Harris locks in delegates, may secure nomination by early August

Washington: Vice-President Kamala Harris has secured the support of a majority of Democratic delegates, and is poised to become the party’s nominee for president after a virtual roll call of the delegates by early August. This will confirm her as the candidate before the party convention in Chicago scheduled from August 19.

On Monday, Harris also visited her campaign headquarters in Delaware where she leaned into her past as a public prosecutor to frame the battle with Republican nominee Donald Trump as one between a prosecutor and a felon. President Joe Biden, recovering from Covid-19, called in and told what was his campaign team till he dropped out on Sunday, “Embrace Kamala. She is the best”.

Harris has also mounted a massive fundraising operation, raising over $100 million since she entered the race on Sunday. On Tuesday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries — two of the most important leaders of the party — also endorsed Harris.*

Amid uncertainty over the next steps in an unprecedented situation where Biden withdrew just weeks before the convention, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) put out draft rules that said that anyone was open to file their candidacy for the nomination, provided they had the support of 300 delegates, not exceeding 50 delegates from one state.

“The process is going to be fair, open, transparent but fast,” Jaime Harrison, the DNC chair said. The impetus for a quicker process before the convention comes from the fact that the deadline to get on to the ballot for the presidential election in the state of Ohio was earlier slated for August 7, a deadline Democrats want to meet to avoid future legal challenges. “If we are going to be on 50 ballots, we have got to have all that done and locked up by August 7,” Harrison added.

But with a majority of delegates already pledging their support to Harris, and no one else announcing their intent to seek the nomination, a virtual roll call is likely to seal her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate in the first week of August. Harris will have to pick her running mate before that. Among the names being most widely discussed are Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.

In a statement after she became the presumptive nominee, Harris said she was proud to have secured the broad support needed to win the nomination, with her home state of California putting her over the line. “This election will present a clear choice between two different visions. Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time before many of us had full freedoms and equal rights. I believe in a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”

Harris also visited what is now her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, the home state of Biden, where she addressed and reassured campaign staffers who have gone through weeks of uncertainty, seen their leader at the top of the ticket drop out, and have felt uncertain about their own prospects.

In what was clearly intended as a message to boost staff morale, sustain the enthusiasm that Harris’s candidacy has generated, and showcase they remained fully united in the campaign, Biden first called in and addressed his team. He acknowledged that the news on Sunday — referring to his decision to drop out — must have been “surprising” and hard for all of them, but that it was “the right thing to do”. He said that the name had changed at the top of the ticket but the mission hadn’t changed. “We still need to save our democracy,” declared Biden, adding that he wasn’t going anywhere and would use the next six months to do as much as he could both on domestic and foreign policy. When Harris spoke, she thanked Biden and told him that for her and her husband, the Bidens were family and expressed her love for them. Biden, still on the call, said, “It’s mutual. I love you,” as their staff cheered.

But what drew the most applause was Harris’s clear and unapologetic attack on Trump. “Before I was elected vice president or senator, I was the elected attorney general of California and before that a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gains. So hear me when I say — I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said, declaring that she would pit her record against his in what promises to be a stormy campaign season ahead.

On Tuesday, Harris headed for her first campaign event as the presumptive nominee to Wisconsin, the same state where Republicans last week crowned Trump as their nominee. Three months before polling day, it is clear that the US election will now be a Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris battle.

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