Chicago – August 18, 2024
They made history once before. Now they’re trying to do it again.
Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly settled into their seats directly behind President Joe Biden as he delivered the opening lines of his first speech to a joint session of Congress. The annual ritual had been repeated for decades. But this time the tableau was very different.
For the first time ever, both leaders were women.
“Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President: From this podium, no president has ever said those words – and it’s about time,” Biden said, acknowledging the history of the moment on April 28, 2021.
When she formally accepts the Democratic nomination Thursday night at the party’s national political convention in Chicago, she will owe her rise to the top of the ticket in part to Pelosi, whose behind-the-scenes pressure campaign led Biden to drop out of the race just four weeks ago and to the party’s decision to anoint Harris as the nominee.
It was a remarkable turn of events that once again brought together the two most powerful women in American politics – both from the San Francisco Bay area, both products of the city’s Democratic political machine, both at the pinnacle of power in Washington.
From different generations and family backgrounds, Harris and Pelosi aren’t close personally. But their unlikely rise through San Francisco’s competitive political environment instilled in them a mutual admiration, according to multiple people in the orbits of both women.
