She remembers that Trump is a “danger” who only causes “chaos, fear and hatred”
She is committed to maintaining Biden's policies regarding Ukraine and the Middle East
The current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, will face the former president and Republican candidate for the White House, Donald Trump, on November 5, in an election that could lead her to make history and become the first female president of the North American country.
Harris, who says she is the only possible solution to face a candidate who, in her own words, represents “a danger to the country and the well-being of all Americans,” has focused on a very clear concept throughout her professional career: the defense of “freedom, with passion and respect for the law.”
With a career full of firsts that have been defined by Harris as an example that the United States is a country “full of possibilities”, the Democratic politician was the first Indian-African-American senator and the first woman with these roots to serve as attorney general of California.
Accustomed to breaking the norm, she was also the first to become vice president under Joe Biden, who had sworn her in the past when she arrived unexpectedly in the Senate. In the Upper House she gained visibility with her speeches and her well-known disputes, especially with Republican Rand Paul regarding the anti-lynching law.
With an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, many see Harris as the embodiment of the American dream: born in Oakland (California) to an interracial family, she grew up in Berkeley, where she was able to benefit from a school bus integration program for African-American families.
Later, after her parents’ divorce, she moved to Canada, where she lived for a few years until she returned to the United States to attend Howard University, historically linked to the African-American population.
Harris, a fervent defender of opportunities, claims to have grown up in an environment in which “activism was part of daily life.” Thus, she has emphasized her passion for defending the most disadvantaged despite Trump’s insistence on accusing her of lying and lacking sufficient “cognitive abilities” to hold the most important office in the United States.
After graduating in Law and returning to California, Harris worked for years as a prosecutor before being elected in 2004 as district attorney of San Francisco. During this stage she was harshly criticized for requesting life imprisonment – and not the death penalty – against the main defendant accused of having shot and killed police officer Isaac Espinoza.
It was during her work as California’s attorney general that she met Beau Biden, Biden’s late eldest son, who many point to as the main person responsible for the now Democratic candidate for the White House coming so far politically.
HER ARRIVAL IN POLITICS
Harris burst onto the scene in 2015 as a senator to replace Barbara Boxer, who had been in office for more than two decades, and received the unconditional support of the then president, Barack Obama, and his then ‘number two’, Joe Biden.
From the hemicycle, she was part of the Judicial Commission and defended the impeachment process against Trump. Afterwards, she decided to launch her career to the White House, from which she had to withdraw due to lack of funds and growing internal discrepancies.
However, and after starring in a clash with Biden himself in relation to policies to minimize racial segregation in schools, in August 2020 she was presented as the running mate of the man who would later become the tenant of the White House.
In accepting the election in what seemed to be the return of the Democratic tandem to the front line of American politics, Harris highlighted the importance of uniting the country in the face of “Trump’s failure.” She also denounced the existence of a “structural racism” that was leading the United States to a “tipping point.”
CHALLENGES
The now presidential candidate, 60 years old and married to lawyer Doug Emhoff, will have to face numerous challenges if she wins an electoral race that is based on extremely tight voting intention data, according to polls.
Although many accuse her of a “low profile” in her performance as vice president and speak of her arrival to the candidacy as an act of “rebound” in the face of growing concern about Biden’s health, Harris, together with her ‘number two’, Tim Walz, remains optimistic and highlights the strengths of the policies of the current Administration.
In this way, she has defended the delivery of weapons to Ukraine to confront the Russian invasion, while highlighting Israel’s right to “legitimate defense” as the conflict intensifies in the Middle East.
In this sense, and despite betting on giving military support to Israel, she has urged a ceasefire and avoiding the massacre of the civilian population in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, while supporting a two-state solution that puts an end to decades of Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the death of more than 42,000 people in the Palestinian enclave during the last year.
INTERNAL POLITICS
In her defense of civil rights, Harris has focused her campaign at the internal level on the defense of women, racialized people and the rights of the LGTBI community, for which she has claimed the fight against inequality and the importance of safeguarding access to abortion, while emphasizing the importance of achieving affordable health care for the population.
Regarding gun control, a hot topic in American society, she has defended the possibility of strengthening access and increasing control over possession, although she raised controversy in September after stating without hesitation during a program with presenter Oprah Winfrey that she would not hesitate to shoot anyone who decided to enter her house.
Despite her personal background and family history, the immigration issue is a headache for the current vice president, who seeks to maintain a strong security device while designing a reform of immigration policies that could lead to greater militarization of the area.
However, she says she is in favor of introducing measures that allow undocumented migrants to speed up their application to obtain citizenship if they have worked in the United States and blames Trump for the lack of security at the border, pointing out her opposition to the bipartisan bill prepared by several legislators, some of them Republicans.
Although she has received criticism for her alleged changes of opinion on political matters, the Democratic candidate has defended that this is only a response to an “evolution” and has assured that her values ”have not changed.” Thus, she has maintained that her position on certain issues, such as the controversial practice of ‘fracking’, remains unchanged: “As president, I will not ban ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing) because a prosperous clean energy economy can be built without a ban.”
This issue has become especially important in states such as Pennsylvania, which is one of the main producers of natural gas in the entire country and can offer candidates a total of 19 electoral votes, so Trump himself has accused her of perverting her principles for electoral reasons.
Harris, for her part, continues to question Trump’s aptitude to return to the Presidency and argues that he is an unstable person who represents “chaos, fear and hatred.”
