The female Obama
KAMALA HARRIS JOINS BIDEN TICKET Tough lawyer who brings sexual predators to task tipped to oust Trump from the White House
BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN
DURING her career as a criminal prosecutor, Kamala Harris made her name going after sexual predators.
So, given who presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is seeking to beat in this November’s US election, many thought the Californian senator was a natural choice to be his running mate.
Known as “the female Obama”, the first woman of colour to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket has made no secret of her disdain for Donald Trump ever since she became only the second black female senator.
Harris, a sex crimes prosecutor, once said: “I know predators, and we have a predator living in the White House.”
The 55-year-old later warned Trump that she had built a career “going after predators”.
Now, with 82 days left before America goes to the polls, Harris has him firmly in her cross hairs.
After taking her seat in the Senate following her election in 2016, Harris steadfastly refused to cower to the billionaire.
She has openly recounted the accusations of sexual misconduct against Trump – which he has denied – and attacked his business practices and the “10 counts of obstruction of justice” she claims he has committed.
Known for her intimidating style of questioning, offset by a billboard smile, Harris once said of Trump: “He claims to be the best president we’ve seen in a generation. Well, I say, let’s call Barack Obama, ’cause that’s identity fraud.”
Confirming his decision to choose Harris, who ended her own run for the Democratic nomination in December, Biden called her “a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants”.
There had been intense pressure from Democrats not only to pick a female, which Biden promised to do in March, but also a woman of colour.
That drumbeat began well before George Floyd’s killing in May at the hands of Minneapolis police, but increased amid ongoing protests across the country.
In the past two years, Harris has become visible to the American electorate through viral clips of her performances on the Senate’s judiciary committee. Her takedowns of Trump’s cronies have left Republicans fearing to debate her.
Millions watched her crossexamination of the president’s controversial Supreme Court pick, judge Brett Kavanaugh, which left the justice frothing at the mouth as he tried to argue back.
Attorney general Bill Barr was left equally roasted by her interrogation style.
Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions, also felt her wrath. While testifying before the Senate’s intelligence committee, he begged Harris to slow down as she held his feet to the fire.
“I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous,” he whimpered as she fired questions at him over his contact with Russian nationals during the 2016 campaign.
Trump, who famously gives each of his rivals a detrimental or offensive nickname, fired off his first salvo against the Californian senator hours after Biden’s announcement.
The president criticised her for an attack she made on Biden during a Democratic debate while she ran for the nomination.
Trump said Harris was “nasty” and “disrespectful” to her new boss, adding that “phoney Kamala will abandon her own morals”.
He then tweeted a video attacking the Biden-Harris ticket. The narrator said: “Voters rejected Harris. They smartly spotted a phoney. But not Joe Biden. He’s not that smart. Slow Joe and phoney Kamala. Perfect together, wrong for America.” The daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father who met in California’s social protest movement of the 60s, Harris will provide Biden with much-needed generational, racial and gender diversity. The former vice-president, who is 77, would be the oldest US president in history if he were to win on November 3. The Harris pick creates a ticket that in many ways mirrors the one Biden ran on in 2008 with then senator Barack Obama. It contains an older white man and career Washington politician with vast foreign policy experience paired with a younger, black running mate with immigrant roots who has been in the Senate just four years, yet has carved out a national profile. Together they hope history will repeat itself – only this time with Biden sitting down in the Oval Office.