Biden withdraws, Harris takes lead at Democratic Convention
In the United States, in Chicago, the National Convention of the Democratic Party is set to begin, where it will officially endorse the candidacy of the current Vice President Kamala Harris for the November presidential elections. Harris will be contesting against former Republican President Donald Trump in these elections.
The thousands of delegates attending the Convention will also vote to approve Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as the vice-presidential candidate and to adopt the party platform.
The four-day convention will commence on Monday with a speech by President Joe Biden, who, to everyone’s surprise, announced at the end of July that he would not seek a second term and would “hand the baton to a new generation” —Vice President Kamala Harris, age 59. The convention will conclude on Thursday with Harris’s acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination.
Kamala Harris is the first woman of colour and the first person from South Asia to be nominated for the presidency by a major American political party. Although Harris has been the Democratic nominee for only a few weeks, her nomination has significantly altered the dynamics of this presidential campaign.
On July 21, President Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, announced his withdrawal from the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the campaign for the White House. Hours after Biden’s announcement, Harris declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination. The Biden campaign officially rebranded as “Harris for President” and registered the new name. The following day, Harris secured the support of a large majority of delegates at the convention, and by early August, her candidacy was approved in an online vote.
Currently, opinion polls indicate that Vice President Kamala Harris holds a slight lead over former President Donald Trump in the national popular vote. However, Trump would likely win the election, as the president is elected indirectly by state delegates in the Electoral College, where 270 votes out of 538 are required for victory. In a direct matchup against Trump, Harris has 49% of the vote intentions, compared to 45% for Trump. If a third independent candidate is included in the poll, Harris has 47% of the vote intentions, Trump has 44%, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has 5%. At the beginning of July, Trump led the polls with 43%, followed by Joe Biden with 42% and Kennedy with 9%.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of anti-Israel protesters have gathered in Chicago to participate in the first in a series of protests related to the Democratic Party’s National Convention. The protesters are calling for the United States to halt aid to Israel in order to help end the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip.
A coalition of approximately 200 organizations advocating for social justice, many of which have a pro-Palestinian agenda at present, will assemble outside the convention. Some pro-Palestinian delegates at the convention are also pushing for the party to amend its platform to restrict arms supplies to Israel, according to Reuters.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
