Washington: As soon as President Joe Biden declared he was leaving the presidential race and backing Vice President Kamala Harris, the latter went to work to win the Democratic presidential nomination by phoning legislators, party leaders, officials, and outside support groups.
In a short period, Harris had garnered significant support from several prominent figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Joe Biden, Senators Chris Coon and Amy Klobuchar, and state governors of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and California, Josh Shapiro, Roy Cooper, and Gavin Newsom. These individuals had previously been mentioned as potential competitors for the nomination.
The US Congress Black and Hispanic Caucuses have also endorsed Harris.
ActBlue, an online fundraising tool for the Democratic Party, announced that in the first five hours of Harris’s presidential campaign, small-dollar donations totalled $27.5 million. Little and large donations had been put on hold while the party awaited Biden’s withdrawal to make room for a new candidate. Once that happened, the floodgates opened.
Harris, though, had pledged to merit the nomination. In her first and only public comments on the day’s historic events, Harris accepted President Biden’s endorsement. He stated, “My intention is to earn and win this nomination,” not to claim it by her lofty office as Vice-President. And that’s exactly what she started doing while getting ready to organise a campaign staff.
On August 9 in Chicago, Illinois, the Democrats will formally pick their presidential candidate at the party convention. Anointing the Democratic primary winner, who would have been Biden after garnering over 3,000 delegates and the endorsement of 14 million Democrats in the party primaries, is typically a formality.
If Harris can garner most of the party’s support, it might still be a formality. However, if contenders emerge for the nomination, the race will become open, and the nominee will be chosen at a contested, open convention where competing candidates will court and charm delegates. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat who defected to the Independent party, is the only one who has apparently shown interest thus far by re-registering as a Democrat.
The Democrats pushed President Biden to make the historic decision to withdraw from the race after winning the primaries but before being officially nominated because they did not have enough time to launch a strong campaign to defeat former President Donald Trump. Until then, Harris has two weeks to complete the nomination. Additionally, Harris’s window for reaching out to supporters outside her party is further limited by the early voting period, which begins in September, four weeks before the convention.
–IANS
