Kamala Harris headed on Tuesday to the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin after amassing enough support from Democratic delegates to clear her adoption as the party’s White House nominee.
The vice president has built up a seemingly unstoppable head of steam since Joe Biden, 81, confirmed on Sunday that he was abandoning his re-election bid, hobbled by intense and widening doubts about his mental and physical health.
A tally of delegates by the Associated Press showed that Ms Harris has won the backing of more than 2,500 party delegates, well over the bar of 1,976 needed to formally clinch the nomination when Democrats convene in Chicago next month.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” the 59-year-old said in a statement late on Monday, after more grandees including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed her.
“I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”
However, the delegates were bound only to support Mr Biden and can still change their minds. All eyes are now on how Ms Harris performs as the standard-bearer, after a disastrous run at the nomination in 2020, and who she will pick as her running mate.
In Wisconsin, she was staging her first full-fledged campaign event since Mr Biden bowed out.
She was taking the fight to the scene of Donald Trump’s triumphant Republican convention last week in Milwaukee, as the Democrats bid to wrestle back the momentum the former president has built since surviving an attempted assassination just over a week ago.
Wisconsin is one of half a dozen battleground states that will decide the result in November. Mr Trump had edged ahead in them in most polls since Mr Biden badly fumbled their first debate nearly a month ago.
Aged 78, Mr Trump suddenly finds himself as the oldest nominee in US history after the president’s withdrawal, offering Democrats one opening to go on the attack.
Ms Harris previewed other lines of attack as she addressed campaign staff in Mr Biden’s home state of Delaware on Monday.
She referred to her past of pursuing “predators” and “fraudsters” as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.
“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said after her rival became a convicted felon when he was found liable for sexual assault in civil court. Other courts have found fraud was committed in Mr Trump’s business, charitable foundation and private university.
Ms Harris added: “Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms. The baton is in our hands.”
Mr Biden’s exit has seen a surge in donor dollars and volunteers for the newly rebranded Harris for President campaign, underscoring an abrupt change in dynamic with just over 100 days to go till Election Day.
Her campaign said on Monday that she had raised $81 million (£63m) since the president stepped aside, nearly equalling the $95 million (£73m) that the Biden campaign had in the bank at the end of June.
While some voters will look askance at electing the first woman president, her mixed race heritage plays well among other groups that are key to any winning Democratic coalition, after signs that black and Latino voters were increasingly turning away from Mr Biden.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said of black voters: “Many of them didn't come along because they were distracted by his age, distracted by his appearance.”
The president called into the staff meeting from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he is recovering from Covid.
“It was the right thing to do. The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Mr Biden said in his first public remarks since Sunday, promising he was “not going anywhere” and plans to campaign on his deputy’s behalf.
But Mr Trump’s running mate JD Vance demanded that the Cabinet invoke the 25th amendment to the Constitution and force Mr Biden from office, rather than letting him serve until the next president is inaugurated in January.
The Ohio senator told supporters in Virginia: "Can anybody just admit that if Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he ain't fit to serve as president of the United States either?
“And if Kamala Harris is too blind or too corrupt to admit to the American people that Joe Biden should have never been in there, she's not fit to serve, either. We got to get them both out of there."
Replacing Mr Biden as the 2024 nominee has also intensified speculation about who might join Ms Harris as a vice presidential candidate.
The shortlist of people being discussed is said to include Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
