Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” declared Michelle Obama on stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. Her husband, former president Barack Obama, spoke of “a country where anything is possible”. Bill Clinton, another former president, talked about “joy”.

The atmosphere was euphoric, as if the attendees could not quite believe what had happened. Instead of facing almost certain defeat in the November presidential poll in the hands of ageing President Joe Biden, victory had somehow come back within reach, thanks to the most unlikely person. Kamala Harris, until recently seen largely as Biden’s loyal sidekick, had been promoted into a genuine candidate for the presidency.

It’s been quite a turnaround. Biden is now ancient history. The assassination attempt that had almost guaranteed another term in the White House for Donald Trump is almost forgotten. Trump, likely believing the gig was already in the bag, now appears out of his depth, yet to conceive of a convincing counter strategy against a much younger opponent (Harris is 59, he’s 78).

Still, questions about Harris’ policies linger. Stepping up at virtually the last possible minute, she avoided the usual scrutiny – and toughening up – of a primaries campaign, the pre-election campaign process by which parties usually choose their candidate from a number of competing contenders. “It feels like the short window of an Australian election campaign,” says Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

Since becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris has yet to hold a press conference. Her TV interview for major network CNN in late August, alongside running mate Tim Walz, was generally seen as a solid, if not revelatory, performance. And while her speech at the party convention was compelling, drawing on her personal story as the child of successful migrants, she has a track record of flubbing unscripted encounters – critics have pounced on her “word salad” waffling. A presidential debate against Donald Trump on September 10 may prove her first real hurdle in the campaign.

How did Harris pivot from understudy to main event? What challenges remain? Can she beat Trump?

Where did Kamala Harris come from?

The Kamala Harris family story is, in many ways, the story of the American dream: come to this country, work hard, succeed – and expect that your children will do even better. Her father, Donald J. Harris, was born in Jamaica; her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, in Chennai (then Madras) in southern India. They met in the ’60s while studying at the University of California, Berkeley, at that time a hotbed of activism.

Donald, now 86, would go on to become a well-known economist with Marxist leanings; Shyamala, who died of colon cancer in 2009, was a notable breast cancer researcher. “These are very high-achieving people,” Dan Morain, author of the biography Kamala’s Way, tells us. “They obviously expected a lot of their daughter.” Kamala, born in 1964 in Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area, was joined by her sister, Maya, two years later; both names were derived from Indian mythology. In Sanskrit, Kamala means “lotus” or “pink”; Maya means “illusion” or “dream” and can also refer to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, power, beauty and prosperity.

The Democratic Convention reached peak charm when Harris’s grandnieces (Maya’s granddaughters) Amara and Leela took to the stage with actress Kerry Washington to teach attendees how to pronounce their aunt’s name. “First, you say ‘comma’, like comma in a sentence,” said Amara. “Then you say, ‘La’, like la-la-la-a,” said Leela. “Put it together,” said Washington, “and it’s – one, two, three – Kamala.“

Harris’s parents split in 1972, leaving her mother to raise her and Maya. “Had they been a little older, a little more emotionally mature, maybe the marriage could have survived,” wrote Harris in her 2018 memoir, The Truths We Hold. “But they were so young. My father was my mother’s first boyfriend.” She remembers the Bay Area fondly, however, telling the Democratic Convention: “In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the flatlands. We lived in the flats. A beautiful, working-class neighbourhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers. All who tended their lawns with pride.”

Shyamala grew up in a family prominent in the movement for Indian independence (which was finally granted in 1947); in the States, she campaigned for black equality. “My mother was barely five foot one,” Harris wrote, “but I felt like she was six feet two.”

Her relationship with her father is less clear. We do know that Donald Harris did not respond well in 2019 when Kamala admitted to having smoked marijuana and joked that “half my family’s from Jamaica”. Donald posted online: “My deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.”

What did Harris do before she became vice president?

Law was a natural fit for Harris, who, Dan Morain writes, “grew up to be a tough, sharp-witted, exacting, hardworking, smart, multi-layered and multicultural woman.” Yet, she did not always follow a predictable path. After graduating, rather than taking the typical route of civil rights activists and becoming a public defender, she opted for a role as a public prosecutor in the district attorney’s offices in Oakland and San Francisco.

”I believe everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice,” she said at the recent Democratic convention. “In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. And I would often explain this to console survivors of crime, to remind them no one should be made to fight alone. We are all in this together.“

Her political prospects were boosted somewhat when she dated the flamboyant and much older African-American Democratic powerbroker Willie Brown, who opened the door to a constituency of wealthy Californian campaign donors in the mid-’90s. With the support of Brown’s contacts, Harris ran for the elected office of district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, prevailing against a well-entrenched incumbent. Eight years later, she was elected to the top job of Californian attorney-general, in the words of The New York Times in July, managing to thread the needle “between California’s often extreme political factions, campaigning sometimes as a ‘top cop’ and other times as a ‘progressive prosecutor.’”

The tensions have not always been easy to reconcile. At Flinders University, senior lecturer in US history Dr Prudence Flowers notes that being a prosecutor necessarily involves imprisoning people.

“That’s something that Trump and others have kind of highlighted, which is that she was locking up men of colour, in particular.” Harris’s opposition to capital punishment, meanwhile, saw her criticised by some for being too liberal, particularly in 2004, after a gang member had murdered a police officer and Harris refused to pursue the death penalty.

When a vacancy opened up for a seat in the US Senate in 2016, Harris took the opportunity. Running a campaign endorsed by Obama and Biden, she succeeded and was now on the road to Washington D.C.

However, her rise was not inexorable. Her first tilt at the presidency, opposing Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg in 2019–20, fell flat.

Outside of a grab-bag of left-wing policies, such as banning fracking (the controversial oil and gas extraction technique), decriminalising illegal border crossings and providing taxpayer-funded health care for illegal migrants, her campaign lacked a galvanising theme. “Muddled,” is how Morain characterises it.

”There was something two-dimensional about her candidacy,” observed The New York Times, “and soon she was tagged with that lethal campaign cliche: not yet ready for prime time.” Democrat activists branded her #KamalaIsACop for her time as a prosecutor. But there was, as we know, to be a consolation prize: Biden, emerging as the frontrunner, needed a running mate.

Has Harris been an effective vice president?

Aside from having a tie-breaking vote in the US Senate, being vice president comes with no instruction manual except: don’t show up the president but do be ready to step into his or her shoes at any moment.

“The vice presidency is a weird concept,” writes Zach Helfand in The New Yorker. “Most countries don’t have one. In the United Kingdom, if the prime minister dies, the government just chooses someone else. But there’s something very American in enduring ongoing humiliation for a small chance at a big payoff.“

Many successful vice presidents have acted chiefly as trusted advisers. “It depends very much on the personal dynamics of the relationship between the vice president and the president,” says Emma Shortis, a senior researcher at The Australia Institute. Few VPs go on to become president, and if they do, it is usually because the president has died (think Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of JFK) or quit (Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon after he resigned following the Watergate scandal). Of 49 vice presidents, only six to date have run for election and won; Harris would be the seventh. (Trump would be only the second former president in history to successfully be re-elected.)

“Vice presidents, in general, are at a disadvantage in the American political system because they do not have very many duties when they’re in office,” says Kathryn Schumaker, a senior lecturer in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre. ”It puts them in a position where they are in the back seat for four years or eight years. For Kamala Harris, one of the benefits is that it hasn’t been that long, it’s only been four years. And she had a very accomplished career up to that point.”

‘What I saw in some of the stories about her ... is not the Kamala Harris I recognise.’

Biden initially gave Harris the complex task of addressing the cause of undocumented immigration from Central America. It was a near-impossible assignment that she did not always handle with aplomb. She walked into a car crash interview where she prevaricated over whether or not she had been to the Mexican border; and when she told would-be migrants, “Do not come,” she was criticised by human rights groups for possibly dissuading those who might legally be able to seek asylum.

As her public appearances diminished, The Los Angeles Times dubbed Harris “the incredible disappearing vice president”. CNN ran the headline “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president.” There were rumours of high turnover among her staff – “Often a sign of a politician who is not succeeding,” notes Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute.

Criticisms mounted even from within her own party. “I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside [the president] at certain ceremonies,” a prominent Democrat fundraiser complained to The New York Times last year. Even Morain, who had followed her earlier career, was puzzled. “What I saw in some of the stories about her, some of the press coverage, television coverage with her, is not the Kamala Harris I recognise,” Morain tells us. “It’s not the Kamala Harris I knew.”

Emma Shortis is more sympathetic than some observers. “In the last six or 12 months, she was performing really strongly, particularly in the area of reproductive rights,” she says, noting Harris “was an incredibly loyal vice president. There was never a hint that she was challenging [Biden] for his position.”

When Biden did finally drop out of the 2024 presidential race, there was no wailing about his successor, possibly because the party had no option unless they were prepared to risk a rare open vote at the national convention (Biden had largely run unopposed in the primaries). Says Shortis: “The Democrats were so convinced that they were facing a generational defeat with Biden that the prospect of even just getting back to kind-of-even stakes was exciting.”

What Democratic dread had once surrounded Harris simply evaporated. Observed The New Yorker: “A large chunk of the population recently decided that everything they used to dislike about Kamala Harris they now love. Favourable ratings are up. Negative views are down. Traits that were seen as wacky or amateurish now read as cool and inspiring.”

Before her TV interview on August 29, she had largely relied on scripted performances, celebrity endorsements and social media (particularly TikTok) to burnish her image. The singer Charlie XCX called her “brat” (a compliment meaning she owned her imperfections); fans of Taylor Swift raised over $200,000 for her campaign fund overnight.

In the event, the light grilling by CNN was uneventful. Harris successfully dodged harder questions – as vice president, why hadn’t she already implemented new policy proposals such as a home-buying grant? – by riffing on the Biden administration’s broader record on climate and the economy. What would she do on her first day in office? “Support and strengthen the middle class.” On X, Trump called her “BORING!!!“.

What challenges does Harris face now?

With barely two months until the election on November 5, Harris is still riding the honeymoon wave of her party’s relief that it’s not staring down the barrel of a Biden-led wipeout. A Reuters/Ipsos poll on August 29 showed Harris leading Trump 45 per cent to 41 per cent among registered voters, with a growing advantage since the same poll in July.

“We’re still in summer in America,” notes Bruce Wolpe. “Summer romances come and go; they’re really intense and lovely, but they may not stand up later in the year.”

At some point, Harris will likely face tough questions about her record that she may have more trouble handling than she did on CNN, particularly during the presidential debate on September 10. What, for example, are her views on reforming the police, once a major goal of far-left Democrats? “She previously came out very forcefully in favour of police reform,” says Sydney Uni’s Kathryn Schumaker. “She talked about it a lot in 2019, 2020, especially after the murder of George Floyd. And that’s really receded.”

On the economy, says Flowers, “She is the establishment right now. She is the vice president. So she needs to present herself as different enough from Biden that voters who might be unhappy with the cost-of-living crisis don’t hold her responsible.” Inflation has dropped rapidly since June 2022, but polls suggest consumers still believe prices are too high. “First and foremost, it is the economy that is the most important issue in the election,” says Wolpe, “the same cost of living pressures that Australians are feeling are here in the US. It has to do with the degree of inflation and interest rates, which are very high, just like they are in Australia. That is the principal reason why Biden’s popularity has been hit, and she’s affected by it.”

‘Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?’

Pro-choice women should prove strong supporters, abortion being one of Harris’s clearest positions (the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris picking up support among women). “The one place where she’s been really effective and strong and clear is reproductive rights,” says Schumaker. On abortion, Harris has diverged slightly from Biden, a practising Catholic, who has said he is personally “not big” on abortion; her visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota in March was a first for any sitting vice president.

Harris has publicly condemned the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022, which removed the constitutional right to an abortion in the US. “How dare they attack basic healthcare. How dare they attack our fundamental rights. How dare they attack our freedom,” she said in a speech to supporters and healthcare professionals on the anniversary of the reversal. An exchange between Harris and then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 saw Harris pressing him on abortion rights.“Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”

Choosing Walz, a grandfatherly former football coach, as her running mate and would-be vice president could spread the appeal of her ticket beyond young people and minorities. Compared to Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, whose campaigning so far has been unpredictable, Walz appears a safer pair of hands. “J.D. was an act of hubris on Trump’s part,” says Tim Lynch, professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne. “Walz is a more logical pick, an older white guy with executive experience that can look palatable to [Republican-ish] swinging voters.”

Wolpe agrees. “Walz has this strong appeal that reaches into the heavily contested swing states, the industrial Midwest, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and then also in the more conservative democratic states like Arizona and Nevada and Georgia and North Carolina.“

‘Do Americans see themselves in the Harris-Walz ticket, or do they see that ticket as two left-wingers who are too left-wing for them?’

Says Michael Fullilove: “I think the identity of Harris and Walz will be crucial. What Harris has tried to do is broaden her appeal from a left-wing Californian by choosing somebody who is from the heartland. The question is, does that work? Do Americans see themselves in the Harris-Walz ticket, or do they see that ticket as two left-wingers who are too left-wing for them?”

For his part, Walz cut through early when he rebranded Trump and other Republicans “weird”. Republicans, meantime, have attacked Walz for a comment that suggested he had seen action when he served in the military – he hadn’t.

Harris has not leaned into her identity. She is yet to make much of the fact, for example, that she would be the first female president and the first woman of mixed South Asian and black background. Her response on CNN to comments from Trump about her race was one of her stronger moments: “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.” Asked about her background by The Washington Post in 2019, she described herself simply as an American.

It’s not quite as easy as that, though. “Identity politics is unavoidably part of this scenario,” says Lynch. “This is contentious, but I think I’d be prepared to argue that part of Barack Obama’s appeal is that he was able to salve some white guilt around issues of race because they could feel positive about voting for a candidate of colour. And I think Kamala will benefit, perhaps, from that psychological response that voters have, that regardless of the detail and her historical positions on things, she represents something that makes people feel good to be American.”

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is relying on old tropes to belittle Harris, including her race, gender and background in one of the more progressive cities in the US. “Trump is trying to tie down Harris to one of the most left-wing cities in the country,” says Wolpe, “and that has been a slogan used by Republicans against Democratic women in particular.”

“He’s got no feel for a race against a young, mixed-race candidate that has seemingly stepped up to the plate,” says Lynch. Flowers notes that Harris actually does have a joyful persona. “She dances, she laughs a lot. These are things that they’ve tried to use against her to paint her as someone who’s not fit to occupy the White House – but there’s no contemplation of whether Trump’s behaviour is presidential. It’s a huge double standard to which she’s held, and a lot of that is also implicitly to do with issues around race and gender. J.D. Vance has referred to her as a crazy cat lady and made various comments about her not being fit to be in office because she hasn’t had biological children and how she’s a stepparent.”

‘Her reproductive and parental status is somehow subject to interrogation, while Trump’s is not.’

Harris is stepmother to Cole, 29, and Ella, 25, children of her husband of 10 years, Doug Emhoff, a lawyer who holds the quaint title “second gentleman”, the first American man in history to do so. Trump, by contrast, says Flowers, “has had multiple affairs, been married three times, has five children to three different women. There’s no attention paid to that, but her reproductive and parental status is somehow subject to interrogation, while Trump’s is not.”

For Wolpe, the election will be decided by voters “not welded on to Trump” and “by the equivalent of teal voters in Australia, but in the US: women who live in the suburbs, who care about issues like abortion and the environment and clean government, and also disaffected Republicans who did not vote for Trump in the Republican primaries this year.”

Ultimately, he tells us, “I would just say this is about as exciting a political campaign as you’re going to get in a long time. Enjoy it.”

Get fascinating insights and explanations on the world’s most perplexing topics. Sign up for our weekly Explainer newsletter.