Following intense pressure from mega donors and party elites, President Joe Biden officially dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21. Democrats then swiftly crowned VP Kamala Harris as the nominee, though she did not receive a single vote.
So who is Kamala Harris?
Background
Harris was born in 1964 to successful parents; her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris was the daughter of an Indian diplomat and became a scientist and a cancer researcher. Her father, Donald J. Harris, was an economist who taught at Stanford University and was described by the Stanford Daily as a “Marxist scholar.”
Harris’ parents divorced when she was seven-years-old and she was largely raised by her mother, who was Hindu. Gopalan, who passed away in 2009, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004 that Harris was named after the Hindu goddess Lakshmi (Kamala means “lotus,” another name for Lakshmi)….
