Profile: Can Kamala Harris be the first female and Black US president?

She's already broken barriers, and now Kamala Harris could shatter several more after President Joe Biden abruptly ended his reelection bid and endorsed her.

Biden announced Sunday that he was stepping aside after a disastrous debate performance catalysed fears that the 81-year-old was too frail for a second term.

Harris is the first woman, Black person or person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. If she becomes the Democratic nominee and defeats Republican candidate Donald Trump in November, she would be the first woman to serve as president.

Biden said Sunday that choosing Harris as his running mate was “the best decision I've made" and endorsed her as his successor.

“Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump,” he wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Let’s do this.”

Early career and setbacks

Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to parents who met as civil rights activists. Her hometown and nearby Berkeley were at the heart of the racial and social justice movements of the time, and Harris was both a product and a beneficiary.

She spoke often about attending demonstrations in a stroller and growing up around adults “who spent full-time marching and shouting about this thing called justice.” In first grade, she was bused to school as part of the second class to integrate Berkeley public education.

Harris’s parents divorced when she was young, and she was raised by her mother alongside her younger sister, Maya.

She attended Howard University, a historically Black school in Washington, and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which became a source of sisterhood and political support over the years.

After graduating, Harris returned to the San Francisco Bay Area for law school and chose a career as a prosecutor, a move that surprised her activist family.

She said she believed that working for change inside the system was just as important as agitating from outside. By 2003, she was running for her first political office, taking on the longtime San Francisco district attorney.

Rising to national prominence

Harris married entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014, and she became stepmother to Emhoff’s two children, Ella and Cole, who referred to her as “Momala.”

Harris had a rare opportunity to advance politically when Sen. Barbara Boxer, who had served more than two decades, announced she would not run again in 2016.

In office, Harris quickly became part of the Democratic challenge against Trump and gained recognition for her pointed questioning of his nominees. In one memorable moment, she pressed now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on whether he knew any laws that gave the government the power to regulate a man’s body.

He did not, and the line of questioning galvanised women and human rights activists.

A little more than two years after becoming a senator, Harris announced her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But her campaign was marred by infighting and she failed to gain traction, ultimately dropping out before the Iowa caucuses.

Eight months later, Biden selected Harris as his running mate. As he introduced her to the nation, Biden reflected on what her nomination meant for “little Black and brown girls who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities.”

“Today, just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way, as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents,” he said.

Harris' support and potential challenges

Harris described Biden's decision to step aside as a “selfless and patriotic act,” saying he was “putting the American people and our country above everything else.”

“I am honoured to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination," Harris said.

“Over the past year, I have travelled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election.”

Prominent Democrats followed Biden's lead by swiftly coalescing around Harris on Sunday. However, her nomination is not a foregone conclusion, and there have been suggestions that the party should hold a lightning-fast “mini primary” to consider other candidates before its convention in Chicago next month.

A recent poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Democrats believe Harris would do a good job in the top slot. About 2 in 10 Democrats don’t believe she would, and another 2 in 10 say they don’t know enough to say.

The poll showed that about 4 in 10 US adults have a favourable opinion of Harris, whose name is pronounced “COMM-a-la,” while about half have an unfavourable opinion.