By Deutsche Welle
21 Jul 2024, 20:19 PM EDT
US Vice President Kamala Harris said on Sunday that she hopes to “win the Democratic Party nomination” for the November presidential election to “defeat Donald Trump,” after Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race.
Harris praised the “selfless and patriotic act” of the 81-year-old Democratic president, who endorsed her as a candidate. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party – and unite our nation – to defeat Donald Trump,” she wrote in a statement.
Trump criticizes support
Trump’s campaign team, for its part, criticized the vice president’s possible candidacy on Sunday.
“Harris will be even worse for the people of our nation than Joe Biden. Harris has been corrupt Joe’s enabler-in-chief this entire time,” he said in a statement.
Harris’s career has been marked by firsts: she was the first black district attorney and the first attorney general in California history; the first Indian-American to serve in the Senate; and, when Biden chose her, the first woman vice president of the United States. Will she now be the first female president?
Obama avoided expressing his support
Born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, she is the eldest daughter of an immigrant couple – Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher from India, and Donald Harris, an economist from Jamaica – who divorced when she was seven years old.
Obama praised Biden’s decision, but despite mentioning Vice President Kamala Harris as a potential successor supported by Biden and other leaders such as Bill Clinton, Obama avoided expressing explicit support for Harris in his statement.
“I have extraordinary confidence that our party leaders will be able to create a process that will produce an outstanding candidate,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, mocked the Democratic Party’s efforts to replace Biden, saying they are frantically trying to remove the results of the primaries to get the president off the ballot.
Keep reading:
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- Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama: Who is the best choice for the US presidency?
- Kamala Harris, the favourite to replace Biden as candidate: what are her credentials?