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The meaning of Kamala Harris: the woman who will break new ground as vice-president

By Arwa Mahdawi

The former prosecutor and senator is the first woman to fill her upcoming White House role. What does her life so far tell us about how she will govern?

Kamala Harris has spent her life crashing through glass ceilings and accumulating “firsts”. She was the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California, the first Indian American in the US Senate, the first Indian American candidate of a major party to run for vice-president. Soon she will become the first female vice-president. If Joe Biden only serves one term, as expected, there is a chance that in 2024 she could become the first black female president.

The problem with phrases like “first black female president” is that they confine the California senator to the sort of boxes she has always tried to avoid. “When I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created,” she told the Washington Post last year. “I am who I am … You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it.” She does not agonise over her identity – she simply calls herself a “proud American”.

As with Barack Obama, there are those who have doubted Harris’s Americanness. The morning after Harris was named as Biden’s running mate, racist “birther” conspiracy theories, amplified by Donald Trump, began to circulate. Newsweek published an op-ed questioning whether Harris was “constitutionally ineligible” to become president because her parents, who met at graduate school in Berkeley, were immigrants. Her mother, a breast cancer researcher, was born in India. Her father, an economist, is black and was born in Jamaica. Harris, meanwhile, was born in Oakland, California. Which, to be very clear, means the 56-year-old is a natural-born US citizen and eligible to run for president.

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Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American studies at Amherst College, notes that Harris’s biracial heritage “represents a history of Asian Americans that is often overlooked”. The dominant narrative around Asian Americans, Dhingra says, has to do with their “abilities to approximate whiteness in regards to their education levels and incomes”. The “model minority myth” has often pitted Asian Americans against black Americans. Harris, however, “offers a different trajectory to understand Asian Americans”, Dhingra believes. Her biography is one of interracial solidarity and activism: Harris’s progressive parents were active in the protests of the 1960s and 70s, and the senator has frequently talked about growing up with a “stroller’s-eye view of the civil rights movement”. She is, Dhingra notes, “a powerful symbol and voice for progressive Asian Americans”.

Canada has also laid claim to Harris: she lived in Montreal between the ages of 12 and 17 because her mother got a job there. (Harris’s parents divorced when she was seven, and her mother raised the children.) To begin with, Harris found it hard to find her feet – not least because the first school she went to was Francophone. Her go-to phrase was “Quoi? Quoi? Quoi?”, which means “What? What? What?” but to French speakers also sounds like quacking. “I used to joke that I felt like a duck,” she wrote in her memoir.

Is Harris a careerist or an activist? Is she pragmatic or progressive? These are questions that have been debated for years.

Before long, however, Harris had thrown herself into an all-female dance troupe called Midnight Magic and, when not dancing, was spearheading demonstrations. Aged 13, she mobilised the neighbourhood children to protest against rules that stopped them playing on the lawn in front of their apartment building. The protest was a success. Later, when the Canadian version of prom rolled around, Harris was part of a group who decided to go without a date so that people who had not been asked out would not feel left out.

After finishing high school in Canada, Harris went to Howard University, a historically black university in Washington DC. From there she went to the University of California’s Hastings college of the law. At both places, the Washington Post notes, “Harris was more careerist than activist, winning competitive internships and joining academic societies”.

But is Harris a careerist or an activist? Is she pragmatic or progressive? These are questions that have been debated for years.

“Kamala is a cop”, a reference to Harris’s record as a prosecutor, was a meme throughout her campaign: in an age in which police brutality is top of the mind, her 13-year career in law enforcement has been a point of contention. During her time as San Francisco district attorney, for example, she boasted about raising the overall felony conviction rate from 52% in 2003 to 67% in 2006, the highest in a decade. Her tough-on-truancy laws led to parents of habitually truant schoolchildren going to jail. As California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, her office argued against releasing eligible non-violent inmates early because “prisons would lose an important labour pool”. After the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, she rejected calls from civil rights groups to investigate deadly police shootings in San Francisco. She has since spoken out against police brutality.

Harris’s law enforcement record has not stopped the right from calling her a radical socialist, however. In one interview with Fox Business, Trump called her “the most liberal person in the US Senate”.

To say Harris has any sort of agenda might be a stretch. One of the key criticisms of her has been a lack of consistency. In 2004, for example, she said she gave her word to the people of San Francisco that she opposed the death penalty. In 2014, after a federal judge ruled California’s death penalty unconstitutional, Harris appealed against the decision. During her campaign she could not seem to make up her mind whether she was courting the left or the moderates: she initially backed Bernie Sanders’ Medicare For All plan, for example, then backpedalled and introduced her own, more centrist healthcare plan.

Mary Kay Henry, who heads the influential Service Employees International Union, takes issue with the idea that Harris is inconsistent. As attorney general in California, Harris “was consistently a champion of what workers were demanding”, she says. “She stood with many of our members who were facing home foreclosures in the last financial crisis and [legislation she championed] helped avoid tens of thousands of home foreclosures.” Harris has also introduced bills to give domestic workers labour rights and advocated for a $15 minimum wage. “Her whole life’s work has been fighting to ensure America is a place where freedom is for everyone regardless of gender, income, or race,” Henry says.

Harris’s past is a mixed bag, then. What about the future? Will Harris veer to the left or stay firmly in the centre? Again, it is likely to be a mixed bag. She is to the right of the Democratic party on Israel, for example, but to the left when it comes to the climate crisis. Harris supports the “green new deal” and has vowed to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass it; she has also said she would get the Department of Justice to hold oil and gas companies accountable. It is also likely Harris will catalyse more discussion about systemic racism, but it is unclear how much she will do to actually try to dismantle it. She has, for example, drawn attention to the way that people of colour are disproportionately dying from Covid-19 and announced legislation to support bias and anti-racism training for workers involved in the Covid-19 response. While that’s important, anti-bias training is a largely symbolic response to a systemic issue. Also unclear is how much she will reform immigration policies. Her first priority is to “roll back Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda” and she says she supports more comprehensive reform, but this is yet to be fleshed out.

Her first priority is to 'roll back Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda'

Immigration is not the only part of Trump’s record she plans to take on. Harris has said her administration’s Department of Justice “would have no choice” but to pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against Trump for his apparent collusion with Russia as outlined in the Mueller report. This should make the former president feel very nervous indeed; Harris is a formidable opponent and, as her 2018 grilling of Brett Kavanaugh clearly shows, unafraid to take on powerful men.

In all this, she will be able to count on the support of her family. Her husband, Douglas Emhoff, is a corporate lawyer who took a leave of absence to support her on the campaign trail. The pair met on a blind date and married in 2014. Harris is “dear friends” with Emhoff’s ex-wife, who also helped Harris’s presidential bid, and close to his children, who affectionately call her “Momala”. “We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost too functional,” Harris wrote in her memoir.

Whatever happens next, Harris’s vice-presidency will make history. She will be the first black American and the first Asian American to hold the country’s second highest office. It is hard to overstate how powerful that is after four years of Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/the-meaning-of-kamala-harris-the-woman-who-will-break-new-ground-as-vice-president

Opinion: Victory for Joe Biden, at Last - Kamala Harris will make history as the first woman to serve as vice president.

Having peered into the abyss of autocratic nationalism, the American people have chosen to step back from the brink. The ballot counting will continue for a few days yet, but the math is what it is: Joe Biden will have the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, and likely many more. President Trump’s four-year assault on our democratic institutions and values will soon end.

The contest generated intense passions. In a year marked by the incalculable loss of life and the economic devastation of a pandemic, Americans turned out to vote in numbers not seen for generations, starting weeks before Election Day. Mr. Trump still knows how to draw a crowd — albeit not always to his advantage. In the end, it was Mr. Biden who captured more votes than any presidential candidate in U.S. history, while Mr. Trump captured the second-most votes in U.S. history.

The tally comes with disappointment on both sides: for Biden supporters, who hoped for a more resounding repudiation of Trumpism and for a Senate ready to enact their agenda, and for Trump supporters, who hoped for another four years and to chasten their critics. Fortunately for America, Mr. Biden promises to be a president for both sides — a welcome shift from a leader who has spent his tenure dividing the electorate into perceived fans and enemies.

While the coming weeks will most likely bring unexpected moves and more dangerous disinformation from Mr. Trump, it is worth taking this moment to raise a glass and breathe a sigh of relief. America gives its citizenry the ultimate responsibility for holding leaders accountable, for deciding what kind of nation this will be. The broad endorsement of Mr. Biden’s message of unity and healing is cause for celebration. Americans have embraced that optimism and Mr. Biden as their next president.

Come January, Mr. Biden will take office facing a jumble of crises. His predecessor is leaving America weaker, meaner, poorer, sicker and more divided than four years ago. Recent events have laid bare, and often exacerbated, many of the nation’s pre-existing conditions: from the inadequacy of our health care system to the cruelty of our immigration policies, from entrenched racial inequities to the vulnerabilities of our electoral system. Mr. Biden has pledged himself to big thinking and bold action in tackling these challenges. The electoral map suggests recovery will be neither quick nor easy. It is not yet clear what the precise composition of the Senate will be, but Republicans may hold the chamber. The government, like the nation, would remain divided.Mr. Biden has made clear he wants to work across the aisle. That is his nature and his political brand. But today’s political climate is not the same as it was 50, or even five, years ago. Even as he seeks consensus, the new president must be prepared to fight for his priorities. Now is no time for timidity.

The American public should be prepared to do its part. People of good will and democratic ideals must not lose interest simply because Mr. Trump leaves center stage. They need to remain engaged in the political process and demand better from their leaders if any progress is to be made.

Mr. Trump’s message of fear and resentment resonated with tens of millions of Americans. Trumpism will not magically disappear. If anything, its adherents will very likely find renewed energy and purpose in marshaling a new resistance movement committed to undermining and delegitimizing the incoming administration.

Republicans will have to decide whether they will continue to wallow in political nihilism, or rise to meet the challenges of the moment. How Republicans respond to this loss, whether they seek to stoke or to cool partisan passions, will help determine the nation’s — and their party’s — path forward.

With the perspective of time, the Trump era is likely to be viewed as an extended stress test for the American experiment. The president did his best to undermine the nation’s democratic foundations. They were shaken, but they did not break. Mr. Trump exposed their vulnerabilities but also their strength. It now falls to Mr. Biden to improve and safeguard those foundations, to help restore faith in our democracy and ourselves — to make America greater than ever before.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/opinion/joe-biden-president-winner.html

#Election2020 - Five Takeaways From President-Elect Biden’s Victory Speech

By Adam Nagourney

Joseph R. Biden Jr. waited a long time to give the speech he delivered in Delaware on Saturday night. Not just the five days since Election Day, but arguably the 48 years since he was first elected to the Senate, during which he ran for president three times. And at age 77, as Mr. Biden came trotting up the runway to an explosion of car horns and cheers, beaming and looking almost surprised by the ovation, it was clear that his moment had arrived.

Here are five takeaways from the president-elect’s victory speech. A new tone from the top.

The contrast between Mr. Biden and President Trump was bracing and notable in almost every passage, as the president-elect invoked his own spirituality and shared credit for the moment with his supporters and the people around him.

He quoted from a hymn, “On Eagle’s Wings.” He thanked his supporters: “I owe you, I owe you, I owe you everything.” He warmly praised Kamala Harris, his running mate, and celebrated the fact that she would be the first woman, let alone woman of color, to serve as vice president: “It’s long overdue, and we’re reminded tonight of all those who fought so hard for so many years to make this happen.”

Most of all, even as the nation faces one of the darkest periods in its history — a deadly pandemic, economic decline, political polarization — Mr. Biden was relentlessly optimistic, even cheerful. “We can do it,” he said. “I know we can.”

There were many notable passages in the speech, but one stood out. “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now,” he said. That is probably a line that people will talk about long into the Biden presidency.

President Who?

Mr. Biden mentioned Mr. Trump’s name only once during his 17-minute speech. He ignored the fact that the president had not conceded, and that he had challenged — without any evidence — the legitimacy of the election. Mr. Biden also did not note that many top Republican leaders, presumably following Mr. Trump’s lead, had not offered him the customary congratulations.

But if Mr. Biden did not dwell on the president, he certainly spoke to his supporters, a notable contrast to Mr. Trump’s speech after his own victory in 2016. “To those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappointment tonight,” he said. “I’ve lost a couple of elections myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance.”And while he ignored Mr. Trump’s protests about the election, Mr. Biden made clear that there should be no doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome. “The people of this nation have spoken,” he said. “They have delivered us a clear victory. A convincing victory. A victory for ‘We the People.’ We have won with the most votes ever cast for a presidential ticket in the history of this nation — 74 million.”

JOE BIDENRead more on the president elect’s policies

Mr. Biden’s strategy here was clear. He has exceeded the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president, and may end up gathering more than 300. He is now moving past the contest with Mr. Trump and into the role of president-elect. The transition is at hand, and the trappings of the presidency have begun to surround him — apparent in the size of the Secret Service contingent that followed him to give his speech, and the way every television station spoke of him as the president-elect.

He is seeking to relegate Mr. Trump to the sidelines, and turning to the urgent business of forming a new government and dealing with the crises he will face.

Priority one: The pandemic.

Mr. Biden left no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic would be a priority for his administration in a way that it has not been under Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden announced that on Monday, he would appoint top science and health experts to a committee to craft a plan for battling the pandemic, which he said would be ready to put in place when he and Ms. Harris take office in January. Mr. Biden told the nation that getting the coronavirus under control was crucial to normalcy and economic prosperity.

“We cannot repair the economy, restore our vitality or relish life’s most precious moments — hugging a grandchild, birthdays, weddings, graduations, all the moments that matter most to us — until we get this virus under control,” he said.

Mr. Trump has taken a much different approach. Throughout his campaign, he urged Americans not to fear the virus, asserting that the danger was being exaggerated by his political opponents. He defied the advice of health officials on precautions like wearing a mask, even after he himself was diagnosed with the virus.Mr. Biden’s victory comes as the nation is setting daily records for new infections and the health authorities have warned of a bleak winter. Masks were everywhere at his celebration.

Seeking ‘the confidence of the whole people.’

Mr. Trump defined the tone of his presidency at his inauguration, with a dark speech in which he notably did not reach out beyond his base of supporters. The strategy had lifted him to a narrow victory in 2016 — in the Electoral College; he lost the popular vote — and he sought to reprise it in his losing campaign this year.

Mr. Biden aggressively moved in the other direction.

“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify — who doesn’t see red and blue states, but a United States,” he said on Saturday. “And who will work with all my heart to win the confidence of the whole people.”

To some extent, that reflects what Mr. Biden said during the campaign, but the approach will take on a new urgency as he becomes president. Pending the outcome of two runoffs in Georgia, the Senate is controlled by Republicans, and he will need to reach out to senators from the red states if he wants to enact an agenda.

Their names in lights.

There have been some impressive pyrotechnics during this campaign — the ones over the Washington skyline on the night Mr. Trump accepted the Republican nomination from the back lawn of the White House come to mind.

This one, though, set a bar that may be hard to match: Fireworks and drones spelled out Mr. Biden’s name, Ms. Harris’s name and a map of the United States. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, surrounded by their families, stood onstage staring into the Delaware sky, lit up again and again on the night that Mr. Biden has been awaiting for most of his life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/08/us/politics/biden-victory-speech-takeaways.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage