WASHINGTON: Democratic Party’s Indian-origin vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris will deliver a speech on Thursday to counter President Donald Trump’s remarks at the Republican National Convention after formally accepting the party’s presidential re-nomination.
Harris will speak on President Trump’s failures to contain COVID-19 and protect working families from the economic fallout and the Biden-Harris plan to contain COVID-19 and build a different path forward in America, The Hill quoted a press release from the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign as saying.
While Trump is planning to give his speech from the South Lawn of the White House lawn, Harris’s remarks from Washington D.C. will serve as the Democratic Party’s main counter to his appearance, the report said.
Biden and Harris both railed against Trump’s leadership at last week’s Democratic National Convention.
Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods, Harris, 55, the first Indian-American and first Black woman to be chosen as a vice-presidential candidate for a major political party in the US, said last week.
The Biden campaign is ramping up Harris’ activities following what was a largely well-received address last week, scheduling her for three virtual fundraisers, online discussions and publishing an op-ed discussing women’s right to vote, the daily said.
Democrats are hopeful that Harris will be able to successfully make the case against a second term for Trump while also appealing to Black women and other voters of colour.
Meanwhile, in a Washington Post op-ed on the occasion of Women’s Equality Day, she detailed the history of women’s struggle to gain voting rights, especially women of colour, who were not granted suffrage even with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
Harris alleged that the Republicans are once again doing everything in their power to suppress and attack the voting rights of people of colour.
They are deploying suppressive voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, precinct closures and reduced early-voting days – all of which have been laser-targeted toward communities of colour since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, she alleged.
And this year, Republicans are also spending millions on every scare tactic and trick in the book.
Most visibly, they are doing what they can to take advantage of a pandemic that the president cannot, or will not, get under control.
They are spreading misinformation about voting by mail – a safe and secure voting option – and they have been caught trying to politicise the US Postal Service, Harris said.
The Biden campaign, she said, is committing the resources needed to beat back voter suppression.
We need to make sure that everyone who’s eligible to vote is able to do so – and that their vote is counted, she said.
Paying tributes to all the courageous women throughout history who fought for voting rights, Harris said that but for the 19th Amendment, neither she nor her mother from India would have been able to exercise their right to vote.
If I had been alive in 1920, I might not have been allowed to cast a ballot alongside white women. Neither would my mother, an immigrant from India, who first taught me how sacred our vote is, Harris, 55, wrote in her op-ed.
She is the first woman of colour and first American of Indian descent to have been nominated by a major political party as a vice presidential candidate.
