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Kamala Harris
President Kamala Harris in 2024? This might be Joe Biden’s thinking
Martin Kettle
Such is the scale of rebuilding the US after Trump and Covid, Biden might already be futureproofing the Democrats More
The panel
Kamala Harris
What to make of the Kamala Harris VP pick? Our panel’s verdict
On Tuesday, Joe Biden finally announced his running mate. Here’s what our panelists think about the choice
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4:50
Why Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate – video explainer
Theodore Johnson: Biden is betting on Black voters More
Joe Biden has announced that Senator Kamala Harris will join his political pursuit of the White House.Women of color, particularly progressives, might feel torn. Perhaps they will be excited. Harris is sharp, strategic and witty, undoubtedly qualified to be vice-president of the United States. She graduated from a historically Black college and belongs to a prestigious Black sorority. A biracial woman with Jamaican and Indian heritage, we have seen her break color barriers and shatter glass ceilings, even though poor, Black women have felt and swept the falling shards.Thousands celebrated her senate seat win and even more were captivated when she picked apart presidential candidates at debates – especially Biden. Her one-liners were unforgettable. Until we remembered that she honed those argumentative skills in court as a prosecutor, including during fights to uphold wrongful convictions.Then, there’s the fatigue. Progressives will have to defend the California senator’s personal identity, while maneuvering against her political identity. Political accession and racism go together like stars and stripes. Michelle Obama was horribly depicted as an ape. Donald Trump called Congresswoman Maxine Waters a “low IQ individual.” Just weeks ago, a congressman called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “disgusting” and a “fucking bitch.” Squad members and fellow representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib regularly experience xenophobic, Islamophobic, and racist attacks, which intensified after their statements regarding social justice. Like the rest of these women, Harris deserves safety and protection from harm. Black women, especially her sorors, will likely be her first line of defense.Yet the defense against racist, sexist attacks must not interfere with the necessary offense required to push the Biden-Harris political ticket, for people who choose to play the electoral politics game. When activists criticized Barack Obama, we were scathingly reminded how hard it was for him to be a Black man in the White House. He had significant executive power and influence to shift resources, call for legislation, and even free people from prison (which his own administration seemingly neglected). We were told to wait. Then, after eight years, we were told that too much was at stake to organize for free college, universal healthcare, the end to police and prison violence, and a clean planet. Nina Simone’s song, Mississippi Goddam, calls this “Do It Slow:”But that’s just the trouble, “Do it slow”Desegregation, “Do it slow”Mass participation, “Do it slow”Reunification, ‘“Do it slow”Do things gradually, “Do it slow”But bring more tragedy, “Do it slow”Fifty-six years since the song’s release, the time seems never to be right to push politicians towards progress. No more. No more imaginary ancestral, postmortem pleas on who died so that we can vote today. People fought and died for lots of reasons alongside voting, but most importantly, for the right of self-determination, which moderates defend for the right and dismiss for the left. No more.This generational fatigue, from Nina Simone to Nina Turner, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Cori Bush, is compounded by the political fatigue of doing progressive work around a party that undermines progressive values. Biden and Harris will be determined to prove that their beloved party has not been hijacked by “the radical left,” as Vice-president Mike Pence described today. He continued: “So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine, and abortion on demand, it’s no surprise that he chose Senator Harris.” This inaccurate characterization is an unfortunate tactic that will push the Biden-Harris ticket further to the right. Together, Biden and Harris might still reject universal healthcare during the deadliest pandemic in recent memory. Together, they might promise expensive common sense “police reform” to a movement against senseless police spending. And together, they will affirm the power of the Black vote, while daring, even asking, do you really have any other choice?I am doubtful that Biden and Harris can be pushed. My hope of being wrong is greater than my fear of being right. That hope comes from the countless activists who are choosing to organize across the state and local level, who are vigorously defending democracy on their blocks and creating care in their families and communities. That hope comes from studying the Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party, who, facing impossible odds and considerable violence and no resources, decided to forge an alternative to the political establishment. Hamer asks, “Is this America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”So many of us are fatigued from laboring to change this country and that needs to be acknowledged. If we want to celebrate Black women, let’s start there.• Derecka Purnell is a social movement lawyer and writer based in Washington DC More
Kamala Harris
Party leaders and progressive groups appear largely united behind Joe Biden’s choice of running mate More
Long before Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate, and even before they faced off as rival Democratic presidential candidates, the two had bonded over their mutual love for Biden’s son Beau – and grief over his death.Harris’s friendship with Biden’s late son, who died in 2015 at the age of 46 from brain cancer, was something that Biden said he “thought a lot about” as he made the decision to name her as his running mate. “There is no one’s opinion I valued more than Beau’s and I’m proud to have Kamala standing with me on this campaign,” Biden wrote in a campaign email.Harris and Beau Biden both served as attorney generals – she of California, he of Delaware – and began working closely together while negotiating with banks during the foreclosure crisis in 2011 and 2012.In her memoir, Harris called him an “incredible friend and colleague” who became a close collaborator. “There were periods, when I was taking heat, that Beau and I talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” she wrote. “We had each other’s backs.”After Beau’s death, Harris said at the 2016 California Democratic convention that the Biden family “truly represents our nation’s highest ideals, a powerful belief in the nobility of public service”. Joe Biden, she said, “has given so much to our country and on top of everything he has accomplished, he gave to us my dear friend Beau.”The elder Biden endorsed Harris’s Senate campaign that year, and she endorsed him for president this year after dropping out of the race. In both cases, they mentioned Beau Biden as a reason they trusted and respected each other.In the lead-up to Tuesday’s announcement naming Harris as his running mate, Biden, the former vice-president under Obama, often said he was looking to re-create the sort of relationship that he and Obama shared. Biden wanted a vice president “who is simpatico with where I want to take the country. We can disagree on tactic but not on strategy,” he told MSNBC. More
Kamala Harris
Trump campaign struggles to reconcile accusations that Biden’s VP pick was an overzealous prosecutor and that the pair won’t be tough enough on crime
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2:45
Trump’s surprise as Joe Biden selects Kamala Harris as running mate: ‘She was very nasty’ – video
Donald Trump’s reelection campaign wasted no time in targeting Kamala Harris with scattergun attacks that sought to define her as “the most liberal leftist nominee” ever to run for vice-president.
The US president hurled insults from the bully pulpit of the White House while his campaign released an attack ad within minutes of Democratic rival Joe Biden’s announcement, following up with a media conference call and barrage of emails.
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Would Destroy America,” read the stark headline of one. A fundraising email made reference to “Sleepy Joe Biden and Phony Kamala Harris”.
With 77-year-old Biden far from certain to run for a second term, Harris, now his most likely successor, is naturally more of a target than most running mates. But the Trump campaign struggled to reconcile an apparent contradiction: accusing her of being an overzealous criminal prosecutor in the past on the one hand, while suggesting that she and Biden would neglect law and order on the other.
“She is a person that’s told many, many stories that weren’t true,” Trump, who has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims while in office according to the Washington Post, told reporters at the White House.
Trump – who twice donated to Harris’s campaign for California attorney general – went on to assert, without offering evidence, that she supports raising taxes, “socialised medicine”, slashing funds for the military and putting a stop to fracking.
“She did very, very poorly in the primaries, as you know,” Trump said. Harris dropped out of the Democratic primary race in December, before the first nominating contests were held in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying she did not have funds to continue.
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4:59
Kamala Harris: memorable moments from Joe Biden’s VP pick – video
The president went on to call Harris “nasty”, a word he often applied to his opponent Hillary Clinton in 2016, as he recounted her grilling of his supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
The word came up again as he reflected on the Democratic primary. “She was very, very nasty… she was probably nastier than even Pocahontas to Joe Biden. She was very disrespectful to Joe Biden. And it’s hard to pick somebody that’s that disrespectful.”
It was a reference to the opening primary debate in which Harris challenged Biden over his past opposition to school busing, although she also said, “I do not believe you are a racist,” and he has since made clear he does not hold a grudge.
The Trump campaign appears to have settled on portraying Biden as beholden to the radical left as its least worst strategic option. It quickly folded Harris, the first woman of colour to be named to a major party US presidential ticket, into that narrative – and her voting record in the Senate does place her on the left of her party.
Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator for Tennessee, told reporters: “This has completed the leftist takeover of the party and of their radical agenda. Kamala Harris will be the most liberal leftist nominee for VP that our country has ever seen. If you want to find proof of where she has moved left, you can start with looking at her support for Bernie Sanders’ health care takeover.”
Blackburn went on to claim that Sanders’ plan would take away private health insurance from millions of Americans and cost $32tn. Harris did imply early in the campaign that she endorsed Sanders’ Medicare for All, but later clarified that she did not favour scrapping private insurance.
Blackburn also cited Harris’s support for the Green New Deal, arguing that it would cost jobs and be hugely expensive. Harris was a supporter and co-sponsor of the original Green New Deal resolution offered by Senator Ed Markey.
The Republican senator added that the number one issue for “suburban women” is security. “What you’re going to see is a lot of ‘security moms’ that are all across this nation who are going to say, ‘You know what? Law and order is important to me and I don’t want a vice president who is out there marching in the streets with the BLM organisation. Law and order is important to me and I do not think felons should be voting while they are in prison.’
“They will look at her record as a DA [district attorney] in San Francisco and say, ‘Security in our communities is important and I don’t want someone who says that they are not going to be tough on hardened criminals’.”
But Trump campaign messaging undercut itself on this topic: it argued that in 2004, DA Harris chose not to seek the death penalty against a gang member who killed a San Francisco police officer, but it also stated she fought to keep inmates locked up in prison so they could be used for cheap labour, “championed” a law to put the parents of truant kids in jail and prosecuted a mentally ill woman who was shot by San Francisco police.
Another Trump campaign email alleged: “Harris has endorsed the far-left’s immigration policies that are tantamount to open borders. Harris supports sanctuary cities.”
The word “tantamount” is open to interpretation. The claim about sanctuary cities included a hyperlink to a New York Times article that was 12 years old.
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina and Trump ally, took a more measured approach, acknowledging the threat and summing up why Harris will motivate voters on both sides of the partisan divide. “Senator @KamalaHarris will be a formidable opponent,” he tweeted. “She is smart, aggressive, and has fully bought in to the Democratic Party’s very liberal agenda.”
Topics
Kamala Harris
Democrats
Donald Trump
US politics
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Opinion
Kamala Harris
In this dystopian world, Kamala Harris sails above the presidential bar
Richard Wolffe
Harris reflects something we take for granted in this circling of the drain we call politics in the Trump era: she looks and sounds presidential because she is More
Democrats
Biden’s VP pick ‘makes America look more like America’ – and now Harris is better placed than anyone to be the first female president More
