My Thoughts on #BidenHarris
I remember where I was when it was finally announced. I was sitting on the basement floor watching MSNBC and listen to Brian Williams, it looked like he was heading to a commercial break. But then he stopped for a moment and received word from his earpiece that we finally have pick, it's Kamala Harris. I sat like "Really? Just like that? He's not gonna come on TV and tell us himself?" I'm referring to Joe Biden of course, and it turns out that CNN and FOX News already gotten the news before MSNBC, and prior had already Twitter that Biden has picked Senator Harris. I want to make it known right now that there was a little disappointment in me that he didn't picked Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, she was my first favorite but I knew that she would have been a long shot to be Biden's running mate. My second favorite who actually did have a much better chance was Susan Rice despite the fact they said she has not campaign experience, but nonetheless, I am proud to congratulate Kamala Harris of California for being named Joe Biden's running mate and I can't see more Harris impressions by Maya Rudolph on SNL this fall.
Let's go over a Deep Dive into what Kamala Harris has to offer to a country that continues to struggle every which way. Born in Oakland, California on October 20, 1964, Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican Male and an Indian Female, she graduated from Howard University and the University of California's Hastings College of the Law and the started her career as a lawyer in 1990 when she was hired as deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, her career in law got her up to to point where she campaigned for District Attorney of San Francisco beginning in 2002 and went on to win in 2003 as California's first American district attorney of color.
From 2004 to 2011, she was District Attorney and decided to take on a new challenge by running Attorney General of California; she announced her candidacy on November 12, 2008, just about a week after Barack Obama became the first Black President of the United States. In a primary in June 2010, she was nominated with 33.6% of the vote, defeating two other opponents and in the general election on November 3, 20210, she defeated Republican Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley, who had led most of the race but then conceded after Harris gained the upper hand with 55,000 votes. Once elected into office, Harris made history by becoming the first African American and South Asian American woman to serve as California's attorney general beginning on January 3, 2011; she ran for re-election in 2014 and won against Republican Ronald Gold.
In 2015, Harris ran for the California senate seat left behind by former Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer who announced her intention to retire from the US Senate at the end of her term in 2016. In February 2016, the California Democratic Party endorse Harris, who received nearly 80% of the vote, and three months later, Governor Jerry Brown endorsed her. In the 2016 primary, Harris came in first with 40% of the vote and won by pluralities in most counties, afterwards, she was endorsed by President Obama and Vice President Biden on July 19, 2016. Following her victory on November 8, 2016, she promised to protect immigrants from the policies made by President-elect Donald Trump who often attacked her many times over the media. Her current tenure as Senator can be sum up like this: she supports healthcare reform, federal descheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. Her national profile came from pointed questioning of the Trump administration's officials during Senate hearings, including U.S. attorneys general Jeff Sessions and William Barr, and Associate Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
After being one of the targets of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts, Kamala Harris officially announced her candidacy for President in the 2020 election on January 21, 2019. I remember watching her in during the first Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, as part of a special viewing before a LIVE taping of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Harris scolded former vice president Biden for "hurtful" remarks he made before, speaking fondly of Senators who opposed integration efforts in the 1970s and working with them to oppose mandatory school bussing. She basically said that Biden should "pass the torch to her," this caused her support for President to rise by between 6 and 9 points in polls following the debate. In the second debate in August 2019, Harris was confronted by Biden and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard over her record as Attorney General which began to face criticism for tough-on-crime policies that were not good. On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination after a shortage of funds made it impossible for her to continue, and the last March, she endorsed Joe Biden for president.
So here we are months later to find out she is Joe Biden's running mate, prior to the announcement yesterday, Biden was urged by many people, mostly those from the Black community, to a black woman as a running mate. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, Harris became more and more the logical choice, especially for her law enforcement credentials. On June 12, The New York Times reported that Harris was emerging as the frontrunner to be Biden's running mate, as the only African American woman with the political experience typical of vice presidents, and CNN reported on June 26, more than a dozen people close to the Biden search process considered Harris one of Biden's top four contenders, along with Elizabeth Warren, Val Demings, and Keisha Lance Bottoms. We will hear from Biden and Harris today in Delaware as they will express their feelings about working together on a much bigger stage, and I would once again like to congratulate Harris as she's now the first African-American woman and the first South Asian woman to be picked as the vice-presidential nominee for a major party ticket. I'll be back on Sunday to post the reactions of other people who are excited about the choice for VP and much more.
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