Biden: ‘Together, we’re going to beat Trump’
Joe Biden selected Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate Tuesday, embracing a former rival who sharply criticized him in the Democratic primaries but emerged after ending her campaign as a vocal supporter of Biden and a prominent advocate of racial-justice legislation after the killing of George Floyd in late May.
Harris, 55, is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party, and only the fourth woman in history to be chosen for a presidential ticket. She brings to the race a far more vigorous campaign style than Biden’s, including a gift for capturing moments of raw political electricity on the debate stage and elsewhere, and a personal identity and family story that many find inspiring.
Biden announced the selection over text message and in a follow-up email to supporters: “Joe Biden here. Big news: I’ve chosen Kamala Harris as my running mate. Together, with you, we’re going to beat Trump.” The two are expected to appear together in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday.
While she endorsed a number of left-wing policy proposals during her presidential bid, Harris also showed a distinctly Bidenlike impatience with what she characterized as the grand but impractical governing designs of some in her party.
“Policy has to be relevant,” Harris said last summer in an interview with The New York Times. “That’s my guiding principle: Is it relevant? Not, ‘Is it a beautiful sonnet?’”
In a Twitter post Tuesday, Harris said she was honored to join Biden on the ticket. “Joe Biden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us,” she wrote.
Throughout her rise, Harris has excited Democrats with a personal story that set her apart even in the diverse political melting pot that is California: She is the daughter of two immigrant academics, an Indian American mother and a father from Jamaica. Harris was raised in Oakland and Berkeley, California; attended Howard University in Washington, D.C.; and pursued a career in criminal justice before becoming only the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate.
Still, Harris was far from a shoo-in for the role of Biden’s running mate, and some of Biden’s advisers harbored persistent reservations about her because of her unsteady performance as a presidential candidate and the finely staged ambush she mounted against Biden in the first debate of the primary season.
In an attack that left Biden reeling, Harris outlined his history of working with right-wing Southerners in the 1970s to oppose busing as a means of integrating public schools. At the same time, Harris said, there was a little girl in California who was part of an early integrated class in her own school. “That little girl was me,” she said.
Biden offered only a sputtering response and, for a few weeks, his polling numbers dived.
In the end, however, Biden may have come to see the panache Harris displayed in that first debate as more of a potential asset to his ticket than as a source of lingering grievance. Indeed, even in the bleaker periods of her presidential candidacy last year, Harris maintained an ability to excite Democratic voters with the imagined prospect of a debate-stage clash between her and President Donald Trump and her spirited interrogations of Trump appointees as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Biden considered at least five Black women for the job, including Susan Rice, who served as the national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and Rep. Karen Bass of California, before ultimately settling on Harris.
If he wins in November, Biden would become the oldest president ever to hold the office, and few senior Democrats believe he is likely to seek a second term that would begin after his 82nd birthday. As a result, when Democrats formally approve Harris as Biden’s running mate this month, they may well be installing her as a powerful favorite to lead their party into the 2024 presidential race.