Who is Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate in the race against Trump

The Democratic candidate and current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, could be the first woman to command the White House.

Kamala reached the top of the Democratic Party ticket in the American elections after President Joe Biden announced that he had given up seeking re-election.

Harris is the first woman to hold the US vice presidency and has her candidacy supported by Biden. Of Indian origin, she is the second black woman to be elected senator in the country.

Discover Kamala Harris’ proposals for the US economy

History

Born in Oakland, California, Kamala Harris is the daughter of a cancer researcher and an economics professor of Jamaican descent.

Her past as a prosecutor has often placed her in the firing line of the most left-wing groups among Democrats, who see criminal justice as a means of reinforcing inequalities. Even so, she is seen as a moderate within the Democratic party.

On the other hand, it has a tough stance on several economic issues, having played an important role in negotiations for compensation charged to financial institutions due to the 2008 mortgage crisis.

Kamala Harris also positions herself as a defender of social programs and an expansion of state action to promote these conditions.

Approximation between Biden and Harris

Kamala Harris and Biden’s first rapprochement came during negotiations with the banks in 2011. At that time, Beau Biden, son of the former vice president, was the attorney general of Delaware and Kamala was the attorney general of California. The two became very good friends.

“We had each other’s backs,” Harris wrote of Beau Biden in a 2019 memoir. “There were periods, when I was at the center of the attacks, when Beau and I would talk every day,” Harris recalls, “at times. several times a day.”

In 2019, however, when she was a pre-candidate for the US presidency, she had a serious disagreement with Biden during a debate between Democratic candidates.

Kamala Harris said she didn’t think the former vice president was racist, “but it was painful to hear him talk about two United States senators who built their reputations and careers on racial segregation.”

The speech, evoking Biden’s old mentions to parliamentarians who were against the end of racial segregation in American schools, generated an outcry. “I was prepared for everyone to attack me,” Biden told CNN at the opportunity. “But not for the person who attacked me the way he attacked me. She knew Beau, she knows me.”

The two say that the raids were overcome, but they were considered until the last moments before the announcement of Kamala’s choice as vice president.

Biden is the first US president to give up re-election in more than 5 decades

This content was originally published in Who is Kamala Harris, Democratic candidate in the race against Trump on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil

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