Leubsdorf: Harris can help Biden win

Initial reaction to the 55-year-old senator, who had been elected statewide three times in the nation’s most populous state, showed she easily passes muster as someone whom all but the most partisan rivals deemed qualified to be president. That was an important consideration for the 77-year-old Biden, who would become the nation’s oldest president.

Her personal and political records have been well vetted, both in California and in the greater scrutiny of a presidential campaign. While she has Democratic critics, they represent a small portion of the party.

And as Biden himself can attest, she demonstrated during the primary debates and hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee the prosecutorial skills that will enable her to press the Democratic case in the campaign, especially against Vice President Mike Pence in their Oct. 7 vice presidential debate. That’s generally the campaign’s single high-profile event for the No. 2 candidates.

The choice also says something about Biden, who selected her to be his partner despite the way that she challenged his civil rights bona fides in a Democratic debate last summer.

After a recent Politico report that some Biden advisers opposed Harris, in part because of that debate, the former vice president wrote himself a note about her before a recent news conference stressing the need to say he would “not hold grudges.” Obviously, that’s true, since he picked the California senator for a job where trust between the two principals is essential.

As soon as Biden disclosed his selection Tuesday, her main rivals and other top Democratic leaders rushed to hail the Harris choice, emblematic of the unusual party unity that opposition to President Donald Trump has produced.

In recent weeks, the Biden campaign created substantial mystery around the selection process, but her ultimate choice was not really a surprise. Even before Harris launched her own presidential candidacy in early 2019, she was regarded as a prime prospect for a spot on the Democratic ticket.

That was enhanced by the strong pressure among Democrats to put a woman or a person of color on their ticket. The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris fulfills both goals.

Over recent weeks, supporters of other potential running mates floated their attributes. In the end, however, all fell short for one or another reason. However, Harris has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. Trump lost no time calling her the “meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful” Senate opponent of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination and expressing surprise she was picked after doing poorly in the Democratic nominating race.

But some California liberals have never been happy with Harris’ efforts to chart a centrist course on criminal justice issues during her career as a prosecutor in San Francisco and as California’s attorney general.

Still, she is the closest thing to a consensus choice in a Democratic Party that has largely put aside most of its internal differences in the interest of driving Trump from the presidency.

And though vice presidential choices don’t generally affect election outcomes, Democrats hope enthusiasm about Harris will drive a large turnout of minorities and younger voters in the same way Barack Obama did in 2008.