First woman vice-president, symbol of diversity, Kamala Harris electrifies the American left, which sees the future much more in it than Joe Biden, president of transition.
From the first hours following the announcement of Joe Biden’s presidential victory by the main American media on Saturday, the enthusiasm very quickly transferred to his running mate, even in the streets of most major cities of the country.
“It’s incredible, we have never seen a woman so high on the scale of power,” said Devi Kowlessar, a real estate agent in New York who, like the vice president-elect, is of Indian origin. . “She represents so many things. She could become our next president!”
At British bookmakers, the former California prosecutor is already favorite for the 2024 poll, ahead of Joe Biden. In fact, for several weeks, signs “Harris 2024” or “Harris-Biden 2024” already blooming.
“Madam Vice-President is no longer a fictional character,” tweeted actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who fictitiously held this role in HBO’s “Veep” series.
On Saturday, on the occasion of her first address after the announcement of the presidential election results, Kamala Harris was dressed in a white pantsuit, a tribute to the activists who fought, a hundred years ago, for women get the right to vote in the United States.
For many democratic women, the success of Kamala Harris is all the more gratifying since the defeat of Hillary Clinton, who came close to becoming the first woman president of the United States, was brutal four years ago.
– “An example for young girls” –
The 56-year-old Californian “is smart, bright, funny, beautiful. She’s a real person, who is my age. A fantastic example for young girls,” said Theodora Egbuchulam, a 55-year-old African-American lawyer. , also took to the streets of New York.
Addressing the country on Saturday evening, the lawyer by training saluted the memory of her mother, who died of cancer in 2009, and of “generations of women, black, Asian, white, Hispanic, Native American, who have traced the path “.
If Donald Trump called her a “monster”, several voices on the left were also very critical when Joe Biden was appointed running mate in early August.
Some, like the former spokesperson for Bernie Sanders, Briahna Joy Gray, saw in them above all a “cop”, guilty, according to them, of having made the choice of a repressive policy when she was the district attorney of San Francisco (2004-2011), which particularly affected minorities.
But on Saturday, it was time for celebration.
“Kamala is the future,” for Theodora Egbuchulam, and her election “shows the children that America is more like us than a typical white man.”
For Kelly Dittmar, research director at the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University, the senator will bring to the White House “the point of view and the story of a black woman from South Asia -Is who spent his life in the United States “.
This, she says, is where the power of “representation” resides, which “leads to better, more inclusive decisions.”
Born in California to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, Kamala Devi Harris, of her full name, is, even more than Barack Obama, the symbol of American multiculturalism.
Well before the election, the choice of Joe Biden to make her his running mate “brought a certain amount of enthusiasm which helped” the Democratic candidate during his campaign to mobilize the Democratic electorate, particularly women, according to Kelly Dittmar.
His appointment also reassured them, the academic analysis, because “fears of a return to the past, to the domination of white men” emerged with a duel announced between the two septuagenarians Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
“I may be the first woman to take on this position, but I will not be the last,” said Kamala Harris, Saturday night, in Wilmington (Delaware).
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