Seventy-four days. That's how long Vice President Kamala Harris has until the presidential election on November 5. A sprint that will last an eternity, where anything can happen after her triumph at the Democratic convention, which validated her nomination with the traditional release of red, white and blue balloons on Thursday, August 22.
At 9 pm Chicago time, Harris appeared on stage, wearing a dark pantsuit and bright smile, before a crowd of delegates dressed in white and shouting "USA." "The path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected. But I am no stranger to unlikely journeys," she began. The woman who replaced Joe Biden on short notice in July wants to offer the country a "new way forward," which seemed quite improbable barely a month ago, when Donald Trump was parading at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. "I see a nation that is ready to move forward, ready for the next step in the incredible journey that is America," said Harris, surrounded by American flags. "We have so much more in common than what separates us," she insisted.
This new journey is first and foremost her own. The journey of a daughter of immigrants: a Jamaican father who was a professor of economics at Stanford, and an Indian mother who was a scientist with a passion for biology. "My mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California, with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer," said Harris, who recounted her happy childhood in the Golden State, despite her parents' divorce. She embodies upward mobility, the American dream fulfilled instead of the disillusionment of recent years.
It's also the journey of a woman to whom her mother used to say "never complain about injustice, but do something about it." It's the journey of a woman with the necessary temperament to become the commander-in-chief after having been a California prosecutor.
A lover of justice, defending, according to the Democratic narrative, children and families evicted from their homes, and fighting drug cartels, the former prosecutor says she discovered her vocation as a protector when one of her friends was sexually assaulted. "When I was in high school, I started to notice something about my best friend, Wanda. She was sad at school. And there were times she didn't want to go home. So one day I asked if everything was all right. And she confided in me that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather. And I immediately told her she had to come stay with us, and she did. This was one of the reasons I became a prosecutor. To protect people like Wanda," said Harris.
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