Washington: California’s Caribbean-Indian-American Senator Kamala Harris has zoomed back into contention as Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, a choice that is expected to have a great bearing on the outcome of the 2020 presidential polls.
Biden, who will be 78 and the oldest person to be elected President if he wins, was spotted holding positive talking points about Harris, who clashed bitterly with him during the Democratic debates. A photographer who zoomed into Biden’s notes at a campaign event showed a page that under the heading Kamala Harris, listed “Do not hold grudges,” “Talented,” “Great respect for all,” among other bullet points.
Biden is expected to make the call on his running mate sometime next week. He has confirmed repeatedly that his pick will be a woman, possibly an African-American, which would put the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren out of contention, possibly also on account of her age (70) and her state (Massachusetts), which is a Democratic stronghold and requires no special effort to win.
Although California is also a Democratic fortress, Harris, 55, would bring geographic balance to the ticket (Biden is from Delaware on the east coast) and fulfill, at least partially, the criteria of African-American heritage. Her father, Donald Harris, was a Jamaican academic and her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer researcher from Tamil Nadu. Her parents met in Berkeley during their college years in the 60s.
Harris identifies herself as a Black-American although she speaks fondly of her South Indian heritage, including regular visits to Chennai to see her grandfather, PV Gopalan, an Indian civil servant, during her childhood days. Several other African-American vice-president prospects are also in the Biden shortlist, including former national security adviser Susan Rice, Congresswomen Karen Bass (California) and Val Demmings (Georgia), and local leaders Stacey Abrams and Keisha Lance Bottoms. But many pundits see Harris as a front-runner because she brings experience and prosecutorial chops to the table, with the ability to get under the Donald Trump’s skin.
She certainly got under Biden’s own skin, and many Democrats, notably Biden’s Senate colleague Christopher Dodd, are still unforgiving about the manner in which she mauled the former vice president in the debate. Biden though sounds more forgiving going by the bullet points in his notes, to the extent of going beyond the reservations of some African-Americans who feel Harris’ policies were tough on the black community during her time as California’s attorney general. On balance, she is seen as the strongest of nearly a dozen candidates being vetted and interviewed by Biden to ensure they are on the same page.
Also in the news this week is Sara Gideon, another prospective senator of Indian-heritage (her father is from India and her mother is Armenian), with latest polls showing she is five points ahead of incumbent Senator Susan Collins in Maine, which is the whitest of all American states. If she wins, Gideon would be the second US senator after Harris with part-Indian heritage in a chamber that has long been seen as a old, white boys club.
