CHICAGO: Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance at the party’s national convention on Monday night, drawing cheers from the crowd as she vowed to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November election.
“Let us fight for the ideals we hold dear and let us always remember, when we fight we win!” Harris, the US vice president, said in brief remarks that drew roars from the crowd.
She had been expected to appear later with President Joe Biden, the keynote speaker on Monday, the first night of a four-day event in Chicago.
Biden’s appearance at the start of the four-day event caps a dramatic handover to his No. 2 after he was pressured to quit the race last month by party leaders worried the 81-year-old incumbent was too old to win or serve another four years.
Having served as vice president to the first Black US president, Barack Obama, Biden bowed out of the race to allow his own second-in-command to try to make history as the first woman, a Black and Asian American, to hold the nation’s highest office.
Hillary Clinton, who became the first woman to secure a major US party’s presidential nomination, was due to address the gathering later on Monday.
Clinton fell short two times, losing the party’s nomination to Obama in 2008 and the election to Trump in 2016 in a bitter disappointment for the pioneering but polarizing political figure.
During a walkthrough of the convention center on Monday afternoon, Biden was asked if it was a bittersweet moment.
“It is a memorable moment,” he told reporters.
