Kamala Harris as VP on Biden ticket

Kamala Harris, the California Senator of IndianJamaican heritage, whom Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has picked as his running mate, further bolsters their prospects to wrest the White House from Donald Trump in the November 3 poll. The first woman and the first Black to be the nominee for vice-president, Harris brings to the ticket commendable experience as a former attorney-general of California and, later, as an effective member of the US Senate. Relatively young at 55, she seems to restore a sort of age-balance to the ticket, given that Biden will be 76 soon. Should the Biden-Harris team win, she will be a strong contender for the Democratic ticket for the 2024 presidential poll. Although the role of vice-president is not clearly defined, Americans love to say a vice-president is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Harris’s nomination was not unexpected. Biden had declared he would pick a woman running mate, and given her credentials as a cerebral person with excellent debating skills, she outclassed a big field of woman candidates. Although she dropped out early in the presidential primaries, and not before exposing Biden’s ambivalence on race relations early on in his career as a US Senator, her record and friendship with Biden’s late son, also a fellow attorney, clinched the issue in her favour. As is his wont, Trump was nasty in reacting to her nomination, but he will have a problem on his hands crossing swords on the campaign trail with her. While the Trump-Pence ticket attracts a disproportionately high percentage of white male voters, the Biden-Harris ticket represents diversity and will draw a large number of Black voters. In the wake of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, following the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, Harris’s nomination should prove a much needed balm. After her nomination, Harris hoped that the ticket could `unify the American people'. She will debate Trump’s running mate,Vice-President Mike Pence during the peak of the campaign and there are no longer any questions about who will come out trumps. It will be wrong to over-emphasise her India connection, since her mother was from Chennai and she still has close family relations here with whom she remains in touch. Yet, maternal links cannot be so easily wished away either.