Joe Biden Enters White House, Kamala Harris Named as First Woman US Vice President
After a tense week of vote tallying, Joe Biden on Saturday became the President-elect of the United States after clinching victory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania which took him well past the Electoral College threshold of 270 votes. As his vice president, Kamala Harris will make history in myriad ways, becoming the first woman to occupy the office.
Long before reaching one of the highest political offices in the nation, Joe Biden born on November 20, 1942, grew up in the blue-collar city of Scranton in northeast Pennsylvania. He served as vice president in the Barack Obama administration during the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
As vice president, Joe played an active role in the administration, serving as an influential adviser to Barack Obama and a vocal supporter of his initiatives. Joe was reelected to the Senate six times, and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to serve as Barack Obama's vice president after they won the 2008 presidential election; Barack Obama and Joe Biden were reelected in 2012. As vice president, Joe oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counteract the Great Recession.
In April 2019, Joe Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, and he reached the delegate threshold needed to secure the Democratic nomination in June 2020. On August 11, he announced the US Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate. Biden won the presidential election of November 2020 against President Donald Trump.
Joe is the second non-incumbent vice president to become President-elect of the United States, after Richard Nixon in 1968. Joe, who served for decades in the Senate, firmly believes in the value of bipartisanship and insists on extending overtures to Republicans even in a moment when many in his own party don’t see negotiating partners on the other side. As a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he also speaks passionately about asserting and defending America’s role as a leader on the global stage.
In the same time, Kamala Harris, the US Vice President-elect has added several firsts to her name after winning the election. She is the first female, first Indian-American and first Asian vice president-elect of the US. Kamala was only the third woman vice presidential nominee to be selected on a major party ticket. Then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and New York representative Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 were the other two. Kamala, a California senator and the state’s former attorney general, built a career in the tech industry’s front yard. Before becoming the vice president-elect, Kamala served as a county district attorney; the district attorney for San Francisco, the first woman and first African-American and Indian-origin to be elected to the position.
The victory of Joe Biden will apparently bring a change in the India-US relationship. Though the India-US relations have evolved and only grown irrespective of which party is in the office, whether it be the Democrats or the Republicans. With a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris win in the US Presidential elections, there could certainly be continuity in the Indo-US ties on various fronts. As the Vice President during the Barack Obama administration, Joe Biden played a critical role in the US-South Asia strategy. Beginning on a positive note, PM Narendra Modi congratulated the duo for their spectacular victory.
