Kamala Harris: Can Underestimated Trailblazer Beat Trump?

 US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris steps off Air Force Two at Joint Base in Maryland on October 27, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris steps off Air Force Two at Joint Base in Maryland on October 27, 2024. (AFP)
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Kamala Harris: Can Underestimated Trailblazer Beat Trump?

 US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris steps off Air Force Two at Joint Base in Maryland on October 27, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris steps off Air Force Two at Joint Base in Maryland on October 27, 2024. (AFP)

The call that upended everything for Kamala Harris came on a Sunday morning in July as the US vice president did a jigsaw puzzle at home with her grand-nieces.

"The phone rings, and it´s Joe," Harris told radio host Howard Stern recently. "I got up to take the call -- and then life changed."

President Joe Biden's revelation that he was going to drop out of the 2024 White House race and endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee triggered one of the most remarkable transformations in American politics.

Harris was previously saddled with record low approval ratings for a "veep."

Within a few short weeks she created an election campaign out of nothing. She held rapturous rallies, raised more than $1 billion in funds and brought what she called a burst of joy to a party that had given up hope.

But with the now polls showing the 60-year-old in a dead heat with Republican former president Donald Trump, Harris is in the fight of her life to win on November 5 and become the first female president in US history.

"It's not easy. Usually people run for president for two years, and she's just been running since late July," David Karol, who teaches government and politics at the University of Maryland, told AFP.

- Difficult debut -

Harris was a trailblazer from the moment she entered the White House as America's first female, Black and South Asian vice president.

Yet the trail proved difficult at first. Harris faced withering criticism that she was not up to the job of being a heartbeat from the presidency.

Already criticized for vagueness on policy during a failed presidential run against Biden in 2019, she increasingly became notorious -- like Biden himself -- for "word salads."

Tasked by Biden with getting to the roots of the country´s illegal migration problem, Harris fumbled and granted Republicans an attack line about being a failed "border czar" that they use to this day.

But things began to change in 2022. Harris found her voice when the US Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.

She rallied around the country on the issue and took on an increasingly prominent role in Biden´s second presidential campaign -- with officials privately admitting she was gearing up for her own presidential run in 2028.

Biden also increasingly tasked her with diplomatic missions on Ukraine and the Middle East.

But few dreamed that the moment for her to take a tilt at the White House would come so soon.

Partly that was because Harris had long been underestimated, by some Democrats and by Republicans alike.

Trump would soon find that the woman he called "crazy" and subjected to sexist and racist taunts was a force to be reckoned with. In their only debate she gained the upper hand by taunting the former president.

- 'Momala' -

Harris, however has deliberately steered away from overtly leaning into her race or her gender during the campaign.

When she does talk about her personal background it has largely been about her Indian-born mother who raised her and her sister alone -- while her Jamaican-born father rarely gets a mention.

Or there's her very public affection for "Second Gentleman" Doug Emhoff.

Famously his children Cole and Emma, who are now her stepchildren, dubbed her "Momala."

She has also used their relationship to call out Trump's running mate J.D. Vance for previously describing top Democrats as "childless cat ladies."

But it is more common to hear her focus on her professional history as a prosecutor and then as California attorney general -- and contrasting herself with Trump, who's bidding to become the first convicted felon in the Oval Office.

Harris has also repeatedly brought up the fact that's she's a gun owner, as she reaches out to Republican voters.

Yet there have also been familiar weaknesses. She remains uncomfortable with the media, and her failure to sit for any interviews for several weeks mid-campaign drew Republican fire.

The question now is whether she can put the puzzle together and shatter America's highest glass ceiling.

"I think she has run a good campaign. And if she loses, some people will say 'oh, that's because she didn't run a good campaign' -- and I think that's wrong," said Karol.



Climate Change-Worsened Floods Wreak Havoc in Africa

People carry possessions on a pirogue over flood water flowing over a main road in Odobere on October 22, 2024. (AFP)
People carry possessions on a pirogue over flood water flowing over a main road in Odobere on October 22, 2024. (AFP)
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Climate Change-Worsened Floods Wreak Havoc in Africa

People carry possessions on a pirogue over flood water flowing over a main road in Odobere on October 22, 2024. (AFP)
People carry possessions on a pirogue over flood water flowing over a main road in Odobere on October 22, 2024. (AFP)

Every rainy season for the past 12 years, floods have swept through 67-year-old Idris Egbunu's house in central Nigeria.

It is always the same story -- the Niger River bursts its banks and the waters claim his home for weeks on end, until he can return and take stock of the damage.

The house then needs cleaning, repairs, fumigation and repainting, until the next rainy season.

Flooding is almost inevitable around Lokoja in Nigeria's Kogi state, where Africa's third-longest river meets its main tributary, the Benue.

But across vast areas of Africa, climate change has thrown weather patterns into disarray and made flooding much more severe, especially this year.

Devastating inundations are threatening the survival of millions of residents on the continent. Homes have been wrecked and crops ruined, jeopardizing regional food security.

Torrential rains and severe flooding have affected around 6.9 million people in West and Central Africa so far in 2024, according to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

- 'Very, very bad' -

Residents and officials around Lokoja said floods first became more severe in Kogi state in 2012 and have battered the area each year since.

In 2022, Nigeria's worst floods in a decade killed more than 500 people and displaced 1.4 million.

Sandra Musa, an emergency agency adviser to the Kogi state governor, believes this year's flooding has not yet reached the level seen in 2022, but warned it was "very, very bad".

"Usually at this time of year the water level drops, but here it's rising again," she told AFP, estimating that the floods have affected around two million people in the state.

Fatima Bilyaminu, a 31-year-old mother and shopkeeper, can only get to her house in the Adankolo district of Lokoja by boat as a result of the waters.

The swollen river rises almost to the windows, while water hyacinths float past the crumbling building.

"I lost everything. My bed, my cushioned chair, my wardrobe, my kitchen equipment," she told AFP.

With no money to rent a house elsewhere, she has little choice but to keep living in the small concrete building and repair it, flood after flood.

- Damage and displacement -

Africa is bearing the brunt of climate change, even though it only contributes around four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent report by the World Meteorological Organization.

This year is set to overtake 2023 as the world's hottest on record.

"This year has been unusual in terms of the amount of rainfall, with many extreme events, which is one of the signs of climate change," said Aida Diongue-Niang from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In the Sahel region bordering the Sahara desert, the volume, intensity and duration of rainfall was "unprecedented," according to Amadou Diakite from the Mali Meteo weather service.

In Niger, some regions recorded up to 200 percent more rain than in previous years, the national meteorological service said. The waters put at risk the historic city center of Agadez, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the desert north.

Over the border in Chad, torrential rains since July have killed at least 576 people and affected 1.9 million, more than 10 percent of the population, according to a report published by the OCHA.

In neighboring Cameroon, the UN body said torrential rains had destroyed more than 56,000 homes and flooded tens of thousands of hectares of crops.

Floodwaters swept through the capital Conakry in Guinea, while floods in Monrovia reignited debates over building another city to serve as Liberia's capital.

Entire districts of Mali's capital Bamako were submerged, leaving waste and liquid from septic tanks seeping across the streets.

In August, downpours caused the roof of the centuries-old Tomb of Askia in the Malian city of Gao to collapse.

Several countries have postponed the start of the school year as a result of the floods.

- 'Keep getting worse' -

"It used to be a decadal cycle of flooding, and we're now into a yearly cycle," said Clair Barnes, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

"This is only going to keep getting worse if we keep burning fossil fuels," she said.

As global temperatures rise, extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity, scientists warn.

Experts estimate that by 2030, up to 118 million Africans already living in poverty will be exposed to drought, floods and intense heat.

Building along riverbanks also poses a risk, Youssouf Sane of Senegal's meteorology agency said, urging governments to think about the relationship between climate change and urbanization.

But the IPCC's Diongue-Niang said the only way to tackle extreme weather was to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

"That doesn't fall to the region -- it falls to the whole of humanity," she said.