U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is now facing her first night of dreaming about making history. Following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race and his endorsement of Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother is now aspiring to become the first woman elected President of the United States. Harris quickly reaffirmed her determination to remain in the White House, but this time as President, not just Vice President.
In the city of Oakland, California, a child named Kamala Harris was born to a Jamaican immigrant father and an Indian immigrant mother. That was 59 years ago, and since then, the daughter of immigrants has become a significant figure in U.S. politics. On January 20, 2021, Harris made history by becoming the second-highest official in the U.S. executive branch. This marked a historic first for the country, as no woman had ever held the office of Vice President before.
Kamala Harris will need to proceed steadily in the coming days and weeks. Her first challenge will be to maintain momentum and prevent strong contenders from emerging as rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination at the convention scheduled for the 19th of next month.
The second hurdle will be to officially secure the party’s nomination for the presidential election at the conclusion of the national convention. If successful, Harris would become the first woman from a minority group to receive the nomination of one of the two major political parties in the U.S.
If Kamala Harris succeeds in what Hillary Clinton failed to achieve eight years ago, she will have made history by becoming the first woman ever elected President of the United States, entering the history books in a monumental way.
The Story of Steady Ascent
The White House describes Harris as someone who “always fights for the people, starting from the time she broke barriers as a district attorney for San Francisco and then as the Attorney General of California, to proudly serving as a U.S. Senator and then as Vice President.”
After serving as the district attorney of San Francisco for two terms between 2004 and 2011, she was elected twice as the Attorney General of California between 2011 and 2017, before becoming the first woman and the first Black person to lead the judicial system in the most populous state in the country.
She has been criticized for her strict enforcement of minor crimes, which, according to her critics, particularly affected minorities.
In January 2017, she took the oath of office as a member of the Senate in Washington, becoming the first woman of South Asian descent and the second Black senator in the country’s history.
After being elected Vice President, Kamala Harris dedicated her speech to “the young girls of America.”
In 2022, Harris strongly defended abortion rights after the Supreme Court rolled back the federal legal right to abortion.
Harris became well-known for her staunch defense of abortion rights, and her position gave momentum to Biden’s campaign among those opposed to the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the national right to abortion, leaving the issue to be decided by individual state governments.
