Issue of the Week: Human Rights

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden named California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate on Tuesday, making history by selecting the first Black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket and acknowledging the vital role Black voters will play in his bid to defeat President Donald Trump.

In choosing Harris, Biden is embracing a former rival from the Democratic primary who is familiar with the unique rigor of a national campaign. The 55-year-old first-term senator, who is also of South Asian descent, is one of the party’s most prominent figures. She quickly became a top contender for the No. 2 spot after her own White House campaign ended.

She will appear with Biden for the first time as his running mate at an event Wednesday near his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

In announcing the pick, Biden called Harris a “fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants.” She said Biden would “unify the American people” and “build an America that lives up to our ideals.”

Harris joins Biden at a moment of unprecedented national crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 160,000 people in the U.S., far more than the toll experienced in other countries. Business closures and disruptions resulting from the pandemic have caused severe economic problems. Unrest, meanwhile, has emerged across the country as Americans protest racism and police brutality.

Trump’s uneven handling of the crises has given Biden an opening, and he enters the fall campaign in strong position against the president. In adding Harris to the ticket, he can point to her relatively centrist record on issues such as health care and her background in law enforcement in the nation’s largest state.

The president told reporters Tuesday he was “a little surprised” that Biden picked Harris, pointing to their debate stage disputes during the primary. Trump, who had donated to her previous campaigns, argued she was “about the most liberal person in the U.S. Senate.”

“I would have thought that Biden would have tried to stay away from that a little bit,” he said.

Harris’s record as California attorney general and district attorney in San Francisco was heavily scrutinized during the Democratic primary and turned away some liberals and younger Black voters who saw her as out of step on issues of racism in the legal system and police brutality. She declared herself a “progressive prosecutor” who backs law enforcement reforms.

Biden, who spent eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, has spent months weighing who would fill that same role in his White House. He pledged in March to select a woman as his vice president, easing frustration among Democrats that the presidential race would center on two white men in their 70s.

Biden’s search was expansive, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive; Florida Rep. Val Demings, whose impeachment criticism of Trump won party plaudits; California Rep. Karen Bass, who leads the Congressional Black Caucus; former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice; and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose passionate response to unrest in her city garnered national attention.

The vice presidential pick carries increased significance this year. If elected, Biden would be 78 when inaugurated in January, the oldest man to ever assume the presidency. He’s spoken of himself as a transitional figure and hasn’t fully committed to seeking a second term in 2024.

Harris, born in 1964 to a Jamaican father and Indian mother, spent much of her formative years in Berkeley, California. She has often spoken of the deep bond she shared with her mother, whom she has called her single biggest influence.

Harris won her first election in 2003 when she became San Francisco’s district attorney. In that post, she created a reentry program for low-level drug offenders and cracked down on student truancy.

She was elected California’s attorney general in 2010, the first woman and Black person to hold the job, and focused on issues including the foreclosure crisis. She declined to defend the state’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After being elected to the Senate in 2016, she quickly gained attention for her assertive questioning of Trump administration officials during congressional hearings.

Harris launched her presidential campaign in early 2019 with the slogan “Kamala Harris For the People,” a reference to her courtroom work. She was one of the highest-profile contenders in a crowded Democratic primary and attracted 20,000 people to her first campaign rally in Oakland.

But the early promise of her campaign eventually faded. Her law enforcement background prompted skepticism from some progressives, and she struggled to land on a consistent message that resonated with voters. Facing fundraising problems, she abruptly withdrew from the race in December 2019, two months before the first votes of the primary were cast.

One standout moment of her presidential campaign came at the expense of Biden. During a debate, she said Biden made “very hurtful” comments about his past work with segregationist senators and slammed his opposition to busing as schools began to integrate in the 1970s.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

Shaken by the attack, Biden called her comments “a mischaracterization of my position.”

The exchange resurfaced recently with a report that one of Biden’s closest friends and a co-chair of his vice presidential vetting committee, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, still harbors concerns about the debate and that Harris hadn’t expressed regret. The comments attributed to Dodd and first reported by Politico drew condemnation, especially from influential Democratic women who said Harris was being held to a standard that wouldn’t apply to a man running for president.

Some Biden confidants said Harris’ debate attack did irritate the former vice president, who had a friendly relationship with her. Harris was also close with Biden’s late son, Beau, who served as Delaware attorney general while she held the same post in California.

But Biden and Harris have since returned to a warm relationship.

“Joe has empathy, he has a proven track record of leadership and more than ever before we need a president of the United States who understands who the people are, sees them where they are, and has a genuine desire to help and knows how to fight to get us where we need to be,” Harris said at an event for Biden earlier this summer.

At the same event, she bluntly assailed Trump, labeling him a “drug pusher” for his promotion of the unproven and much-questioned malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus. After Trump tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in response to protests about the death of George Floyd, a Black man in police custody, Harris said his remarks “yet again show what racism looks like.”

Harris has taken a tougher stand on policing since Floyd’s killing. She co-sponsored legislation in June that would ban police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, set a national use-of-force standard and create a national police misconduct registry, among other things. It would also reform the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.

The list in the legislation included practices Harris did not vocally fight to reform while leading California’s Department of Justice. And while she now wants independent investigations of police shootings, she didn’t support a 2015 California bill that would have required her office to take on such cases.

“We made progress, but clearly we are not at the place yet as a country where we need to be and California is no exception,” she told The Associated Press recently. The national focus on racial injustice now, she said, shows “there’s no reason that we have to continue to wait.”

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Ronayne reported from Sacramento, California. Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe, Jill Colvin and Julie Pace contributed from Washington.

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“Biden and Harris Pledge a Strong Challenge to Trump and a Path Out of Crisis”

By Katie Glueck and Thomas Kaplan, August 13, 2020, The New York Times

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made their debut as running mates in Wilmington, Del., offering a vision of recovery from the coronavirus and pressing their case that the president has made things worse at every turn.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris made their debut as running mates in a high school gymnasium on Wednesday, pledging to lead the country out of the coronavirus crisis amid an onslaught of attacks from President Trump as the two national tickets went head-to-head for the first time, less than three months before Election Day.

The first full day for the newly announced Democratic presidential ticket offered a glimpse of how two once-bitter rivals from opposite coasts and different generations will try to unite Americans around their platform. Projecting warmth toward each other, they sketched out a vision of recovery from the nation’s crises surrounding public health, the economy and racial injustice — challenges that, they argued, Mr. Trump has made worse at every turn with an extraordinarily divisive presidency.

“We need more than a victory on Nov. 3,” Ms. Harris said. “We need a mandate that proves that the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be.”

Ms. Harris, a Californian who once served as attorney general of the state, made clear that part of her campaign role would be demonstrating her skills as a prosecutor to build a case against Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, methodically detailing what she cast as the administration’s failures in combating the coronavirus, reopening the economy and creating conditions under which schools could reopen safely this fall.

“Let me tell you, as somebody who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut,” Ms. Harris said.

Other contours of Ms. Harris’s role in the campaign also started coming into focus on Wednesday. A Biden adviser described Ms. Harris as well positioned to connect with Black and Latino voters across the country as well as with suburban women, saying that the campaign expected her presence on the ticket to drive turnout in Arizona, Florida and Texas in particular, as well as in communities of color nationally.

People familiar with Ms. Harris’s plans said they expected her to be a major presence on the virtual fund-raising circuit, and she and Mr. Biden, the former vice president, held a grass-roots fund-raiser on Wednesday night in an ornate ballroom of the Wilmington hotelwhere Mr. Biden announced his 1972 Senate candidacy. There, Mr. Biden announced that in the past 24 hours, the campaign had raised $26 million, with 150,000 first-time contributors.

More fund-raisers, such as a Bay Area virtual reception, are also planned for Ms. Harris, according to invitations. And her outreach to key Democratic Party constituencies is also underway — an event with members of the Jewish community, for example, is in the works, according to people familiar with the planning.

Mr. Trump, who has unleashed sexist attacks on Ms. Harris, called her “a very risky pick” at a news conference as he referred to “horrible things” she had said about Mr. Biden during the primary campaign, suggesting those words would haunt the ticket.

“I’m sure that’ll be played back,” Mr. Trump said. “Not necessarily by me, but others. It’ll be played back.”

Mr. Trump also defended his administration’s response to the virus, citing the number of tests that have been administered and bragging about the government’s efforts to ramp up production of ventilators to help gravely ill patients.

“We have better testing than any country in the world,” he said, adding that “when you look at the job that we’ve done compared to others, we’ve done a great job.”

As Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris spoke on Wednesday before a group of socially distanced reporters — not the excited crowd of supporters that would normally greet such an occasion — they each nodded to the symbolism and historic nature of the moment. Wednesday was the third anniversary of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., at which Mr. Trump claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” Mr. Biden noted.

“I knew we were in the battle for the soul of the nation,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s when I decided to run. And I’m proud now to have Senator Harris at my side in that battle, because she shares the same intensity I do.”

The former vice president, Ms. Harris said, was the only person who had “served alongside the first Black president and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate.”

Ms. Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, is the first woman of color on a major party’s presidential ticket, and she and Mr. Biden argued that possibilities for American success stories abound despite the challenges that the nation confronts.

“Her story’s America’s story,” Mr. Biden said.

But they also laid out the staggering toll that the coronavirus crisis has taken on every facet of American life, And they made clear that they will seek to make the election a referendum on Mr. Trump’s handling of the outbreak.

“This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation,” Ms. Harris said. “It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start. His refusal to get testing up and running. His flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks. His delusional belief that he knows better than the experts.”

The joint appearance, which came a day after Mr. Biden announced his decision, followed a highly public vice-presidential search process. Some of Mr. Biden’s allies made clear their reservations about Ms. Harris, which originated with her searing debate stage attack last summer on Mr. Biden’s record on busing, remarks that struck his team as cynical as she later struggled to articulate her own view on the issue.

But in recent weeks, some of the criticism of Ms. Harris from Democrats played out through sexist language around whether she was overly “ambitious,” a dynamic she appeared to nod to when she said she was “mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me.”

But Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden repeatedly sought on Wednesday to demonstrate that they shared a policy agenda and personal values, with Ms. Harris echoing Mr. Biden’s often-used language about “character,” and demonstrating a fluency with his campaign proposals. They also emphasized the importance of Ms. Harris’s friendship with Beau Biden, Mr. Biden’s son who died in 2015.

“Kamala,” Mr. Biden told his running mate, “you’ve been an honorary Biden for quite some time.”

Ms. Harris, too, invoked Beau Biden, in a moment loaded with emotion, recalling their frequent phone conversations when they were both state attorneys general.

“He really was the best of us,” Ms. Harris said. “And when I would ask him: ‘Where did you get that? Where did this come from?’ — he’d always talk about his dad.”

The joint appearance provided a striking reminder of how the pandemic has upended the usual rhythms of a presidential campaign. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton and her new running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, made their debut appearancebefore thousands of people inside an arena in Miami. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, barely strayed from his Wilmington home for his appearance with Ms. Harris.

Though scores of onlookers gathered outside Alexis I. duPont High School, the event was closed to the public, depriving it of the typical soundtrack of big campaign speeches. There was no burst of applause, for instance, at the long-awaited moment when Mr. Biden introduced Ms. Harris as “your next vice president of the United States.” (After the event, Mr. Biden told a CNN reporter, “If the science allows us, you’re going to see us campaigning together.”)

Still, the current constraints did not interfere with online fund-raising.

On Facebook, the Biden campaign sought to keep up the flow of donations on Wednesday, running hundreds of ads prodding supporters to kick in small contributions.

The Facebook ads included some broad talking points, saying that Ms. Harris “is a leader in holding the Trump administration accountable” and that “Joe and Kamala are ready to fight for hard-working Americans who have been hurt by Trump and the G.O.P.’s divisive politics.”

The Trump team was nearly immediate in its digital response, flooding its multimillion-dollar Facebook campaign with ads calling Ms. Harris a far-left liberal and painting the Biden-Harris ticket as “two of our Nation’s most RADICAL Democrats.”

The Trump campaign also turned the Harris announcement into a fund-raising opportunity online, asking for small-dollar donations that it claimed would help air a 30-second, ready-for-TV ad attacking Ms. Harris as a member of the “radical left” and “a phony.”

In his own speech, Mr. Biden directly addressed Mr. Trump’s attacks on Ms. Harris, quoting some of the adjectives he had used, like “nasty.”

“It’s no surprise, because whining is what Donald Trump does best, better than any president in American history,” Mr. Biden said. “Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with a strong woman, or strong women across the board? We know that more is to come.”

Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York, and Michael D. Shear from Washington.

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“What Kamala Harris Means For Feminism”

Emma Green, August 13, 2020, The Atlantic

Why having a woman vice-presidential candidate is historic—and painful for young feminists