Kamala Harris made a splash with her well-received presidential campaign rollout in January, only to see her candidate-of-the-month status deflate as she struggled for a breakout moment on the trail.
Thanks to a rock-solid performance Thursday in the first Democratic debate of the 2020 cycle, the US senator from California has now catapulted back into the top tier.
Her suddenly viable candidacy is noteworthy in the era of Donald Trump: as a black American daughter of immigrants, Harris may well be the American dream incarnate, mounting a challenge to a president whom many Democrats denounce as the nation’s divider in chief.
Harris is 54, a former prosecutor and one time attorney general for California whose sometimes steely demeanor can give way to a million-watt smile.
Both countenances were on display in the debate — the most watched Democratic debate ever — where she was the best storyteller on stage, mixing policy proficiency with a knack for personal connection.
“We need to think about this situation in terms of real people,” Harris said when discussing the migrant border crisis.
Harris owned the evening’s most powerful moment, when she boldly confronted frontrunner Joe Biden on race and identity and called out his “hurtful” comments in praise of segregationist senators with whom he worked but disagreed.
She also chided Biden on his past opposition to 1970s busing programs that forced integration of segregated schools — eloquently invoking her own childhood.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public school, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”
