Kamala Harris Is Biden’s VP Pick — Here’s What It Means For The Election And Beyond

Former Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden announced Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate today. Here’s a look at what this choice means and … what it doesn’t.

It’s a historic choice, with the potential for even more history to be made.
Harris is the first Asian American and the first Black woman in American history to be a general election candidate for president or vice president for either of the two major political parties. (Harris’s mother was born in India, her father in Jamaica. They met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley, in the 1960s.) Harris is just the second Black person (after Barack Obama) and the fourth woman (after Democrats Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008) to be on a presidential ticket for one of the two major parties. If she and Biden win the November election, she would be the first Asian American, the first woman of any race or ethnicity and the second Black person in U.S. history to be vice president or president.