There is no hyperbole in that headline. Kamala Harris, in serving the past four years as vice-President of the United States of America, has achieved a status no woman in that country has ever done.

With the withdrawal of President Biden from the Presidential Election, she has now accepted the  Democrat nomination, and faces off against Donald Trump, the former President who has no understanding of the word ‘defeat’. Nor an understanding of most other words.

Alan Wares re-visits Kamala Harris’ rise – from being voted in as vice-President of the US in 2020, to her leading the polls ahead of the 2024 election

 

In November 2020, Dynamic’s sister magazine, Platinum ran the rule over the vice-President-elect of the United States of America, Kamala Harris. It opened with the line, “Should many of the pundits be correct in the assertion that Biden will not see out the first four years, whether from age, illness or choice, Kamala Harris will make history in too many ways to count.”

Biden will indeed see out his first four years in office – just. However, on July 21st, he withdrew his candidacy for a second four years at the White House. His statements had drawn much criticism as they had been as largely indecipherable and error-strewn as anything mumbled by Donald Trump, the man he was supposed to be running against.

It was not a time for celebration – more one of relief. It also left the path open for vice-President Kamala Harris to take her shot at the top job. Although not exactly a coronation into that role, Kamala was, given the relative lack of time available, just about the only name who could have possibly replaced Biden on the Democrat ticket.

 

Four years ago

Kamala Harris savoured the moment she became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be vice President-elect, with a very hearty laugh. The smile that greeted the nation on her investiture as vice-President went around the world in no time.

In a video posted to her social media, she shared the news with then-President-elect Joe Biden: “We did it, we did it, Joe. You’re going to be the next President of the United States!” Her words are about him but the history of the moment is hers.

Just over a year previously, as the senator from California hoping to win the Democratic nomination for Presidency, she launched a potent attack on Joe Biden over race during a debate. Many thought it inflicted a serious blow on his ambitions. But by the end of the year, her campaign was dead and it was Mr Biden who returned the 56-year-old to the national spotlight by putting her on his ticket.

“It is a big reversal of fortune for Kamala Harris,” says Gil Duran, a communications director for Ms Harris in 2013 and who has critiqued her run for the presidential nomination.

“Many people didn’t think she had the discipline and focus to ascend to a position in the White House so quickly... although people knew she had ambition and star potential. It was always clear that she had the raw talent.” What she has demonstrated from the moment she took the national stage with her pitch for the presidency – is grit.

 

A colourful woman

“We know that, being descendants of enslaved people and people of colour coming out of colonisation, that we have a special role and having an education gives us a special position in society to help effect change,” she explains – it was a philosophy and a call to action that was part of the university experience Ms Harris lived.

She returned to address students at Howard in 2017 and took them on a journey from the Ferguson race protests of 2014 to the halls of Capitol Hill in just one sentence: “You students have joined the fight for justice - you protested. From the streets of Ferguson to the halls of the United States Congress, you have lived the words of James Baldwin, ‘There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.’

But Ms Harris also operates with ease in predominantly white communities. Her early years included a brief period in Canada. When her mother took a job teaching at McGill University, Ms Harris and her younger sister Maya went with her, attending school in Montreal for five years.

Ms Harris says she’s always been comfortable with her identity and simply describes herself as an “American”.

She told the Washington Post in 2019, that politicians should not have to fit into compartments because of their colour or background. “My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she said. In 2014, Senator Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff – now a fixture at her campaign stops – and became stepmother to his two children.

In 2019, she wrote an article for Elle magazine about the experience of becoming a stepmother and unveiled the name that would then come to dominate many headlines that followed.

“When Doug and I got married, Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn’t like the term ‘stepmom’. Instead, they came up with the name ‘Momala’.”

They were portrayed as the epitome of the modern American 'blended' family, an image the media took to and one that occupied many column inches about how we talk about female politicians.

In a bizarre twist, Donald Trump’s running mate in the 2024 Presidential Elections, the hitherto unheard-of JD Vance, offered up a critique that Harris is never going to be fit for Presidency due to her not being a mother. He chose to call her ‘a childless cat lady’ for good measure. This month’s Platinum Business Magazine highlights some equally vacuous statements from the Lunar twins

On becoming vice-President-elect, many argued she should also be seen and recognised as the descendant of another kind of family and that is the inheritor of generations of black female activists.

But from the very earliest, as her friend Ms Rosario-Richardson attests, she showed the skills that allowed her to be one of few women to break through barriers. “That is what attracted me to get her to join the debate team at Howard University, a fearlessness.”

 

AS A PERSON

Wit and humour are part of that armoury. The laugh she greeted Joe Biden with upon his election victory, when making that first momentous phone call, was one her friend recognised immediately and intimately.

“It clearly shows her personality, even in the short time she has been on the campaign trail. She has always had that laugh, she has always had a sense of humour too, she had a sense of wit - even in the context of a university debate - to get those points across,” remarked Duran.

The ability to deliver zingers to her opponents in a live debate was very much part of the momentum behind the start of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wasn’t afraid of confrontation as in this Twitter exchange with Donald Trump Jr last October.

“Why is @KamalaHarris the only person that laughs at her jokes... always way too long and way too hard?” Mr Trump’s son asked.

“You wouldn’t know a joke if one raised you,” she wrote back.

A simple burn on social media, but a popular shorthand for the kind of skills that meant a career in law and politics was a natural fit. Although her career as a prosecutor is what made her a politician, it brought with it political benefits and risks.

Kamala as VICE-President

It’s often extremely difficult for the time served as a vice-President to be judged, especially by the public. They may be No.2 to the most powerful person in the land – maybe even the world – but their role isn’t one of being a ‘near-equal’.

It is not uncommon for the second-in-command to struggle to prove themselves in a role largely defined by behind-the-scenes work. According to the New York Times, “Harris’ critics and detractors alike acknowledge that the vice presidency is intended to be a supporting role. Many of her predecessors have laboured to make themselves relevant, as well.”

Put it this way, how many VPs that didn’t ultimately make it to the top job can one name?

Even so, her track record as a vice-President will be put under even more intense scrutiny now that she has secured the Democratic nomination. Over the last four years, Harris has taken the lead on several critical issues while Biden focused his efforts elsewhere.

She launched a nationwide “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour, highlighting the harm caused by abortion bans. She called on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.

Ms Harris set a new record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice-President in the history of the Senate. Her vote helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, which provided Covid relief funds including stimulus payments.

But she struggled to achieve broad appeal among Americans. Despite leftward leanings on issues like gay marriage and the death penalty, she faced repeated attacks for not being progressive enough for some Democratic voters. “Kamala is a cop” was a common refrain on the 2020 campaign trail.

Mr Biden also called upon Ms Harris to lead efforts addressing the root causes of migration as a record number of immigrants fled to the US-Mexico border.

It is an issue opponents point to as one where she hasn’t made enough progress, and she was criticised by Republicans and some Democrats for taking six months to plan a trip to the border after entering office.

While border crossings have fallen dramatically this year, it remains to be seen if she can turn that success to her advantage in the presidential election.

 

Democrat nomination

On August 22nd, Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democrat presidential nomination at the party’s national congress, becoming the first woman of colour to become a major party’s presidential nominee. She has nominated the Governor of Minnesota, the 60-year-old Tim Walz as her running mate – a role he immediately accepted.

The conservative media didn’t take long to pile into him – or rather, his family, after his son was overcome with emotion upon his nomination. Far-right political commentator Ann Coulter was forced to take down a post – after an onslaught of criticism, including from her own side – mocking his family, a post that went against the long-held tradition within the US media that presidential candidates’ families are not ‘fair game’.

She made her keynote address to the congress that night. She had already secured the support of President Biden and President Obama, and the strong backing of Michelle Obama, with whom Harris had performed a knockabout tag-team takedown of their Republican opponent, Donald Trump, two days earlier.

“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” She brought up the January 6th attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, and mentioned his criminal convictions.

She also hit what has become a favourite Democratic punching bag, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a Republican presidency. Although former President Trump has disavowed the plan, she noted that it was written by his advisers and it sought to “pull our country back into the past.

The congress has been commented upon by many political diarists and writers as a strong one for the Democrats in every way that Trump is struggling on his side with the Republicans.

The ‘future v the past’ contrast has been a central theme of the Harris campaign so far, as it was in her nomination acceptance speech. It’s one of the ways the vice-President has been able to draw a distinction not only from her current Republican opponent, but from the unpopular aspects of her boss, Joe Biden, who just a few weeks ago was the presumptive Democratic nominee.

 

Harris v Trump

Many, if not most, political commentators believe Harris has a better chance of beating Trump in the November elections than Biden would have had. Two old men, barely making sense, while presiding over the future of the planet’s one superpower would not have made for a gratifying spectacle.

Then one has to consider Trump’s expected petulant behaviour should - and this is a real possibility given the state of the polls – be defeated by Harris. Losing two elections in a row – three if you consider he didn’t win the popular vote when he won the Presidential College Vote system in 2016 – isn’t something his colossal, yet vast ego can handle.

It’s now up to the electorate in the US – 300 million people that the rest of the world wearily shakes its head at – to deliver us from orange, and into the right kind of historical outcome.