Hyderabad: As far as numbers go, Kamala Harris, the first-ever Indian and African American woman on a US presidential ticket, enters Wednesday's prime time Vice Presidential debate on a high with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden widening his head-to-head lead against US President Donald Trump, now the country's most famous COVID-19 patient.
It will be for the first time in American history that an Indian-origin person will be taking up the podium for a vice presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah on Wednesday night.
The vice president is a 61-year-old former Indiana governor and ex-radio host, an evangelical Christian known for his folksy charm and unwavering loyalty to Trump.
Know about Kamala Harris. Harris is a 55-year-old California senator, the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. She is also a former prosecutor whose pointed questioning of Trump's appointees and court nominees and cool charm on the campaign trail made her a Democratic star.
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She will make history as the first Black woman to appear in a vice presidential debate. Democrats hope the historic nature of her candidacy will help energize key groups of likely Democratic voters — African Americans and young people, in particular — who have shown less excitement for Biden.
Pence and Harris face off Wednesday 9 p.m. EST (Thursday, 6.30 a.m. IST). They meet on the debate stage for the first and only time, in Utah.
VP debates have rarely been a lightning rod in the final bend of presidential politics, but in the last week alone, the stakes have shifted in surprising ways.
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Harris' presence on the debate stage is historic, in and of itself. Harris will be looking to star in a few big moments Wednesday night to leave her mark in the annals of presidential politics.
She did that in the Democratic primary debates by turning the clock back to her personal experience with school busing. At that time, it was to attack Biden.
Harris' introduction as VP nominee to the American public and her subsequent pitches have been deeply personal. In a pre-debate tweet, Harris said she is voting "for people like my mother, Shyamala, who taught my sister and me that if you see a problem, you don't complain about it: you do something about it. "It's because of her that I know change is possible when we put in the work."
Harris' mother Shyamala Gopalan was only 19 when she arrived in Berkeley, which was crackling at the time with civil rights activity. It was here that she met Donald Harris, a graduate economics student from Jamaica. They married and had two girl children, Kamala and Maya. Harris never fails to headline the 'Mother India' theme in her high stakes public appearances.
This time, the task before Harris is to force Pence to answer for Trump's chaotic handling of the pandemic and endless attempts to downplay the virus and its deadly potential. Pence heads the president's coronavirus task force.
In the week since the first presidential debate, Biden has widened to 9.2 points his national lead over Trump, according to a Real Clear Politics poll average dated between September 22 and October 5.
Trump is 74 and clinically obese, putting him at high risk of COVID-19 complications. Trump's condition has cranked up the scrutiny of Biden's vulnerability, at age 77. Of the four in the fray - Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris, Harris is the youngest. She is 55.
Given the ages of both Trump and Biden, voters' chatter is already rife that Pence or Harris might be required to step into the presidency before 2024.
With Donald Trump laid up in the White House cum hospital now, the pressure on Vice president Mike Pence to deliver the goods rises dramatically.
Trump may be too unwell to attend the next two presidential debates and the first one, before Trump caught COVID-19, was drowned out by a mess of cross talk and personal insults.
With inputs from agencies
