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The call that upended everything for Kamala Harris came on a Sunday morning in July as the US vice president did a jigsaw puzzle at home with her grand-nieces.
“The phone rings, and it’s Joe,” Harris told radio host Howard Stern recently. “I got up to take the call — and then life changed.”
President Joe Biden’s revelation that he was going to drop out of the 2024 White House race and endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee triggered one of the most remarkable transformations in American politics.
Harris was previously saddled with record low approval ratings for a “veep.”
Within a few short weeks she created an election campaign out of nothing. She held rapturous rallies, raised more than $1 billion in funds and brought what she called a burst of joy to a party that had given up hope.
But with the now polls showing the 60-year-old in a dead heat with Republican former president Donald Trump, Harris is in the fight of her life to win on November 5 and become the first female president in US history.
“It’s not easy. Usually people run for president for two years, and she’s just been running since late July,” David Karol, who teaches government and politics at the University of Maryland, told AFP.
Harris was a trailblazer from the moment she entered the White House as America’s first female, Black and South Asian vice president.
Yet the trail proved difficult at first.
