US Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday appeared poised to clinch her party’s presidential nomination after receiving support from enough Democratic delegates, as she launched a blistering campaign against the Republican candidate, former US president Donald Trump.
The formal nomination process for a US presidential candidate occurs when delegates from across the US gather to officially anoint a nominee chosen by voters during the primaries.
However, when US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, the fate of those delegates, who had been slated to vote for him, came into question.
Photo: AP
With the support of a slew of Democratic heavyweights, including Biden himself, and massive voter donations, Harris quickly closed in as the Democratic Party’s heir apparent, and delegates began falling in line to pledge their support.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” Harris wrote in a statement, after US media reported she had sailed past the number of delegates needed — 1,976 out of nearly 4,000 — in order to decisively secure the Democratic presidential nomination during voting in the coming weeks.
The news came after Harris, in her first speech to campaign workers since Biden’s announcement, lashed out at Republican nominee Trump on Monday at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
Telling the crowd of workers she had come to address them personally after the “roller-coaster” of the last few days, she reminded them that in her past role as California’s chief prosecutor, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds.”
“Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said to applause.
“We are going to win in November,” a smiling Harris told the workers.
She also pledged to focus on the politically explosive issue of abortion, after Trump praised the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the long-held federal right to the procedure.
It is a winning issue for Democrats, as Republicans struggle to secure votes among suburban women who have shown waning enthusiasm for another Trump term.
Among battleground state voters, 52 percent judged abortion a “very important” issue for the November ballot, according to the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll conducted from July 1 to 15.
At the time, 47 percent across the swing states said they trusted Biden more to handle the issue, with 35 percent for Trump.
Biden, 81, meanwhile made his first public remarks in nearly a week as he recovered from a bout of COVID-19.
He called in to the campaign meeting to say that dropping out — after mounting party and voter concerns over his health and mental acuity — had been the “right thing to do” and he praised Harris as “the best.”
Harris was yesterday scheduled to take her fight against Trump to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was to hold a rally hoping to bolster her following in the critical swing state.
Aiming to become the first female president in US history, the 59-year-old Harris won the backing of a seemingly unassailable number of Democrats.
Notably among them was powerful former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said she endorsed Harris “with immense pride and limitless optimism.”
Donors have also rallied behind Harris, pouring a record US$81 million into her campaign in the 24 hours after Biden stood aside.
The campaign claimed the haul was the largest one-day sum in presidential history — and that, among the 888,000 grassroots donors, about 60 percent were making their first 2024 contribution.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS