Pictured are Democratic Vice Presidential-Elect Kamala Harris and Democratic Presidential- Elect Joe BidenWASHINGTON, D.C.-Kamala Harris, the only Black female U.S. senator and the only Black woman to seek the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, became America's first woman and first Black female vice president on Saturday via a historic election that also saw former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, unseat incumbent president Donald Trump, a Republican real estate mogul.
"I'm just so happy right now I could cry," said 24-year-old college graduate Shae Maresco, a greater Clevelander from the pivotal state of Ohio and the county of Cuyahoga, a Democratic stronghold. "Vice President Elect Harris is not only a woman, but she is a woman of color who will fight for all of us."
COVID-19 was the main factor in Trump's electoral college loss, pundits said, some 223,000 Americans dead from the virus that has taken the lives of Black people at a rate more than three times that of their White counterparts.
And the Biden-Harris team was miles apart from Trump and Vice President Pence on public policy issues across the spectrum, from the Affordable Care Act to racial justice, sexism, women's reproductive rights, taxes, education, climate change, Supreme Court nominees and Civil and human rights.
After winning in the key battleground states that were holding up overall election results since Tuesday night, namely Nevada, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, Biden won the White House with 290 electoral votes to Trump's 214 to become the country's 46th president.
He also won the popular vote 74.5 million to Trump's 70.4 million votes, Biden making history in garnering the most number of popular votes of any American president.
Both Biden and Harris will speak tonight at 8 pm ET from the president elect's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, supporters already celebrating in the streets in Washington D.C., the nation's capital, and across the nation.
Harris is the first woman of color to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America.
When she accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president relative to the Democratic National Convention in August she spoke out on racism, amid a number of issues impacting the Black community and others, including the pandemic.
She blamed the partisan divisiveness in the country on the Trump administration.
She said then that Trump is too controversial, and that he is mean.
"The constant chaos leaves us adrift," Harris said. "The incompetence makes us feel afraid."
With millions of Americans watching across most major television and cable channels, she shined during the vice presidential debate on Oct 7 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and out did Vice President Mike Pence, polls said.
A former California attorney general, the junior federal lawmaker is native of Oakland who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.
She became the fourth woman to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America behind vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin in 2008 and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton a presidential candidate that year.
The late Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was often mentioned by Harris, Chisholm the first Black woman to run for president in America.
Hailing from the nation's most populous state, she was the best known on Biden's narrowed list of potential running mates
The former vice president had promised to choose a female running-mate during the 11th Democratic Debate on March 15 in Washington, D.C and pressure subsequently mounted by Black leaders and Democrats, and even some mainstream media, for that woman to be a woman of color, preferably a Black woman.
The daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris brings a Jewish husband to the White House, and she enjoys a grown stepdaughter and step son whom she says she is close too.
She also has a sister.
Her parents, who were divorced, are both dead.
She received her law degree from the University of California and her undergraduate degree from Howard University, a historically Black university and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, one of the prominent Black sororities in the country, among several of them.
A staunch Obama ally, Sen. Harris was a known pick in Democratic political circles to be the one both Biden and Obama favored for Biden's presidential ticket.
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