By Hadassa Ferreira, Arts & Culture Editor
As a community, we are about to go through one of the most important seasons: the presidential election season. This particular season has been interesting, since the race between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party has been remarkably close. One of the notable events during this season is President Joe Biden stepping down as the Democratic Party nominee, which led to the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris. This has caused mixed emotions among American citizens.
A presidential nomination has a long path until it becomes official. In the United States, the nominee candidate is announced at the respective party’s convention after a lengthy process. In this process, the prospective candidates announce their intentions to run for election to their party. After announcing their intentions, those prospective candidates, or primary candidates, will start their campaign to gain political support from their parties as well as financial support for their campaign. After that, the delegates of each party will decide who to support and announce them at the party’s convention. This chosen candidate will run for the presidential election.
An incumbent, who is the previous person to occupy a political office, usually has priority, if they can be re-elected, to represent their party. However, this year, the Democratic Party situation was different since President Biden’s popularity among Americans was extremely low.
In recent months, the Democratic Party started to see diminishing chances of winning the presidential elections if President Biden ran against former President Donald Trump. After suffering pressure from the Democratic Party, President Biden stepped out of the presidential race, and current Vice President Kamala Harris was nominated as the official candidate to represent the Democratic Party for this presidential election (Rachel Leingang, 2024).
The Democratic National Convention happened Aug. 19-22, where Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech on the last day of the convention. According to The Guardian and CBS News, in the speech, the candidate recalled her life history, addressed important themes of her campaign, such as immigration matters, support for Ukraine, a pledge for a cease fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and presented attacks to her adversary, Donald Trump.
Emily Shute, a student majoring in political science, said, “I think she was the easiest and fastest option, and the voters did not get much of a say.”
Kamala Harris was a safe choice as the nominee for the Democratic Party, since President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race was so close to Election Day. The party would not have much time to promote a candidate who is not well known by the public. Additionally, Kamala Harris already has staff inserted in the current administration; therefore, the changes in the administration would be smaller, which makes it easy to conquer the votes of the consolidated democratic public.
Professor Frank Orlando, who teaches political science at Saint Leo University, said, “Parties have choice on who to pick, and everything was legal. Of course, if she had to run against all those other people in the primaries, things would be different. But with the support of Biden, former President Obama, and other members of Congress, she got there.”
He added, “Although it [Harris’ nomination] was formally legal, to say it was possible to feel the will of Democratic voters, there is no way to say it. There was no campaign.”
Even before Harris’ nomination, due to President Biden’s lack of popularity, Kamala Harris was conquering support in important swing states; and, clearly, after her official nomination, it was possible to see the gap between Trump’s numbers and Harris’ numbers had diminished considerably. Nevertheless, for now, everything indicates that the elections will be tight between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, according to ABC News.
