Biden makes history with Harris VP pick
What happened
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden this week selected California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, a historic decision that makes Harris the first woman of color to run for vice president on a majorparty ticket. A former San Francisco prosecutor and California attorney general, Harris battled Biden for the center lane during the Democratic primary, scoring a viral breakout in the first televised debate when she sharply criticized Biden for his opposition to mandatory busing in the 1970s. After leaving the presidential race in December, the 55-year-old Harris soon made up with Biden, 77, and began acting as a campaign surrogate for the former vice president. Biden said he partly decided to pick Harris as his running mate because of her close friendship with his late son Beau, who was attorney general of Delaware when Harris held the position in California. “There is no one’s opinion I valued more than Beau’s,” he said, “and I’m proud to have Kamala standing with me on this campaign.”
Biden noted at an event in Delaware that Harris’ background reflects a diversifying country. The daughter of immigrant academics, an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, she became only the second black woman U.S. senator in history when elected in 2016. “One of the reasons that I chose Kamala,” said Biden, “is that we both believe that we can define America simply in one word: possibilities.” In her first speech as Biden’s running mate, Harris said Americans will face a stark choice when they decide between Biden and President Trump in November: “Everything we care about—our economy, our health, our children, the kind of country we live in—it’s all on the line.”
What the columnists said
Young progressives aren’t happy with this choice, said Jordan Weissmann in Slate.com. Harris’ record as a California prosecutor— when she fought to uphold wrongful convictions—“has not aged well in the era of Black Lives Matter.” As a senator, she’s been overly chummy with Wall Street. But Harris has moved leftward in recent months, and now champions criminal justice reform, marijuana legalization, and tax credits to help lower- and middle-class families. Harris isn’t “the veep candidate of the Left’s dreams,” but she “might be a good policy influence on Biden if he treats her as a real governing partner.”
“Harris is no moderate,” said NationalReview.com in an editorial. During the Democratic debates, she pledged that if elected president she’d outlaw so-called assault rifles by executive order, never mind that the Constitution grants the president no such power. She briefly supported abolishing private health insurance and mandating Medicare for All, and has proposed that states should get “pre-clearance” from the federal government before changing abortion laws. That Harris might be only a heartbeat from the presidency is terrifying.
Like her politics or not, Harris’ “nomination is a turning point for Democrats,” said Ronald Brownstein in TheAtlantic.com. While the GOP remains dominated by white men—starting with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence—Biden understands that his party needs to “more closely resemble the base of voters that elects it to power.” Democrats haven’t put two white men on a presidential ticket since 2004. “It’s difficult to imagine when they ever will again.”