When Kamala Harris was chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020, it seemed almost a given that today, four years later, she would be a presidential candidate, regardless of the election results that year. Biden, in fact, gave the impression that he was destined to remain in the White House for only one term: not because the Democrats didn’t believe in him, not because they were divided, but because already on that occasion, in putting together a far-reaching project for the years to come, the issue of Biden’s age was on the agenda.
It almost seems like a useless and convoluted detour has been made that has led the Democrats to arrive in a confused, decidedly unusual and also quite clumsy way at the decision that four years ago seemed to be the most obvious.
Not valued enough according to some, not up to par according to others, apparently destined for a second campaign as vice to eventually obtain reconfirmation in this role, Kamala Harris finds herself catapulted at the limit of the maximum time in the electoral arena of a vote that will have the attention of the entire world, destined to run the 100 meters in one breath to tell her story and the America she has in mind. Not easy for someone who in the eyes of many Democrats should have remained in Biden’s shadow, even less easy in a party that had to make the shock decision to change candidates during the race.
Two faces
Kamala Harris’s story is also one of withdrawals, sideways steps, falls. Of difficulty finding a single narrative in a country that has made electoral storytelling a decisive brand exported – sometimes uncritically – throughout the world. And the ambiguity between seeming to be the right choice, due more to an element of clarity when doubts about Biden were increasingly insistent, and instead being first and foremost the obligatory choice will perhaps not help in this situation: no one else would have been willing to put their face in such an unexpected situation, no other name could be worked on to launch it to the White House if not that of the vice president, however much she may have remained in the shadows.
On the other hand, Kamala Harris apparently embodies a symbolic figure for those who fight for the rights of minorities: perhaps not so much for being born into a wealthy family, the daughter of an Indian oncologist and a Jamaican economist who emigrated to the United States, but for being a black woman who, in a country still full of barriers and stereotypes, has managed to obtain leading roles up to the vice presidency.
On the other hand, however, her political vision and her main role before arriving in the Senate in 2016, that of district attorney of San Francisco first and attorney general of California, are something that clash with this aspect. In this role, in fact, Harris launched a great fight against violent crimes, which however cost her the accusation by several Democrats of the more progressive wing of the wing of the law enforcement agency of implementing particularly security policies. Security policies that sometimes frighten some social strata of the population that still today report abuses by American law enforcement, such as blacks, another sign of the two different souls that, in some way, coexist in Harris, in her history and in her career.
The Number 2 Years
It was precisely an abuse against a black man that was decisive in the choice of Kamala Harris as vice president. The killing of George Floyd, the birth of the Black Lives Matters movement and the mass protests that followed led the Democrats and specifically Joe Biden, fresh from his victory in the primaries, to make the clearest possible choice in embracing that movement that was spreading throughout the world: the choice for a black woman as vice president thus prevailed, and that black woman was Kamala Harris.
It wasn’t an obvious choice. The primaries won by Biden had been particularly fragmented. An unprecedented number of candidates, seeing a political space and in the absence of a clear front-runner, had tried to jump into the game. Among them was Kamala Harris, who as senator of the most populous state, as well as the largest constituency of the Democrats, was seen as one of the possible favorites, but the campaign never took off and, without managing to position itself on the major issues, the polls saw her plummet to the point of withdrawing before the vote even began.
A few months after this exit, however, came the designation as vice, and the consequent victory in a difficult year, in which America and the world were shocked by Covid and with the Black Lives Matter protests leaving a decisive mark.
In an era when the choice of a vice presidential candidate seems to carry much less weight than it used to, Harris has left the colorless primaries behind and has been a figure who has helped engage the black electorate at a particularly sensitive moment.
Difficulty
The vice-presidency, however, has not been all roses and flowers. One could cite polls, data and so on but to explain it to us is a fact: despite the doubts and concerns about his age, Joe Biden has been – or rather, it should be said, had been at first – re-nominated, thus burying the more or less formal rumors about a handover between the two at the end of the mandate.
Meanwhile, the role of vice president is often meant to compensate for that of the president, especially when the latter is less experienced, but that has not been the case for Biden, who has a long career at high levels that began with his election to the Senate at the age of 30 in 1972.
Difficulties in finding a space and a clear political profile, internal problems within her staff, with resignations and people who have defined it as an unhealthy work environment, have done the rest to prevent her from ever taking off in the popularity rankings.
Speed Race
Today, however, the situation is different, because Kamala Harris finds herself accidentally but clearly and unequivocally the Democratic candidate for the White House.
He does not have to carve out a political space for himself, because he already has the natural one as an alternative to Trump, nor will he have to emerge from any other internal rival. But he must be able to tell his story and explain his positions to America and the world in a race of just over three months, something unprecedented in recent American history.
Her dual nature – on the one hand Kamala Harris, symbol and champion of rights, especially black women’s rights, but also a staunch supporter of abortion rights and numerous environmental causes, on the other Kamala Harris who, during an official trip to Mexico and Guatemala, invited migrants not to go to the United States because they would be rejected – is something that perhaps played a decisive role in putting her in difficulty, in creating those ambiguities that, in an era in which there seems to be little room for nuance, have prevented her from finding the right political space.
But today, finding a balance, a single narrative, a vice presidential candidate capable of compensating for her where necessary, as Biden did with Obama in 2008, and doing all this in the sprint that awaits her, is something that Harris must do, just as she must do, despite her unusual and unorthodox path.
The facts will tell whether these forced choices will end up representing a weakness, as can happen with decisions that arrive late or are dictated by unforeseen events, or whether they will instead be a way to indicate an obligatory path that leaves aside those uncertainties and ambiguities that have cost dearly in the past.
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