WASHINGTON: US Vice President Kamala Harris made her first public appearance on Monday since entering the presidential race after President Joe Biden, 81, abruptly abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed her as his successor.
“Joe Biden’s legacy over the last three years is unmatched in modern history,” Harris said, before delivering remarks at a White House event to honor college athletes.
Harris has moved swiftly to lock up the Democratic presidential nomination, after Biden announced on Sunday he was stepping aside, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats.
Virtually all of the prominent Democrats who had been seen as potential challengers to Harris have lined up behind her, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
Campaign officials and allies have already made hundreds of calls on her behalf, urging delegates to next month’s Democratic Party convention to join in nominating her for president in the Nov. 5 election against Republican Donald Trump.
Biden’s departure was the latest shock to a White House race that included the near-assassination of former President Trump by a gunman during a campaign stop and the nomination of Trump’s fellow hard-liner, US Senator J.D. Vance, as his running mate.
“My intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Harris said in a statement on Sunday. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump.”
Harris, who is Black and Asian American, would fashion an entirely new dynamic with Trump, 78, offering a vivid generational and cultural contrast.
The Trump campaign has been preparing for her possible rise for weeks, sources told Reuters. It sent out a detailed critique of her record on immigration and other issues on Monday, accusing her of being liberal than Biden.
The Trump campaign accused Harris of favoring abolishing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and decriminalizing border crossings, backing the so-called Green New Deal, supporting the administration’s electric vehicle mandates and encouraging “defund the police” efforts.
Some of those were positions Harris adopted as an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the 2020 election when she was running on a more liberal agenda than Biden but were not ones that the administration assumed, particularly with regard to border security and law enforcement issues.
Biden, the oldest person ever to have occupied the Oval Office, said he would remain in the presidency until his term ends on Jan. 20, 2025, while endorsing Harris to run in his place.
Biden’s shaky June 27 debate performance against Trump led the president’s fellow Democrats to urge him to end his run, but senior Republicans have demanded he resign from office, arguing that if he is not fit to campaign, he is not fit to govern.
Harris spent Sunday working the phones, dressed in a Howard University sweatshirt and eating pizza with anchovies as she spoke with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a potential vice presidential running mate, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Congressional Black Caucus chair Representative Steven Horsford, according to sources.
Biden’s withdrawal leaves less than four months to wage a campaign.
Trump, whose false claims that his 2020 loss to Biden was the result of fraud inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol, on Monday questioned Democrats’ right to change candidates.
“They stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries,” Trump said on his Truth Social site.
Despite the early show of support for Harris, talk of an open convention when Democrats gather in Chicago on Aug. 19-22 was not totally silenced.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama did not announce endorsements, although both praised Biden.
With Democrats wading into uncharted territory, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said the party would soon announce the next steps in its nomination process.
Abortion rights leader
Biden won the party’s nomination in 2020, picked Harris to be his vice president, and went on to beat Trump. She is a former California attorney general and a former US senator.
Harris is expected to stick largely to Biden’s foreign policy playbook on such issues as China, Iran and Ukraine, but could strike a tougher tone with Israel over the Gaza war if she tops the Democratic ticket and wins the November election.
She has been outspoken on abortion rights, an issue that resonates with younger voters and more liberal Democrats.
Proponents argue she would energize those voters, consolidate Black support and bring sharp debating skills to prosecute the political case against the former president.
But some Democrats were concerned about a Harris candidacy, in part because of the weight of a long history of racial and gender discrimination in the United States, which has not elected a woman president in its nearly 250-year history.
Polling shows that Harris performs no better statistically than Biden had done against Trump.
In a head-to-head match-up, Harris and Trump were tied with 44 percent support each in a July 15-16 Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted immediately after the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump.
Trump led Biden 43 percent to 41 percent in that same poll, though the 2 percentage point difference was not meaningful considering the poll’s 3-point margin of error.
Biden’s campaign had $95 million on hand at the end of June, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Trump’s campaign ended the month with $128 million. Campaign finance law experts disagree on how easily that money could be shifted to a Harris-led campaign.
Harris’ campaign had raised $49.6 million in less than 24 hours after Biden’s exit, a campaign spokesperson said on Monday.
More than 44,000 Black women and allies, including Representatives Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crockett and Joyce Beatty, joined a three-hour call on Sunday evening in support of Harris’s bid, raising more than $1.5 million for her presidential campaign, organizers told Reuters.
Biden has not been seen in public since testing positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday. He was isolating at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and tentatively plans to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday if he has recovered.
Harris makes first appearance since launching Democratic presidential campaign
https://arab.news/8f5ab
Harris makes first appearance since launching Democratic presidential campaign
- Harris has moved swiftly to lock up the Democratic presidential nomination, after Biden announced on Sunday he was stepping aside
- Virtually all of the prominent Democrats who had been seen as potential challengers to Harris have lined up behind her
India, Arab League target $500bn in trade by 2030
- It was the first such gathering of India–Arab FMs since the forum’s inauguration in 2016
- India and Arab states agree to link their startup ecosystems, cooperate in the space sector
NEW DELHI: India and the Arab League have committed to doubling bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030, as their top diplomats met in New Delhi for the India–Arab Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
The foreign ministers’ forum is the highest mechanism guiding India’s partnership with the Arab world. It was established in March 2002, with an agreement to institutionalize dialogue between India and the League of Arab States, a regional bloc of 22 Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa.
The New Delhi meeting on Saturday was the first gathering in a decade, following the inaugural forum in Bahrain in 2016.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said in his opening remarks that the forum was taking place amid a transformation in the global order.
“Nowhere is this more apparent than in West Asia or the Middle East, where the landscape itself has undergone a dramatic change in the last year,” he said. “This obviously impacts all of us, and India as a proximate region. To a considerable degree, its implications are relevant for India’s relationship with Arab nations as well.”
Jaishankar and his UAE counterpart co-chaired the talks, which aimed at producing a cooperation agenda for 2026-28.
“It currently covers energy, environment, agriculture, tourism, human resource development, culture and education, amongst others,” Jaishankar said.
“India looks forward to more contemporary dimensions of cooperation being included, such as digital, space, start-ups, innovation, etc.”
According to the “executive program” released by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the roadmap agreed by India and the League outlined their planned collaboration, which included the target “to double trade between India and LAS to US$500 billion by 2030, from the current trade of US$240 billion.”
Under the roadmap, they also agreed to link their startup ecosystems by facilitating market access, joint projects, and investment opportunities — especially health tech, fintech, agritech, and green technologies — and strengthen cooperation in space with the establishment of an India–Arab Space Cooperation Working Group, of which the first meeting is scheduled for next year.
Over the past few years, there has been a growing momentum in Indo-Arab relations focused on economic, business, trade and investment ties between the regions that have some of the world’s youngest demographics, resulting in a “commonality of circumstances, visions and goals,” according to Muddassir Quamar, associate professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“The focus of the summit meeting was on capitalizing on the economic opportunities … including in the field of energy security, sustainability, renewables, food and water security, environmental security, trade, investments, entrepreneurship, start-ups, technological innovations, educational cooperation, cultural cooperation, youth engagement, etc.,” Quamar told Arab News.
“A number of critical decisions have been taken for furthering future cooperation in this regard. In terms of opportunities, there is immense potential.”
