Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his campaign for reelection Sunday and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee for president was a selfless act of patriotism and a strong vote of confidence in the extraordinarily talented woman he selected four years ago to be his partner in governing.
America needs Kamala Harris. Democrats must unite behind her
Biden picked Harris to be his vice presidential running mate in 2020 because he knew the former prosecutor, California attorney general and U.S. senator would be able to succeed him should he be unable to carry on with his duties due to severe illness, injury or death. He made a wise choice.
Harris has played a key role in Biden’s long list of achievements, including passing historic legislation to improve Americans’ lives, implementing a wise foreign policy, and effectively defending our nation.
Biden has now made another wise decision that Harris is the candidate best qualified to be elected and serve as our next president. I know Kamala Harris personally. I’ve worked with her, and I believe she gives Democrats our best chance to defeat former President Donald Trump and save America from his destructive policies. Democrats should unite behind Harris because she would do an outstanding job as president and build on all Biden has done to benefit our country.
As Biden knows, there is no better preparation for the presidency than serving as vice president. Fifteen vice presidents have gone on to become president.
The American people owe President Biden a debt of gratitude for his lifetime of service to our country. He has accomplished more than most American presidents and continues to provide strong leadership for our nation.
But Biden is a realist. After his weak performance in his June 27 debate with Trump prompted a growing number of Democratic elected officials to call on the 81-year-old president to end or at least reconsider his candidacy, Biden clearly realized it would be enormously difficult to unite the Democratic Party behind him.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Biden can’t deny his age, any more than Trump can deny he is just three years younger at 78. Yet, I have trouble understanding Trump’s status as a senior citizen never became as significant as Biden’s. I hope that now the media will put Trump’s age and obviously diminished abilities under the microscope.
It would be foolish of Trump to attach the 59-year-old Harris — 19 years younger than him — as too old and frail to serve as president, as he sought to depict Biden. Trump’s main line of attack will be gone if Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
Dropping out of the presidential race must have been one of the hardest decisions Biden has ever made. But he understands that we are approaching one of the most important elections in American history. He knows that Trump poses a clear and present danger to all we hold dear, including our democracy, our freedoms, our national and global security, our economy and jobs, our health, and the rights of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.
Biden put the interests of our country above his own personal desire to serve our nation for another four years. He followed the guidance of one of his heroes, President John F. Kennedy, who said in his 1961 inaugural address: “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Of course, Harris will make history if she is elected America’s first woman president and becomes the second Black person and the first Asian American to hold our nation’s highest office. But despite the vicious and insulting attacks she is sure to face from Republicans, she is not a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) candidate. Her qualifications are greater or comparable to past American presidents before they assumed office.
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Harris is battle-scarred and battle-tested. She is focused on the future rather than the past. Trump constantly cavils about his grievances and falsely claims he won the 2020 election. Unlike Trump, she is interested in serving the American people in the spirit of Presidents Biden and Kennedy and not benefitting personally from the presidency.
As a former prosecutor, Harris will not let the American people forget that Trump is a convicted felon, awaiting sentencing on 34 counts of falsifying business records growing out of hush money payments to an adult film actress who alleges she had a sexual relationship with him — a claim he denies.
In addition, Harris will remind voters that Trump has been indicted on federal and Georgia charges of trying to illegally overturn his 2020 election defeat, and has been hit with hundreds of millions of dollars in civil fines for business fraud and for defaming and sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll. Special counsel Jack Smith is appealing a decision by a U.S. district judge to drop charges of mishandling classified documents against Trump.
I feel confident that Harris will become the Democratic nominee for president and wage a strong campaign that will put her in the Oval Office. She has the abilities, experience, background, compassion and patriotism we need in a president.
America needs Kamala Harris. Democratic leaders and activists need to unite to put her in the Oval Office.
Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, Senior Advisor at Purple Strategies, New York Times bestselling author, Chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and sought-after Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning media contributor to such outlets as ABC News, USA Today and TheGrio. She previously served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. Donna was the first Black American to serve as the manager of a major-party presidential campaign, running the campaign of Vice President Al Gore in 2000. She serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University and served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. She has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.
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