John Adams, the second president of the United States, called the vice presidency “the most insignificant office,” and Republicans consider Democrat Kamala Harris’s tenure in the office to have been utterly in vain. But Harris (Oakland, California, 59), the first woman, the first black woman and the first South Asian American to hold the office, in 2021, now has a historic opportunity to hit back at the Trumpists. Never in American history has a vice president taken up the electoral baton to fight for the presidency at such an advanced stage of the campaign.
Before becoming president, Adams was vice president to George Washington, so he knew what he was talking about. He set the precedent for the transition from one office to another and since then, at the end of the 18th century, three sitting vice presidents have been elected president, as well as two former vice presidents, including Joe Biden. A kind of sudoku of ambitions and misfortunes, like those that brought Kamala Harris’s leader to the White House in 2020 and, this Sunday, take him away from it for good.
Since the era of Adams and the founding fathers, the position of vice president has gained in substance: it is no longer just the one in charge of succeeding the president in the event of death, resignation or dismissal, nor of presiding over the Senate and breaking ties in votes (with the slim Democratic majority, Harris has broken the record for tiebreakers in a legislature, 32 as of last December). The successful Californian lawyer – too Californian, that is, liberal, for Republicans – has also taken on part of the Biden Administration’s immigration policy since 2021, to the point of being ridiculed by the opposition as an “immigration czar.” Since the Supreme Court’s revocation, in June 2022, of the doctrine Roe vs Wade, which enshrined constitutional protection of the right to abortion, she also became a standard-bearer for the sexual and reproductive health of her fellow women, a political trump card that allowed the Democrats to save face, and even the scenery, in the midterm elections in November of that year. A self-confessed feminist, her gesture of wearing white on the night of the celebration of the Democratic victory in Wilmington (Delaware) recalled the struggle of the suffragettes.
Kamala Harris, pure Democratic elite, arrived at the White House as number two Biden’s campaign after having challenged him in the primaries. She was backed by a term in the House of Representatives (2017-2021) and, previously, six years of experience as California’s attorney general (2011-2017). The Attorney General’s Office and the Senate, in that order: the planned ladder to power in the US; the successful culmination of years of experience as, first, assistant district attorney (1990-98) in Oakland, where she gained a reputation for being tough on cases of gang violence, drug trafficking and sexual abuse, and district attorney (2004), the springboard to the State Attorney General’s Office.
These were the times of Democrat Barack Obama, and the hangover from the great crisis of 2008, with its history of bankruptcies, and Harris demonstrated her political independence, rejecting, for example, the pressures of the Government to reach an agreement in a national lawsuit against mortgage lenders for unfair practices (the hole of the junk mortgages or subprime Persistent and tenacious, Harris insisted on the example of California and in 2012 she obtained a sentence five times higher than the one Washington invited her to close. Particularly noteworthy was her repeal in 2013 of Proposition 8 (2008), which prohibited same-sex marriage in the State of California. Her book Smart on Crime,published in2009, was considered a model for addressing the problem of criminal recidivism.
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In addition to being the most natural and, above all, automatic replacement, pending confirmation from the party, Biden now seems to be returning the favour to Harris. The one who in the previous elections seemed a solid contender for the Democratic nomination, in a particularly crowded primary, threw in the towel in December 2019 when she failed to gain an advantage from the back of the pack. Three months later, at the dawn of the pandemic, she gave her support to Biden, the sixth of all the candidates for the post. The Democratic competition was then reduced to a duel between Biden and the leftist Bernie Sanders, but Harris’ support for the current president was decisive in leading him to the White House.
“I have decided that I am going to enthusiastically support Joe Biden to be President of the United States,” the senator said in a video shared on Twitter. “I believe in Joe. I really believe in him, and I have known him for a long time.” Even then, her name appeared with some frequency in the polls. vice presidential candidatesjust as now, since the fatal debate on June 27 that showed Biden’s decline, in the presidential candidates. The Republicans, who this week joked about the traditional debate that will face the two vice presidential candidates by refusing to set a date because they “don’t know the identity of the vice president” that Kamala Harris could hypothetically choose, were not wrong.
Mixed marriage
The roots of the possible Democratic candidate for the US presidency are to be found in Jamaica and India. Her father, a professor at Stanford University, came from the Caribbean island; her mother, the daughter of an Indian diplomat, was an oncology researcher. Her sister, Maya, to whom she is very close, is an expert in public policy. The presidential hopeful graduated in Politics and Economics in 1986 from Howard University and, three years later, in Law from Hastings College. Her origins, therefore, are those of a well-off family, too intellectual by the standards of the new Republican populism.
Her professional career also placed her in the elite, as did her late marriage, just before turning 50, with the lawyer Douglas Emhoff, whom she met on a blind date and who in 2021 became the first second knight Emhoff, who is Jewish, has practically put his career on hold to take on this official role full-time, which entails public representation (in his case, participating in debates and events against anti-Semitism, a debate that has been on the rise in the US following the Gaza war and in which he cannot hide his condition). When they married, ten years ago, Emhoff stepped on a crystal goblet with his right foot, as is Jewish tradition, and Harris placed a garland of flowers on the groom in the Indian style.
Kamala Harris has never been Biden’s dolphin, not even subordinate. She has a charisma that has been reduced to caricature by Trump, who rebranded her Laffin’ Kamala Harris (Kamala the laughing one) for her frank laugh and her spontaneity, which despite herself has been the subject of memes. Her appearances on the micro-video social network TikTok, in improvised dances with members of her team, have also served as an object of ridicule for the opposition or, at least, to make her the object of mockery. But Kamala Harris has more experience and political trajectory than Donald Trump. Years before the tycoon considered the leap into politics, the current vice president gave a memorable speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, which catapulted her national profile. Considered a rising star within the party, she was recruited to compete for the Senate seat left by Barbara Boxer’s retirement. In early 2015, months before the Republican set sail for the White House, Harris presented a program based on immigration and criminal justice reforms, increases in the minimum wage and protection of women’s reproductive rights. He won the seat easily.
Republicans prefer her over any other candidate for the White House, certain that Trump will swallow her up in two bites. But the tenacity and determination of the vice president and potential candidate to be the first female president of the United States, after Hillary Clinton’s failed attempt in 2016, may hold some surprises and shake up the most turbulent campaign of recent decades.
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