Kamala Harris: A Potential Democratic Nominee Facing Historical Challenges

With Kamala Harris, Democrats would bet against US history of sexism, racism

July 21 (Reuters) - The Democratic party will be taking a historic gamble if it now turns to Vice President Kamala Harris to become its presidential candidate, betting that a Black woman can overcome racism, sexism and her own missteps as a politician to defeat Republican Donald Trump. President Joe Biden, 81, announced on Sunday he was ending his campaign for reelection, while staying on as president for the remainder of his term. In a separate post on X, formerly Twitter, he endorsed Harris. "My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it's been the best decision I've made," Biden wrote. "Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year." Biden's decision comes after weeks of pressure from Democratic lawmakers and donors who feared he lacked the mental and physical stamina to win and serve four more years. In more than two centuries of democracy, American voters have elected only one Black president and never a woman, a record that makes even some Black voters wonder if Harris can crash through the hardest ceiling in U.S. politics. "Will her race and gender be an issue? Absolutely," said LaTosha Brown, a political strategist and co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. Harris would face other big challenges: if promoted to the top of the ticket, she would have barely three months to campaign and unite the party and donors behind her. But many Democrats are excited about her chances. Harris, 59, is two decades younger than Trump and a leader in the party on abortion rights, an issue which resonates with younger voters and Democrats' progressive base. Proponents argue she would energize those voters, consolidate Black support, and bring sharp debating skills to prosecute the political case against the former president. Her candidacy would offer a contrast with Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, the two white men on the Republican ticket, Brown said. "That to me is reflective of America's past. She is reflective of America's now and future," Brown said. But despite earning praise in the last few weeks for her strong defense of Biden, some Democrats remain concerned about Harris' shaky first two years in office, short-lived campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination, and - perhaps most of all - the weight of a long history of racial and gender discrimination in the United States. 'NO SAFE OPTION' In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Harris and Trump were tied with 44% support each in a July 15-16 Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted immediately after the assassination attempt against Trump. Trump led Biden 43% to 41% in that same poll, though the 2 percentage point difference was within the poll's 3 percentage point margin of error. Harris's approval ratings, while low, are a tick higher than Biden's. According to polling outfit Five Thirty Eight, 38.6 percent of Americans approve of Harris while 50.4 percent disapprove. Biden has 38.5 percent approval and 56.2 percent disapproval. "If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave that they will support Kamala - Vice President Harris - you would be mistaken," Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a Biden supporter, said on Instagram. "There's no safe option." The United States elected Barack Obama, the first and only Black president, in 2008. The only woman to head a presidential ticket of a major party, Hillary Clinton, lost to Trump in 2016. Supporters of Harris, the first woman and first Black and South Asian person to serve as vice president, argue she has already weathered unfair attacks related to her race and gender and is prepared for more. "America has a history of racism, sexism, so I'm sure that will factor into this conversation, factor into her campaign," said Jamal Simmons, a former Harris aide. But he said there is a flip side: Black voters could be galvanized if Harris is put at the top of the ticket, and women, including some who regret not voting for Clinton in 2016, would back her as well. "It's also true that she will benefit from her race and her gender, that many African Americans may rally to her candidacy," he said. Item 1 of 4 Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 18, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt [1/4]Fayetteville, North Carolina, July 18, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Harris benefits from greater name recognition than the other Democratic leaders who have been floated as potential presidential candidates, he said. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are among those talked about in Democratic circles as possible replacements. "While she has flaws and faults like everyone, we know those flaws and faults, so you can build a campaign with clarity. Any other candidates are complete unknowns," Simmons said. One former Democratic lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he thought Harris was a bigger risk because of her record than her race. Harris was plagued by staff turnover at the beginning of her vice presidency and showed little progress on her portfolios of protecting voting rights and stemming migration from Central America. "I think the race thing is just a compounding factor or an exacerbating factor," the former lawmaker said. "Any of it's going to be a gamble, but I like the odds with another candidate, even if that means Kamala at the top of the ticket." 'PATRIARCHY IS A HELL OF A DRUG' Critics have accused Trump of using racist and sexist language, explicitly and in code. In 2020 he said he had "heard" Harris, a U.S. citizen born in California, did not qualify to be a candidate for vice president. At a rally in Michigan on Saturday, Trump piled on Harris for the way she laughs. "I call her Laughing Kamala," Trump said. "You ever watch her laugh? She's crazy." Trump's campaign said Democrats were deploying "classic disinformation" about his language and noted Harris's dispute with Biden in a 2019 debate about school busing and her criticism of Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate. "In contrast, President Trump is polling at record-high levels with African Americans," Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement. Trump made false "birtherism" claims against Obama, who was born in Hawaii. Those falsehoods gained traction among far-right activists and his nationalist base, prompting an exasperated Obama, blasting "carnival barkers," to release a longer version of his birth certificate from the White House. Polling at the time showed a quarter of all Americans - and 45 percent of Republicans - believed Obama had not been born in the country. "You've got birtherism 2.0," said Cliff Albright, co-founder and CEO of Black Voters Matter Fund, an Atlanta-based non-profit, referring to Harris. Nadia Brown, director of the women's and gender studies program at Georgetown University, said despite the rise of Black political leaders, there remains a notable reluctance to accept women in key leadership roles. "Patriarchy is a hell of a drug," Brown said. "With racism, we know it, we can call it out. The mood that we're not seeing as articulately expressed is a real reticence to have a Black woman in particular as a leader." Harris's standing in the party has improved with her aggressive advocacy for reproductive rights after the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down Roe v Wade, which protected women's right to abortion. Biden credited her with helping to prevent a "red wave" of Republican victories in that year's midterm elections, and Harris has crisscrossed the country as a top campaign spokesperson on abortion rights. Harris could also inherit Biden's strong support among Black voters, who helped propel him to the 2020 Democratic nomination. But if the party ends up coalescing around Harris, she could receive some of the blame from voters who say Democratic leaders covered up Biden's frailties. "I'm kind of done with the Democrats. So many knew about Biden's condition and hid it. Kamala was part of that," said Gina Gannon, 65, a retiree in the battleground state of Georgia, who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Reporting by Jeff Mason and Bianca Flowers; additional reporting by Jason Lange and Timothy Reid; Editing by Heather Timmons, Kat Stafford and Suzanne Goldenberg Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Jeff Mason Thomson Reuters Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents' Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA's work was recognized with Deutsche Welle's "Freedom of Speech Award." Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA's "Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure" award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists' "Breaking News" award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar. Bianca Flowers Thomson Reuters Bianca Flowers is an award-winning multimedia journalist based in Chicago where she focuses on enterprise stories in areas of race, inequality, identity and social justice. She joined Reuters in 2022 as a manufacturing correspondent, covering the bedrock of the U.S. economy. She reported on labor unions strikes, corporate finance for global agriculture and construction companies and the impact of automation and artificial intelligence in the industrial sector. Prior to joining Reuters, she was a Senior Video Journalist at Dow Jones, covering short and long-form features on personal finance, income inequality, and diversity in the tech industry.

Kamala Harris' Views on Abortion, the Economy, and More

Vice President Kamala Harris is now the leading Democratic standard-bearer in the 2024 elections after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed her on Sunday. Read More: Why Joe Biden Dropped Out While largely supporting Biden's policies over the past four years, Harris, 59, was once criticized for having few firm ideological convictions. She is largely seen as a moderate Democrat. Harris' long record in public office -- from being San Francisco's district attorney in 2003, to becoming California state attorney general in 2011, to a Senator from California in 2017, and then Vice President -- offers more clues on how she may lead as Democratic nominee and President. Here's what we know about Harris' policy positions. Harris has consistently supported abortion rights throughout her career, and has been seen as the stronger reproductive rights advocate compared to Biden. As a Senator, she co-sponsored legislation that would ban states from imposing restrictions on abortion rights, and voted against a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. As Vice President, she condemned the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade -- and became the White House's leading voice on reproductive health rights. Earlier this year, Harris visited a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Minnesota, believed to be the first time a sitting U.S. Vice President visited an abortion provider. The Biden-Harris administration has sought to regulate artificial intelligence, most notably passing a sweeping executive order in October promising to curb threats stemming from AI. And Harris has become the face of some of these key announcements, saying in March that U.S. federal agencies must prove that their AI tools are not harmful to the public. The Republican party has pledged to repeal the executive order, despite public opinion reflecting widespread, bipartisan support of limits on AI development. Harris is likely to continue the Biden Administration's approach to counter China's growing influence around the world, often echoing U.S. condemnations of Chinese activities in the Indo-Pacific, and advocating for "de-risking" from Beijing. As a Senator, Harris backed legislation promoting human rights in Hong Kong and sanctioning individuals responsible for human rights abuses against Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang region. In 2022, when Vice President Harris met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the sidelines of the APEC Summit, she reiterated Biden's statement that "we must maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries." Days later, she visited the Philippines in what was seen as a message to China that the U.S. will continue to support the Southeast Asian country in the face of increasing aggression from Beijing in the contested South China Sea. She has called China's actions in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and Taiwan Strait "disturbing." During a visit to a naval base in Japan in 2022, Harris reiterated U.S. commitment to "continue to support Taiwan's self-defense, consistent with our long-standing policy." Climate change is one of the hallmarks of Harris' political career -- an area of interest that can be traced back to her time suing oil giants as San Francisco's district attorney and later attorney general. As a Senator, Harris was one of the early co-sponsors of the Green New Deal, a blueprint for clean energy transition introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward Markey. She also tried -- and failed -- to pass the Climate Equity Act, which called for an independent Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Accountability to support communities vulnerable to the climate crisis. During her presidential campaign in 2019, Harris proposed a $10 trillion plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which includes a climate pollution fee, and the ending of federal fossil fuels subsidies. As Vice President, she has advocated publicly for climate action while engaging in behind-the-scenes conversations with officials to facilitate climate legislation, as well as attending private events with environmental leaders. Last December, while attending the COP28 climate summit, Harris announced a $3 billion pledge from the U.S. to the Green Climate Fund. Early on in her career, Harris developed a tough-on-crime reputation as district attorney in California, having boasted about raising conviction rates. She also supported a controversial anti-truancy program that prosecuted the parents of kids who were missing school, which disproportionately affected families of color. Harris later tried to steer her reputation into one of a "progressive prosecutor." Before becoming the Vice President, she had called for an investigation into police shootings and opposition to the death penalty -- along with a notable acknowledgement of the racial inequalities undergirding the criminal justice system. "My entire career has been spent making needed reforms and fighting for those who too often are voiceless -- from young people arrested for the first time and getting them jobs instead of jail, to grieving black mothers who wanted justice for their child's murder as the system ignored their pain," Harris had said during her presidential campaign in 2019. Harris, who is the first Black Vice President -- and who has faced both sexist and racist attacks from her political opponents -- has also previously addressed the issue of racial justice in the country. "I don't think America is a racist country," she said during a television interview. "But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today." Since 2023, Harris has overseen the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention created by Biden and remained a prominent face of the Administration's gun control efforts. (The Biden-Harris Administration in 2022 passed the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the country's first major gun safety law in nearly three decades.) In March, during a visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the site of a mass shooting in 2018, Harris announced the launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center to support the enforcement of state red flag laws -- which permits the temporary seizure of at-risk persons' firearms -- and called on more states to pass such red flag laws. Harris has vigorously championed assistance to low- and middle-income Americans. As a Senator, she introduced the LIFT the Middle Class Act, which proposed tax credits of $3,000 per person for most middle- and working-class Americans. She was also an early proponent for universal healthcare and forgiving student debt. As Vice President, she supported the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and recently announced a series of measures to make housing more affordable (another issue that she has long pushed for). In 2020, Harris was one of the few senators who voted against Trump's U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement, saying that it did not sufficiently protect American workers nor addressed climate change. Harris, who kickstarted in April an Economic Opportunity Tour across the country, has touted the Biden Administration's record on key economic issues, including supporting small businesses, job creation, infrastructural investment, healthcare accessibility, and erasing student loan debt. Biden in 2021 had deputized Harris to oversee and solve the root causes of migration from Latin American countries. (Republicans mistakenly called her the "border czar" because of this appointment.) In 2021, speaking alongside then-Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris said: "I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border." The Biden-Harris administration continues to use a Trump-era rule to turn back most migrant adults. That approach has not sit well with Democrats and migrant rights groups, which advocated for the right of migrants to seek asylum in the U.S. In March, she announced over $1 billion to respond to the causes of migration and create economic opportunities in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, bringing the total amount of commitments to the program to $5.2 billion since May 2021. Harris has also backed a bipartisan border security deal aimed at reducing border crossings. The bill had been rejected twice this year, amid Republican opposition and Democratic divisions. Younger voters, progressives, and Arab Americans may be more receptive to Harris' candidacy given their opposition to Biden's strong backing of Israel. Former officials and analysts say that Harris appears more willing to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the high death toll in Gaza and express empathy for the plight of Palestinians, NBC News reported. Around 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, while at least 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, figures the U.S. and U.N. deem credible. But Aaron David Miller, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told NBC News that a Harris presidency would not result in a major change in policy. "When it comes to Israel, she has very moderate views," Miller said. "To the left of what Biden is prepared to do but way to the right of those who argue we need to impose costs and consequences on Israel to make it clear we're the superpower and they're not." Harris is a staunch supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, having spoken out against Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law. As Vice President, she has hosted Pride Month receptions, and in 2023, she visited the famed Stonewall Inn in New York to pledge support for the local LGBTQ+ community. But Harris has also been criticized by LGBTQ+ rights advocates for writing legal briefs that sought to deny gender-affirming surgery to trans inmates during her stint as California Attorney General. Harris has followed the Biden Administration's policy on Ukraine. In an interview with NBC News earlier this year, Harris was asked whether Ukraine can survive a year without American support, to which she responded: "Ukraine needs our support, and we must give it." Last month, the Vice President represented the U.S. at the Summit of Peace in Ukraine, where she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in support of Kyiv. Harris subsequently announced a U.S. commitment of $1.5 billion to help Ukraine's energy system, humanitarian needs, and civilian security. She is a vocal critic of Russia's President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine and, most recently, for the death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in a penal colony. "Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible," Harris said in February. Harris has led the Biden Administration's initiative for federal voting rights and increasing ballot access, a task she asked Biden for in 2021. While a voter legislation bill failed to clear the Senate in 2022, Harris has repeatedly convened with civil rights leaders and outlined strategies "to ensure Americans have the information they need to vote, promote voter participation for students, protect election workers, and fight voter suppression laws."