Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris accepted her place in history on Saturday night with a speech honoring the women who she said “paved the way for this moment tonight”, when the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants would stand before the nation as the vice-president-elect of the United States.
With her ascension to the nation’s second highest office, Harris, 56, will become the first woman and the first woman of color to be elected vice president, a reality that shaped her speech and brought tears to the eyes of many women and girls watching from the hoods of their cars that had gathered in the parking lot of a convention center in Wilmington, Delaware.
Wearing an all-white pantsuit, in an apparent tribute to the suffragists who fought for a woman’s right to vote, Harris smiled, exultant, as she waved from the podium waiting for the blare of car horns and cheers to subside. Joe Biden, the president-elect, would speak next. But this was a moment all her own.
She began her remarks with a tribute to the legacy of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.
“Protecting our democracy takes struggle,” Harris said, speaking from a stage outside the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington. “It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it. And there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future.”

With Harris poised to become the highest-ranking woman in the history of American government, this milestone marks the extraordinary arc of a political career that has broken racial and gender barriers at nearly every turn. As a prosecutor, she rose to become the first Black woman attorney general of California. When she was elected to the Senate in 2016, she became only the second Black woman in history to serve in the chamber.
In her remarks, Harris paid tribute to the women across the country – and throughout history – who made this moment possible.
“I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision, to see what can be, unburdened by what has been,” she said. “I stand on their shoulders.”
She specifically honored the contributions of Black women to the struggle for suffrage, equality and civil rights – leaders who are “too often overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy”.
As a candidate for president, Harris spoke often of her childhood spent attending civil rights marches with her parents, who were students at the University of California, Berkeley. When protests erupted in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd this summer, Harris joined activists in the streets to demand an end to police brutality and racial injustice.
As Biden searched for a running mate, pressure built to choose a Black woman in recognition not only of the role they played in salvaging his presidential campaign – which Biden acknowledged in his remarks on Saturday night – but of their significance to the party as a whole. Yet a narrative began to form that Harris was a somewhat conventional choice, a senator and one-time Democratic rival who brought generational, ideological and racial balance to the Democratic ticket. More

President-elect Joe Biden declared victory in the US presidential race on Saturday and called for Americans to come together after years of partisan rancor.
“The people of this nation have spoken. They’ve delivered us a convincing victory. A clear victory,” Biden told the crowd of supporters in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden became the president-elect after several days of vote counting when major news outlets called Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes for the former vice-president. Soon after the Pennsylvania call, media outlets announced Biden had also defeated Donald Trump in Arizona and Nevada, giving him a total of 290 electoral votes. Echoing the introductory speech by his running-mate, Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris, Biden in his speech pledged to be a president for all Americans, including the 70 million who voted to re-elect Trump.“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but to unify,” Biden said.
The incoming 46th president acknowledged the current era of hyper-partisan politics and tense race relations across the country. “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end – here and now,” he said.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again,” Biden added.
“To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans. The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America,” Biden said.
And he acknowledged the historic nature of his campaign, and the supporters that buoyed it even when it struggled to stay afloat.

“To all those who supported us: I am proud of the campaign we built and ran. I am proud of the coalition we put together, the broadest and most diverse in history. Democrats, Republicans and independents,” Biden said. “Progressives, moderates and conservatives. Young and old. Urban, suburban and rural. Gay, straight, transgender. White. Latino. Asian. Native American. And especially for those moments when this campaign was at its lowest – the African American community stood up again for me. They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”
Cars at the Chase Center convention venue honked and supporters cheered throughout the address.
Biden’s speech was as much a celebration as it was an acknowledgement of the momentous tasks his incoming administration faces. The US confirmed 126,480 new coronavirus cases on Friday, a record number for a third day in a row. Millions of Americans are still losing their jobs each month, and the climate crisis is worsening.
Biden is likely to enter his first term as president with a divided Congress, where Democratscontrol the House of Representatives but Republicans hold a majority in the Senate.
Biden on Saturday formally announced a new taskforce to plan federal efforts to curb the virus. “On Monday, I will name a group of leading scientists and experts as transition advisers to help take the Biden-Harris Covid plan and convert it into an action blueprint that starts on January 20 2021,” Biden said. “That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy, and concern. I will spare no effort – or commitment – to turn this pandemic around.”

Biden was introduced by Kamala Harris, the California senator who is now the vice-president elect. She noted the historical aspect of her ascension to the vice-presidency, becoming the the first woman of color to inhabit the office. She thanked Biden for helping break “one of the most substantial barriers” and picking a woman as his vice-president. She vowed to be a vice-president for all Americans.
It was a theme the ticket would return to repeatedly. Biden stressed the need for unity in addressing the challenges the country faces going forward, and he reached out to supporters of Donald Trump – one of the only times he and Harris directly name-checked the president in their remarks.
“And to those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of elections myself,” Biden said. “But now, let’s give each other a chance.”
It’s unclear whether Trump will continue the traditions past presidents have kept when leaving office, both because of term limits and electoral defeat.
Trump has not conceded the race and he and some of his advisers say that the election results are laced with fraud. Those claims are unfounded. After the race was called for Biden, Trump sent out several angry tweets, baselessly alleging vote count irregularities.
The White House signaled that it would have no more public events on Saturday. The 45th president went golfing earlier in the day.
During Biden’s speech, Trump was in the executive residence of the White House with the first lady, Melania Trump. It is unclear if he watched Biden’s remarks. As of Saturday, Trump had not extended an invitation to meet with Biden, as presidents normally do with their successors.
After Biden’s speech, the campaign shot out fireworks as the incoming first and second families watched together on stage. The fireworks included the Biden campaign logo and the words “president-elect” and “vice-president-elect.” More