VP KAMALA HARRIS IS ALMOST ASSUREDLY GOING TO BE THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT IN THE UPCOMING NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION. SEE EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW.
Count the names—Ed Gainey, Summer Lee, La’Tasha Mayes, Austin Davis, Josh Shapiro, Bob Casey, Joe Biden, 44,000 Black women on a Zoom call in one night, 20,000 Black men on an online call the next night, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn, the United Steelworkers Association, those who were part of the $81 million in donations that came in 24 hours time, and many more.
The list of people and organizations that, in such a short time, have endorsed, rallied around and thrown their full support behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee has been gigantic and symbolic.
With the Democratic National Convention scheduled for Aug. 19-22, in Chicago, there’s almost no way you won’t see Harris on that United Center stage come Thursday night, Aug. 22, in prime time, taking the stage, accepting the Democratic nomination for president. Seemingly, as soon as President Joe Biden on Sunday, July 21, announced he wouldn’t run for re-election and endorsed Harris, it put to rest the thought of the Democrats trying to put someone over Harris for the presidential nomination.
Allegheny County, and more specifically, Pittsburgh, has a chance to help make history with their votes. Pennsylvania is at the center of this November’s presidential election, just as it was four years ago when the Keystone State went blue for Biden. African American adults all over Pittsburgh, the county, and the surrounding counties of Beaver, Westmoreland, Butler, Lawrence and Fayette should understand that their vote is needed and will matter, if they want to see Kamala Harris become the first woman, and the first Black woman, to hold the U.S. Presidency.
Sure, there’s zero chance that the surrounding counties not named Allegheny County will go for Harris, but all that matters in Pennsylvania is that the individual number of votes for Harris outnumber those for her opponent, Donald Trump, no matter where they come from in the state, including in “Who Shot John,” Pa.
In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by just 81,660 votes over Trump, or by 1.2 percentage points. In Allegheny County, where the Black population is about 14 percent and the love for labor unions is intense, Biden beat Trump by 20 percentage points, or nearly 148,000 votes.
This means that the margin of victory for Harris in Allegheny County must be as high as possible to help offset the votes that Trump will assuredly get in the rural areas and the middle of the state.
“We have no time to waste—what’s at stake for communities like mine isn’t abstract. We need to unify and move forward to defeat Trump and fascism in November. That’s why I endorse and encourage unity behind Vice President Kamala Harris,” said Congresswoman Lee, in a statement to the New Pittsburgh Courier.
“With women’s rights, workers’ rights, and voting rights on the line, the stakes of this election for Pennsylvania and the Nation couldn’t be higher,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, in a statement. “Vice President Harris has been leading on those fights and as a former prosecutor, she will draw a clear contrast between herself and former President Trump. She is prepared to be Commander-in-Chief and is the best person to meet this moment. I’m proud to endorse her candidacy for President.”
Harris has been in Pittsburgh a few times since becoming Vice President, and during a visit to the Kingsley Association in East Liberty in February 2024, she held a 10-minute interview with just one media outlet — the Courier.
VP KAMALA HARRIS SPEAKS WITH COURIER EDITOR AND PUBLISHER ROD DOSS IN FEBRUARY 2024.
Although the Courier is part of the “Black Press,” Harris was dealt no softballs in the interview. Courier Editor and Publisher Rod Doss pressed Harris on if there was a sense of apathy within the Democratic Party or the presidential election as a whole.
Harris’ response: “People said deal with Black unemployment; we now have the lowest Black unemployment in the history because of the work that we have done. That’s about building jobs and creating opportunities for not only employment, but for wealth-building. People said deal with the fact that Black businesses don’t get federal contracts in the same way that other businesses do. We have made a pledge which we are on track now to achieving, increasing federal contracts by 50 percent to minority-owned businesses. So this is some of the work that we have done and it is incumbent on us in an election season to let people know that we heard them, we have delivered and therefore believe that we have earned a re-election.”
Obviously, Harris didn’t know at the time that her time would be now, this 2024 presidential election, that she would be the one to not only lead the charge to a re-election, but that she would be the top dog, not Biden.
Expect Harris to be in Pennsylvania often between now and Election Day, which is Tuesday, Nov. 5. And she most likely will return to Pittsburgh, too. As she said during her remarks on Monday, July 22, in Wilmington, Delaware: “In the next 106 days, we have work to do, we have doors to knock on, people to talk to, phone calls to make, and an election to win.”
Winning the election is doable for Harris, but it’s nowhere near a guarantee. The Associated Press spoke with a number of young African American adults in Atlanta, Ga., in the past few days, and some were concerned that the country wouldn’t be able to accept a Black woman as president. Rewind back to 2008, and there was all kinds of happiness about Barack Obama running for president, but African Americans, in general, were skeptical that America would be ready for a Black president.
The country obviously was ready, for two terms no less, but then told the White woman, Hillary Clinton, who had spent decades in public office and was the First Lady when Bill Clinton was the president, to “skedaddle,” and put Trump in the president’s seat in the November 2016 election.
Harris’ detractors say that she’s “even worse” than Biden when it comes to progressive ideals. They say that she’s going to just advance the agendas that Biden initiated, and that voting for Harris is just like voting for Biden. The Trump campaign has already started the attacks, also saying that Harris helped Biden “screw up the border,” thus allowing countless “illegal aliens” into the country.
Trump and his new running mate, J.D. Vance, a senator from Ohio, also like to poke fun at Harris’ laugh, calling her, “Laughin’ Kamala,” to play off the “Crooked Joe” Biden moniker.
Harris, who turns 60 years old two weeks before Election Day, doesn’t seem fazed by the attacks. She felt right at home in Delaware on July 22, right at home in Milwaukee the following day, as she now goes from playing second-fiddle to Biden, to being possibly the next elected President of the United States.
“I was the elected attorney general of California, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor,” Harris said on July 22, in Wilmington, Delaware. “In those role, I took on perpetrators of all kinds…predators who abused women…fraudsters who ripped off consumers…cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain…so hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type. And in this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
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