Can Kamala Harris Break The Highest Glass Ceiling In US Politics?

Washington DC: Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has a lot of historic firsts to her name and now she is also in the running for President. Will she be able to shatter the highest glass ceiling in US Politics to become the first female President of the country?

The US Presidential Elections took a sudden turn after the President of USA and Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris for the post.

Can Kamala Harris Shatter the Highest Glass Ceiling?

Kamala Harris, who is currently serving as the first woman Vice President of USA, is now being endorsed as the Presidential candidate for the Democratics by Joe Biden. 

If Harris is able to defeat Trump, she will become the first female President of the country, as before her, it was Hillary Clinton who ran for the post but lost to Trump.

Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major US political party (Democrats) aimed at creating history but despite leading in almost every nationwide and swing-state poll, she lost the 2016 Presidential Elections to Republican candidate Donald Trump. 

Seeing this situation without the gender lens, Harris will also seek to avoid the fate of Hubert Humphrey, who as vice president won the Democratic nomination in 1968 after President Lyndon Johnson declined to run for reelection amid national dissatisfaction over the Vietnam War. Humphrey lost that year to Republican Richard Nixon and couldn't get a term of his own. 

Kamala Harris and Her Historic Firsts

Kamala Harris has a lot of historic firsts added to her name; she is the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to become the Vice President of the US.

Harris ran for the San Francisco District Attorney in 2003 and emerged victorious to become the first African American woman and also the first South Asian American woman in California to hold the office.

As President Biden's running mate in the 2020 Presidential Elections, when Joe Biden won, Harris became the  first vice president-elect in recent history who along with the president-elect, delivered a victory speech.

Kamala Harris and Her Indian Connection

Speaking about Kamala Harris' Indian connection, the current Vice President of USA is a child of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. 

Harris was born to Shyamala Gopalan who was born in Chennai and immigrated to the US to attend a doctoral program at UC Berkeley.

Kamala Harris, along with her mother and sister, moved back to California in 1970, while her father remained in the Midwest after their divorce when she was seven.

Harris’s rise as the daughter of immigrants – one from Jamaica, one from India – serves as a powerful counter-narrative to former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

Who is Kamala Harris?

Harris attended various schools in her childhood in Montreal, Quebec before finally attending Westmount High School in Westmount. Harris later attended Vanier College in Montreal in 1981-1982.

After high school, in 1982, Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington DC. While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston. Harris graduated from Howard in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.

She then returned to California to attend law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. While at UC Hastings, she served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association. She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989 and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990.

Harris began her law career in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County, before being recruited to the San Francisco DA's Office and later the city attorney of San Francisco's office. In 2003, she was elected the district attorney of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Harris served as the junior US senator from California from 2017 to 2021.

In 2016, she defeated Loretta Sanchez in the Senate election to become the second African-American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the US Senate. Harris sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but withdrew from the race before the primaries. Biden selected her to be his running mate, and their ticket went on to defeat the then-incumbent president and vice president, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, in the 2020 election.

Joe Biden Endorses Kamala Harris 

Endorsing Kamala Harris as the Presidential candidate from the Democractic Party, Joe Biden said on X, “My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

‘My Intention is to Earn and Win This Nomination’: Kamala Harris

Reacting to Biden's endorsement of her name, Kamala Harris said in a social media post, “On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country. I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.”

She further said, “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda. If you’re with me, add a donation right now.”