Extract from ABC News
In short:
A day after US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for re-election, Vice-President Kamala Harris says she has secured the broad support of the party.
Ms Harris, a former attorney-general in California, is framing the election race as a contest between a tough-on-crime prosecutor and a criminal.
What's next?
Ms Harris still needs the votes of party delegates to secure the nomination in August.
Kamala Harris has used her first campaign stop since Joe Biden's US election withdrawal to compare her background as a criminal prosecutor to Donald Trump's trouble in the courts.
The vice-president also said she is proud to have secured the broad support of her party to become the Democratic nominee in the presidential election.
Speaking to campaign staff in Delaware, Ms Harris declared she was ready to put her record up against Trump's, in a likely preview of a campaign strategy to frame the contest as "prosecutor vs felon".
"I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain," Ms Harris said – a reference to Trump's criminal conviction for falsifying business records and a civil finding where he was found liable for sexual abuse in a case brought by writer E Jean Carroll.
"So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type."
Mr Biden, who remains in isolation with COVID, dialled into the event and urged campaign staff to embrace Ms Harris, who he has endorsed to take his place in the race.
"I know yesterday's news is surprising, and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do," Mr Biden said.
He said he planned to keep "working like hell, both as a sitting president getting legislation passed, as well as in campaigning".
Ms Harris's potential serious challengers have all now endorsed her, easing fears of a messy fight for the top of the ticket less than four months from the November 5 election.
Among her latest big-name backers is Nancy Pelosi, the influential former House speaker whose initial silence on Mr Biden's successor raised eyebrows in Washington.
A day after the president's announcement, Ms Pelosi tweeted her endorsement of Ms Harris with "immense pride and limitless optimism".
Three state governors — Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), JB Pritzker (Illinois) and Andy Beshear (Kentucky) — quietened speculation about their own possible challenges for the candidacy by issuing endorsements for Ms Harris within minutes of each other.
Mr Pritzker and Mr Beshear are now seen as potential running mates. But Ms Whitmer told a Michigan TV station she was "not going anywhere" when asked if she might join the ticket.
Also in the wide field of Ms Harris's possible vice-presidential nominees are astronaut-turned-senator Mark Kelly, and Mr Biden's transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who built a strong supporter base when he sought the party's presidential nomination in 2020.
A clearer path for Harris, but holdouts remain
While Ms Harris looks to have cleared the field of challengers to her placement at the top of the party's ticket, several key Democrats are yet to formally back her.
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, who lead the Democrats in the lower and upper houses of Congress respectively, are expected to meet with Ms Harris soon.
Neither has endorsed her, but Mr Jeffries said: "Vice-President Kamala Harris has excited the community, she has excited the House Democratic Caucus, she is exciting the country.
"And so I am looking forward to sitting down with her in person, in short order, with leader Schumer and we will have more to say about the path forward as soon as that meeting concludes."
Former president Barack Obama is also still withholding his endorsement after saying he had "confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges".
Big donors have continued to back the vice-president with big money. One pro-Democrats political fundraising committee, the Future Forward group, received $US150 million ($226 million) in new commitments, an aide told Politico.
That revelation followed what one party strategist said "might be the greatest fundraising moment in Democratic Party history", when donations massively spiked in the hours after Mr Biden's announcement.
The Harris campaign later announced it had raised $US81 million in 24 hours, almost doubling a war chest that had reached $US96 million at the end of June.
Earlier on Monday, at an event at the White House, Ms Harris gave her first public remarks since Mr Biden's announcement, praising his legacy as "unmatched in modern history".
"In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office," she said. She did not specifically mention her own campaign for the presidency.
The Trump campaign and its supporter groups have meanwhile begun painting Ms Harris as a more left-wing choice than Biden.
Campaign ads and emails attack her as complicit in a cover-up of Mr Biden's decline, a failure as his "border tsar" tasked with securing the US-Mexico border, and a "weak-on-crime prosecutor" when she was San Francisco's district attorney between 2004-2010.
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