Kamala Harris comes to play … every single day,” said her Senate colleague Ron Wyden, from Oregon. “She’s prepared, she’s focused, she’s smart, she’s effective, she does her homework. And that’s really the coin of the realm of the Senate: who’s doing their homework and who’s just throwing press releases out for a 10-second sizzle.”In this case, heritage is almost as important as talent. The daughter of a Jamaican-born economist and Indian-born cancer researcher, Harris embodies the American immigrant dream – and everything Donald Trump and his disgusting minions have spent four years seeking to destroy.Dan Morain is a former state political reporter for the Los Angeles Times and former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee but he doesn’t have any scoops in Kamala’s Way. He has done a workmanlike job of assessing her passions and her accomplishments. But often his best details are lifted directly from her own autobiography, including this description of her life as an undergraduate at Howard University, America’s premier black college in Washington DC:
“You could stand in the middle of the Yard and see, on your right, young dancers practicing their steps or musicians playing instruments. Look to your left and there were briefcase-toting students strolling out of the business school, and medical students in their white coats … That was the beauty of Howard. Every signal told students that we could be anything – that we were young, gifted and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success.”
One thing Harris doesn’t describe in her autobiography is the jump start her career got from a romance with Willie Brown, the grand old man of California politics, a long-time speaker of the state assembly who became mayor of San Francisco. Harris was just 30 when she was outed as Brown’s girlfriend at his 60th birthday party. The legendary San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, reported that Clint Eastwood spilled champagne “on the Speaker’s new steady, Kamala Harris”.The political education she received from Brown undoubtedly contributed to her rapid rise, from San Francisco district attorney to California attorney general to United States senator. But even as she enjoyed the usual perks of a California politician, crossing paths with everyone from Elton John to George Lucas and Sharon Stone, Harris was always impressing colleagues with her seriousness – from early advocacy for marriage equality to determination to get $20bn out of the nation’s largest banks as punishment for their abuses of the foreclosure process after the collapse of the housing bubble.She was also an enthusiastic enforcer of a California law that takes guns out of the hands of convicted felons.By the time she ran her first campaign for DA, eight years after her romance with Brown was over, she didn’t hesitate to call him her “albatross”. In a clever bit of political jiujitsu, she told SF Weekly: “I refuse to design my campaign around criticizing Willie Brown for the sake of appearing to be independent when I have no doubt that I am independent of him – and that he would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me. His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years.”From the beginning she was a superb networker, becoming one of Barack Obama’s earliest supporters when he ran for president, befriending Joe Biden’s son Beau when both were state attorneys general. In the Senate, she was appropriately abrasive when she interrogated Trump’s cabinet nominees. But she was also careful to be much more respectful of Senate staffers than many other senators.All her life, Harris has made a habit of exceeding expectations. This book suggests she will do that again as vice-president – and that one day she might also excel as America’s first woman, first Indian and second Black president. More
When Kamala Harris raises her right hand and takes the oath of office on Wednesday she will realize a multitude of historic firsts – becoming America’s first female, first Black and first south Asian American vice-president.Exactly two weeks after a deadly attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, and a week after the president’s second impeachment, it will be a barrier-breaking moment for millions of women across the US and the world that it is hoped will signal a distinct shift away from the chaos and racist rhetoric of the previous administration.But for Harris, it will also be deeply personal. The California senator has said she will be thinking of her late mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an activist and breast cancer researcher who immigrated to the US from India in 1958, and children who were told by their parents: “You can do anything.”“I feel a very big sense of responsibility … I will be the first, but I will not be the last,” she told ABC, echoing her mother’s words and those of her powerful victory speech.Bakari Sellers, a friend and supporter, said it will be an “amazing moment” for Harris and her sister Maya, with whom she is very close and was the chairwoman of her presidential campaign, and that their mother “is going to be looking down on them both”.“Personally it’s going to be an awesome feeling, and then she’ll have a sense of history because from a historical perspective there’s so many women who chipped away at that glass ceiling and now she has broken it. And I think that she will feel the weight of that history on her shoulders,” added Sellers, an attorney, commentator and author of My Vanishing Country.But with the coronavirus pandemic still raging across the US, and amid heightened security fears following the attack on 6 January and the threat of unrest from far-right extremist groups, the inaugurationwill look very different from previous years.There will be minimal in-person spectators at the inauguration, themed “America United”, and a virtual parade. Guests will include Vice-President Mike Pence (but not the president, who has said he won’t attend) and former presidents and first ladies Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W and Laura Bush.Harris, 56, is expected to be sworn in just before Biden, 78, at around midday in a televised ceremony in front of the US Capitol that will include performances by Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez.Together with her husband Doug Emhoff, who will become America’s first “second gentleman”, she will then take part in a pass in review, a tradition with members of the military, and attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington national cemetery with the new president and first lady, Dr Jill Biden.She will also feature in an evening prime-time television special called Celebrating America.It signals to the world that we are an interracial democracyManisha Sinha, history professor at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, said Harris’s vice-presidency has galvanised huge enthusiasm among Black women and the Indian American and Asian American communities and signifies “a new direction in American democracy”.She added: “It’s also a symbol to the rest of the world that has been watching the United States in horror, just to have her and Biden take over is really important. It signals to the world that we are an interracial democracy and that certainly her election is a rejection of the kind of white supremacist politics that Trump brought back into vogue.”But, she warned, the whole country is not behind America’s increasingly diverse political landscape, demonstrated by a “tremendous racist backlash”.“There is a strong unregenerate minority in this country that is willing to overthrow democracy in the United States rather than accept the election of people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.”Harris’s role will be far more than symbolic. Unusually for a vice-president whose official role is largely ceremonial, she will wield considerable power.Biden has vowed that Harris will be the “last person in the room” making important decisions, modelled on his relationship as vice-president with Obama, and has asked the vice-president-elect to bring her “lived experience” to every issue. Harris has said she wants to be a “full partner”.But in addition to her White House duties, following the Democrats’ two recent Senate victories in Georgia, Harris will also play a high-profile role in passing legislation on Capitol Hill.Despite their constitutional duty as president of the Senate, vice-presidents are only allowed to vote to break a tie. But with the balance of power evenly split 50-50 with Republicans, it is likely that Harris will be required to spend more time than perhaps she imagined with her former Senate colleagues.The last two times that the Senate had a 50-50 split was for six months in 2001, under the vice-presidency of Dick Cheney, and in 1954. Harris is likely to be in this position for at least two years.Jennifer Lawless, a politics professor at the University of Virginia, said Harris’s pivotal role in the Senate will mean she “is going to be cast in a very different light than previous vice-presidents” and will make her crucial in terms of putting forward a legislative agenda.“Now that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to weigh in on important policy decisions or try to be a broad adviser to Joe Biden, [but] at least for that first 100 days, she’s pivotal to ensuring that any piece of tied legislation gets passed because that’s how Joe Biden’s going to build a legislative record.”In a lot of ways, she’s basically just taking on an additional job – she’s going to be a senator plus vice-presidentShe added: “I can’t remember another time, and in contemporary history there isn’t one, where the vice-president is basically the person determining whether legislation gets to the president’s desk.”The extent to which her Senate responsibilities will shape her vice-presidency will depend on what happens in the 2022 midterms, said Lawless. But she believes it could constrain her ability to work across party lines as well as other responsibilities and potential to travel.“In a lot of ways, she’s basically just taking on an additional job – she’s going to be a senator plus vice-president … that’s sort of poetic in that women have been doing three times as much work as men forever,” said Lawless.Harris allies insist nothing has changed in her approach to the vice-presidency in which she will be a “governing partner” to Biden.A source familiar with the situation said: “If she needs to be there [the Senate] for anything, she will, but the president-elect won because people want the gridlock in Washington to end. Our goal is to work across the aisle to get things done.”Despite an impeachment trial, expected to take place in the Senate in the early days of the new administration, Harris has said they will be “hitting the ground running” on their first day of office, starting with a $1.9tn rescue package to address the pandemic and the economic crisis. Their other top priorities, the source said, will be racial justice and climate change. “She is approaching this as a partner to him and they have to address those together.”The pair are said to have a “wonderful dynamic” and are in constant contact. Their spouses are also said to have a good relationship and are well acquainted after travelling extensively together on the campaign trail.She’s thoughtful, she is deliberate, she is strategic, she thinks more than one step aheadDan Morain, a California-based journalist and author of biography Kamala’s Way: An American Life, said she is an “incredibly talented politician”.“She’s thoughtful, she is deliberate, she is strategic, she thinks more than one step ahead, she thinks many steps ahead.”In California, where Harris was district attorney and attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2016, Morain said she was known for being “tough and demanding” but also “incredibly charming and charismatic”. He believes there is little doubt that Harris, who ran against Biden in the 2020 presidential election, will run again for president in the future.Lateefah Simon, a civil rights activist who worked for Harris in San Francisco and considers her a mentor, cannot wait to see the vice-president-elect – who she refers to as the MVP (Madam Vice-President) – in the White House.“Kamala shifts that conversation, not only for little Black girls, but for all women who believe that they have to wait their turn,” she said. “Kamala showed us that there’s no turns – if you’re right for the job, you work hard, and you take it.”Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino More
