US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November’s showdown against Republican Donald Trump.
Harris, 59, was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. The first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party’s nomination, she will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month.
“I am honoured to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Harris said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon virtual vote.
In the two weeks since Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Harris has gained full control of the party, smashing fundraising records, packing arenas and erasing the polling leads Trump had built over the president.
“I couldn’t be prouder,” Biden posted on X after her nomination.
The nomination milestone came with Harris preparing to hit the campaign trail next week for a swing across seven crucial election states alongside her yet-to-be-named running mate.
The Democratic Party decided on a virtual nomination process — departing with tradition and mirroring the procedure used in the pandemic-hit 2020 election — because of an early deadline in Ohio for submitting the names of certified candidates.
The virtual roll call marks the official beginning of the 2024 convention, with the more traditional festivities getting going when thousands of party faithful descend on Chicago on August 19.
The gathering will feature a ceremonial vote for Harris in what is expected to be a raucous celebration of her rise from California prosecutor to historic candidate vying for the nation’s highest office.
Trump’s White House bid was turned upside down on July 21 when 81-year-old Biden, facing growing concerns about his age and lagging polling numbers, withdrew his candidacy and backed Harris.
Wave of momentum
Energetic and two decades younger than 78-year-old Trump, the vice president has made a fast start, raising $310 million in July, according to her campaign — more than double Trump’s haul.
She and her running mate are scheduled to rally Tuesday in Pennsylvania — a crucial swing state, where Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro is on the shortlist to join Harris’s ticket.
Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by around 80,000 votes and it is seen as the biggest prize of the closely fought battlegrounds that decide the Electoral College system.
The Keystone State is part of the so-called blue wall that carried Biden to victory in 2020, alongside Michigan and Wisconsin, two states where Harris is due to woo crowds on Wednesday.
Harris will also tour the more racially diverse Sun Belt and southern states of Georgia, North Carolina Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada as she seeks to shore up the Black and Hispanic vote that had been peeling away from the Democrats.
In a sign that the Harris campaign is thinking big, US media reported that a raft of senior advisers from Barack Obama’s historic candidacies in 2008 and 2012 have taken up top positions with her.
Where the now defunct Biden reelection campaign made high-minded appeals to the nation’s founding principles, Harris’s messaging has focused on the future, repositioning the race as a battle for “freedom” rather than the less tangible “democracy” that the president emphasised.
She and her allies have also been more aggressive than the Biden camp — mocking Trump for reneging on his commitment to a September debate and characterising the convicted felon as an elderly crook and “weird”.
“Some days I feel sorry for Republicans because they’ve got to figure out how to run a criminal against a prosecutor,” Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock said at Harris’s Atlanta event.
On the detail, however, Harris has been tight-lipped.
While she has disavowed some of the leftist positions she took during her ill-fated 2020 primary campaign, she hasn’t given a wide-ranging interview since jumping into the race, meaning voters have no clear picture of her overall vision.
Meanwhile, Trump and his Republicans have struggled to adapt to their new adversary or hone their attacks against Harris — at first, messaging that she was dangerously liberal on immigration and crime before pivoting to accusing her falsely of pretending to be Black for political purposes.
