Just over a day after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race upended the election campaign and pushed the United States into uncharted territory, Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden immediately proposed as his successor on Sunday, appeared at the president’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, to pick up where he left off. In her first rally since the historic announcement, she went on to attack Republican candidate Donald Trump: “I was a prosecutor, I know guys like him,” she said.
Harris is expected to be the Democratic nominee in November’s election. On Monday afternoon, she was on the cusp of winning delegates needed to be acclaimed at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, while breaking fundraising records with $81 million in donations. After an event at the White House, she traveled to Biden’s hometown to assure those working on the president’s campaign that she is now the boss and that their continued employment is guaranteed.
“When we stand together, we win,” the vice president told a gathering of employees who cheered her every statement. In the background, posters with the campaign’s new image could be seen. The posters no longer say Biden-Harris, but rather “Harris for president,” or simply, “Kamala.”
The event began with a phone call from Biden. It was the first time the president had spoken since announcing last week that he had contracted Covid and was retreating to his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to recover. From there, he announced to the world early Sunday afternoon that he was abandoning his efforts to seek re-election.
Biden speaks
“I want to tell the whole team: hug her, [Harris] “It’s the best,” Biden said, his voice hoarse from illness. “I know the news yesterday was shocking and hard to hear, but it was the right thing to do. We’re still fighting this fight together, I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “We still have to save this democracy, and Trump remains a danger to the nation… So I hope you give him every bit of your heart and soul that you’ve given to me, to Kamala. I also want you to know that I will not be on the ballot, I will remain fully engaged.” [con la campaña]”.
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Harris, whose tone, energetic and aggressive but smiling, could not be more different from Biden’s, said afterwards: “Let me say something: we are going to win this election. We are on the right side on all the issues. We have an incredible team, we have done an amazing job and we are going to make Kamala Harris the next president of the United States of America.” In her speech, she made it clear that she still had the two main pieces of Biden’s campaign: Jen O’Malley Dillon, head of the electoral operation, and director Julie Chavez Rodríguez.
“I was elected attorney general,” Harris recalled of a role she served in the city of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011 and the state of California from 2011 to 2017 before becoming a senator and then vice president. “I’ve seen predators of all kinds. Predators who preyed on women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules of their own game. So hear me when I say that I know guys like Donald Trump. And in this campaign, I will proudly fight him.”
She spoke of one of her favorite topics, abortion (“the government should not tell a woman what to do with her body”), and warned that if Trump is reelected, he will grant tax breaks to large corporations, cut Social Security and Medicare, weaken the middle class and reduce access to health care. “These are two opposing visions: one, ours, is focused on the future; the other, on the past.”
He accused Republicans of seeking to “strip citizens of rights and freedom.” “In this election, each of us faces a question: What kind of country do we want to live in? A country of freedom, compassion, and rights? Or a country of chaos, fear, and hate? Over the next 106 days, [hasta la cita con las urnas]“We have work to do. We have doors to knock on, people to talk to, phone calls to make, and an election to win.”
Harris concluded her speech with the following words: “God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America and Joe Biden.” Then, her husband, Doug Emhoff, approached the podium, they held hands and together they left the room where Harris gave the first impromptu rally of the campaign with which she seeks to become the first woman to lead the White House in the 248 years of history of the United States.
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