With President Joe Biden having stepped aside and having endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris for US President, Harris has earned enough support in the party to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, paving the way to become Donald Trump’s opponent in the November presidential election, Financial Times reported.
With the DNC rules committee meeting today to determine the necessary procedural rules for the nomination process, the US vice president surpassed the necessary number of committed delegates yesterday on the first full day after Biden suspended his re-election effort and threw his full support behind her, upending the 2024 presidential race.
As of early this morning, Harris had received committed support from 2,668 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention, well above the required 1,976, the Associated Press reported.
Last night Harris tweeted, “Tonight, I am proud to have earned the support needed to become our party’s nominee.”
She had already gained the support of scores of influential politicians, including some of the most prominent Democrats in Washington, such as Nancy Pelosi, and Bill and Hilary Clinton.
Harris’s presidential campaign was boosted by a flood of funding in the first 24 hours after the Biden stepped aside, with her campaign having received a record $81 Mln in contributions–more than Biden had received in the first two months of his campaign.
In a string of enraged posts on his Truth Social network, Trump claimed that the change at the top of the Democratic ticket has “misled the Republican Party, causing it to waste a great deal of time and money.”
While he also posted that he “hopes” for numerous debates during the campaign, claiming that Harris “has absolutely terrible pole [sic] numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP,” his campaign is concerned about his chances against the current VP.
As a prosecutor in California before being elected to high office, Harris “took on perpetrators of all kinds,” including “sexual predators” who abuse women, as well as “fraudsters” and “cheats,” she told a Delaware audience. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
The Republican nominee’s vision, Harris said, is to return the US to a time when “many of our fellow Americans did not have full freedoms and rights.” The Democratic Party’s vision wants to take the country forward, she said.
Trump, 78, is now the oldest presidential nominee in US history.