US presidential election: Kamala Harris, a running mate with contested progressivism

Text by: Christophe Paget Follow

7 min

For weeks now, the pressure had been mounting on Joe Biden that the woman he had planned to choose as running mate was an African American. But reducing Kamala Harris, 55, to her origins would be a mistake: prosecutor then senator, she had plenty of time to build a career and defend beliefs that were not always to the taste of her progressive camp ...

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Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California - in 2011 she became its Attorney General, the first woman in that post in all of the United States. Her parents, born in Jamaica and India, divorced when she was five and it was her mother, a cancer researcher but also a civil rights activist, who brought her up. She takes him on her visits to India, but takes great care, explains Kamala Harris in her autobiography "The Truths We Hold", to share with her two daughters the black culture of Oakland: " My mother knew her country foster would see us, Maya and I, as two black girls, and she was determined to make us two confident and strong black women. »As a teenager, she spent five years in Canada, in Montreal, where her mother landed a teaching position, then the family returned to the United States where Kamala Harris decided to join Howard University in Washington.

The " black Harvard"

This is an important choice for Kamala Harris, who, according to the Washington Post , " grew up in a predominantly white universe ", but who then wants "to be surrounded by black students, black culture and black tradition in the most famous historically black universities ”moreover nicknamed“ the black Harvard ”. The newspaper points out that " when someone questions her black identity, she always refers to the four years she spent at Howard University ". Kamal Harris then studied law. She was called to the California Bar in 1990 and rose through the ranks: she was elected District Attorney for San Francisco in 2003, and in 2010 Attorney General of California, the most populous state in the country - 40 million people, she will be re-elected in 2014. Kamala Harris then befriends Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the now deceased son of Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate explains that if he decided to take Kamala Harris as his running mate, it was because he saw her working at the time with her son and was able to observe " how they challenged the big banks, helped workers and protected women and children from ill-treatment ”.

A progressive prosecutor?

Kamala Harris herself calls herself a “ progressive prosecutor ”. But not everyone has such good memories of their mandates."  In California, Kamala Harris had the reputation of a prosecutor who waited rather than showing the way, who did not move on controversial subjects until she saw that they were politically viable  ", asserted last June the daily Sacramento Bee . A San Francisco prosecutor, she decides to prosecute the parents of children who miss school too much - which especially affects disadvantaged households from black and Hispanic minorities. It is then labeled as a "tough". A California prosecutor, she takes no position on the proposed law to make systematic independent investigations into any murderous incident involving a police officer -cases in whichhere too it is the black and Hispanic populations that are most affected. Some still haven't forgiven him.

However, other initiatives of Kamala Harris were well received by the reformers: his “Back On Track” program, back on track, offering first-time offenders to drop prosecution if they follow professional training and obtain a diploma; or the training against discrimination and other “facies” arrests that it has imposed on all Californian law enforcement agencies. Its greatest success, according to civil rights activists as well as the police, remains the creation of an internet portal offering numerous judicial data, in particular on violence committed by the police during arrests, to restore the reality of facts. “ It really helped our movement a lot ,” says Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles , “ because before that there was no place where you could find the numbers ”.

A pugnacious senator

Before the end of her second term, she used her reputation as a rising star of the party to become a senator from California in 2017. Supported by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, she won the election in 54 of the 58 counties of the state. . The first woman from South Asia and the second black woman to become a senator in United States history, Kamala Harris proves her reputation as a rising star in the Democratic Party. She stood out in the Senate when she passed on the grill, during Senate hearings, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's candidate for the Supreme Court, and William Barr, whom he appointed attorney general of the United States. His interrogations (" Answer yes or no ") put the Democrats in joy but annoy the Republicans: for them Kamala Harris uses these hearings to prepare his candidacy for the presidential election.

In fact the senator is running for president in January 2019, the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King, to defend "the truth", "decency" and "equality". She tries to put forward a record of progressive prosecutor, but is called a "cop" by some of her allies. Her hesitations on the issue of health coverage also serve her well. Her campaign was briefly revived when to everyone's surprise she attacked Joe Biden harshly during the first debate in the primaries - but she ended up throwing in the towel and giving her support to the former vice president of Barack Obama, who would ultimately win the election. primary.

A winning ticket?

Kamala Harris then returns to the fore, by redoubling his all-out attacks against Donald Trump: coronavirus, immigration, racism. Her name appears immediately when Joe Biden announces his decision to take a woman as running mate in March. And in May, after the death of George Floyd, this African American killed by a police officer during his arrest, many Democrats ask Joe Biden to choose an African American.

Her choice therefore fell on Kamala Harris, despite criticism from the left wing of the party denouncing a lack of progressivism on her part when she was a prosecutor (as opposed to the Republicans who already present her as a dangerous leftist) . Joe Biden may be counting on these reservations within the Democrats to rally undecided voters who may make the difference on November 3.

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• United States
• Kamala harris
• Joe biden
• USA Elections 2020