It was 1.46pm on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when President Biden posted a letter from his personal account on the social media site X, announcing he would be withdrawing from the presidential race. By 2.13pm he had sent another post, this time endorsing Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic Party’s nominee.
It took 27 minutes to get there but President Biden has supercharged a campaign which, in three months time, could see Kamala Harris become America’s first female President.
Her record as a mould breaker is longstanding – in her home state of California, Harris became the first Black woman to be district attorney and the first Black person to serve as attorney general, the highest legal office in the state.
She is already the first woman and woman of colour to be Vice President. But becoming the first female President would make her the ultimate glass-ceiling smasher. In two centuries, the US has elected only one Black president and never a woman so to say it is a formidable challenge would be a gross understatement.
But the prospect of a Harris presidency has energised donors quickly. The Democratic fundraising organisation ActBlue said it has raised $46.7m from grassroots supporters in a matter of a few hours after Harris launched her campaign.
'I’m excited to see a campaign with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket,' Lindy Li, a Democratic Party strategist tells me, 'I know the money is going to be ramping up because I’m already hearing from donors who have been waiting on the sidelines but are ready to come back in.'
Her presidential campaign is likely to focus on bringing more women to the polls and particularly women of colour who are disproportionately affected in states with very strict abortion laws.
Harris is a lot more comfortable speaking about abortion than Joe Biden, as an elderly Catholic man, ever was. Where Biden has said in the past he is 'not big on abortion,' Harris will likely make it front and centre of her battle for the White House. It is a subject where she can really nail Donald Trump to the wall and she knows it.
Harris, who turns 60 in October, has already attacked Trump’s newly announced running mate, JD Vance, for blocking protections for in vitro fertilisation. Vance also made a comment in 2021, suggesting that women might be better off staying in marriages with domestic violence 'for the kids.' Although Vance claims his comments were misconstrued, it is something Harris can seize upon in adverts and on the campaign trail. Showing she is progressive, where the Trump/Vance ticket is regressive when it comes to women’s rights will be key.
The problem Harris has is that her approval ratings are barely better than President Biden’s. In vast parts of America, Biden’s inflation problem will now be seen as Harris’s inflation problem, Biden’s border problem is Harris’s border problem and so on. Divorcing herself from the issues of the current administration and focussing minds on the future is a big challenge.
She also has a reputation with some as being inauthentic and awkward, with a propensity for delivering world salad speeches which contain very little meaning and are meme-tastic. To turn this reputation around, she needs to hit the campaign trail hard and address serious issues with feeling, appealing to disparate parts of the voting base, from Black men in inner cities to white women in suburbia.
Being a woman of colour could count against her, according to former Harris aide, Jamal Simmons. 'America has a history of racism, sexism, so I'm sure that will factor into this conversation, factor into her campaign,' he has said.
But Black voters are likely to be swayed to vote Democrat by seeing her at the top of the ticket, and women, including some who regret not voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, would back her as well.
It is a big mountain to climb for Kamala Harris and the clock is ticking.