Who is Kamala Harris in US politics? 1:43
Washington (CNN) - No one said being a vice president would be easy. But as Joe Biden's deputy, California Sen. Kamala Harris would face an exceptionally challenging balancing act: taking the Democratic Party into the future, while navigating the backward mores of party leadership.
"If I am elected president, my cabinet, my administration will look like the country, and I promise that I will in fact elect a woman to be vice president." When Biden said these words during the CNN-Univision debate in March, many people took note.
Before Biden announced Harris as his running mate on Tuesday, only two women had been nominated for vice presidency by a major American party: then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
Biden's statement in March, then, evoked what had become an inescapable buzzword during the 2020 Democratic race: representation . And indeed, Biden's right hand would have significant representative value.
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After a primary season that began with the most diverse roster of candidates in American history but then unsurprisingly shrank into heterosexuality, white race, and masculinity, a black and southern woman Asia as vice president would indicate that, in some way at least, times are changing.
You may gain enthusiasm for a party whose top brass rarely reflect its base in any meaningful way, and may even transform the appearance of power. (Biden himself has said it would be a "bridge" to a new "generation of leaders.")
In particular, the message that a Vice President Harris would send to black women, the most trusted and committed Democratic voters in a long time, is far from despicable.
"Black women are sick and tired of being considered the backbone of the Democratic Party," Democratic strategist Karen Finney recently told Errin Haines of The 19th, a new nonprofit newsroom that focuses on the junctures of gender and politics. «We want to be recognized as leaders. We want all things. We owe it to ourselves.
In particular, it is very likely that Harris's power is more than merely representative. If Biden wins in November, he will inherit a country beset by several crucial problems: a pandemic that President Donald Trump has actively made worse, a recession that is the deepest on record since the Great Depression, and systemic racism in the police and beyond.
Which means Harris would likely take on a lot of responsibility in the White House as well.
"History tells us that consequent presidents and vice presidents come to light at times when they are put to the test and tried, and I cannot imagine a period of time in which president and vice president are to be evaluated more than in January 2021, ”Michael Feldman, who was senior adviser to Vice President Al Gore, told Christian Paz of The Atlantic in July.
“There is simply no possibility that the person you elect is not a consistent vice president or a consistent historical figure. It just will be, ”Feldman added.
Yet despite all that potential, Harris would, in all likelihood, have to grapple with gender and old thinking, even within his party. There have already been advances in the form this thinking might take.
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"She laughed and said, 'That's politics.' I had no regrets, "former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, who was on the search commission for Biden's vice president, told a Biden supporter and donor, according to Politico . Harris was responding to a question about how he had beaten up the former vice president during the June 2019 Democratic debate, and Dodd was not a fan of Harris's response, devoid of shame.
In the other direction, Dodd advocated for California Rep. Karen Bass, who was also among the vice-presidential contenders, because he saw her as "a loyal No. 2."
The vice presidency is an inherently different position. But the aforementioned comments, and taunts about 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams's swagger, have had the scrambled, if unintended, effect of suggesting that only modest and withdrawn women are fit for the role, a notion that especially afflicts black women.
Elsewhere in the Politico report , a Harris ally noted that the senator "is often more comfortable talking about others than about herself." In its way, the comment was a silent "corrective" to Harris's direct speech and her general refusal to reduce her ambitions.
Such distortion of ambition and fussy are practically non-existent when men compete for political office.
Harris, then, will have two things to do under the microscope if she becomes vice president. You will have to serve as a proxy for those voters who are rarely reflected in the upper echelons of power, and do work that will be far more than representative, and that will surely test whether your party can leave certain prejudices in the past.
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None of this is to minimize the undeniable excitement of Biden's historic announcement.
After all, as Harris tweeted on Tuesday: "Black women and women of color have long been underrepresented in elected office and in November we have a chance to change that."
Rather, it's to recognize that if Biden and Harris win in November, the latter will be in a much riskier position. But of course, black women always are.
Joe BidenKamala Harris