I’m struck just in your presence,’ a news anchor gushed to Kamala Harris in January. The Vice President beamed, nodding for her interviewer to continue. ‘You hear candidates suggesting that a vote for President Biden, because of his age, is a vote for you.’ The reporter paused: ‘And that is hurled as an insult.’
Harris explained that this is the price women pay for professional success – in her case, rising from first female attorney general in California to state senator to Vice President of the United States. ‘I love my job,’ Harris concluded, wrapping up the kind of hard-hitting interview the media tends to throw her way.
Insult or not, the suggestion that a vote for Biden was a vote for Harris turned out to be true. The President’s decision to withdraw his campaign 107 days out from polling day – followed by a glowing endorsement for his VP – ensured Harris’s ascendency to the top of the ticket. A series of Zoom meetings this week have nearly finalised the process, which will see delegates confirm Harris as the presidential nominee next month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
It’s a remarkable rise in just four years. In early 2020 Harris was recovering from her botched run for president. Then a junior senator, her polling among fellow Democrats had been down in the single digits, so in December 2019 she pulled out of the primaries before the first ballots were cast. Now, in a matter of weeks, only Donald Trump stands in the way of her being elected to the most powerful job in the world.
Harris and Biden never fell into the same political camp until they were on the same ballot
It’s a serendipitous position for the Vice President. What might she do with it?
‘I love you, Joe,’ Harris said down the line to the President during her first rally on Monday, speaking to campaign staff in Delaware.
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