Joe Biden, Kamala Harris make their first appearance together
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appeared together as a Democratic ticket for the first time Wednesday in a socially distant unveiling that played to the moment’s historical significance — and set the stage for battles to come against President Trump.
“I have no doubt that I picked the right person to join me,” Biden said as he re-introduced his former rival as his running mate. “Kamala knows how to govern. She knows how to make the hard calls. She’s ready to do this job on day one.”
Biden highlighted the dual magnitude of the moment — Harris, 55, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, is the first Black woman and first Asian American woman to compete on a major party’s ticket.
“This morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up, especially little Black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities,” Biden said. “But today just maybe they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way.”
Harris nodded to the “ambitious women before me,” whose resilience “makes my presence here today even possible.”
From a high school gymnasium in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Del., the newly minted pair offered the first glimpse of their unified platform, which included elements resurrected from Harris’s presidential bid.
“This is a moment of real consequence for America,” Harris said. “Our economy, our health, our kids, the kind of country we live in — it’s all on the line.”
They also took shots at Trump — with Harris hammering the president over his handling of the coronavirus crisis and Biden deriding the Republican’s attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee’s new running mate.
Trump and his team spent the day attempting to paint Harris, a relative moderate, as a “radical.” Surrogates trotted out Harris’s past backing of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill — she later pushed her own health care plan that preserved private insurance — and her co-sponsoring of the Green New Deal. Communications Director Tim Murtaugh said her selection completes the “leftist takeover of Joe Biden and the entire Democrat Party.”
In an evening White House briefing, Trump expressed surprise at Biden’s choice, saying Harris “dropped like a rock” in her presidential bid and “said far worse about Biden than I ever did.”
Biden called on his supporters to have Harris’s back, saying, “Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with a strong woman?”
Harris and Biden spoke emotionally of her friendship with his late son, Beau Biden, when they served together as state attorneys general, and how it factored into the elder Biden’s decision.
Biden also said the Harris announcement heralded the best fundraising day of his campaign — $26 million.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3fTFoEH
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