Kamala Harris’ next goal- to succeed Biden in 2024

The pair of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is set to make history together - Biden as the oldest ever US president, and Harris as both the first female and the first Black and Asian American to be vice president.

"We did it, we did it, Joe," exclaimed vice president-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday as she congratulated Joe Biden on his victory, reports the Daily Mail.

Mother of Kamala Harris, Shyamala Gopalan was from India and her father was Jamaican. After they divorced, she was raised by her Hindu single mother, a cancer researcher and civil-rights activist.

"My mother would say to me, "Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you're not the last," Harris recalled last year.

A lawyer and former attorney general of California, she initially soared through a crowded field of Democratic candidates, only to drop out when her early gains faded.

It was, therefore, a surprise when Biden announced that he had chosen her to take on Trump and his running mate, Vice President Mike Pence.

In a volte-face, Harris tweeted: "Joe Biden can unify the American people because he's spent his life fighting for us."

She has taken a noticeably more moderate stance in recent months - being notably muted on calls by Black Lives Matter activists to defund police departments, arguing instead there should be "reform" instead.

Last year, she backed a Senate bill to legalise cannabis across America, adding: "Times have changed - marijuana should not be a crime."

It represented a U-turn from her time as attorney general when she took a hard-line stance on the drug, which critics said disproportionately affected ethnic minority communities.

Harris has also co-sponsored bills calling for tougher gun-control measures and "Medicare for All" to establish a US health system open to everyone.

While a rising star in Democratic politics for the past two decades, she was elected to the Senate only in 2016 - but has never shied away from her ambition.

"My mother always used to say, 'Don't just sit around and complain about things. Do something,'" she tweeted after Biden announced that he had chosen her as his running mate.

Her mother came to the US in the early 1960s to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and met Harris's father Donald, an economics professor, at a civil-rights protest. They married but divorced in 1971.

Kamala Harris' childhood included a spell in Canada when her mother took a job teaching in Montreal before the family returned to California. Harris went to Howard University, one of the top black colleges in America, and earned her law degree at the University of California.

She became the district attorney for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected the first woman and the first black person to serve as California's attorney general.

Harris said she has always been comfortable with her identity and describes herself simply as "an American".

In an interview with The Washington Post, she argued that politicians should not have to fit into compartments because of their colour or background.

"My point was: I am who I am and I'm good with it," she said.

"You might need to figure it out, but I'm fine with it," she added.

She married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer, in 2014 and became stepmother to his two children from a previous marriage.

After the election victory, her husband shared a picture of the couple hugging, on Twitter, adding: "So proud of you."

Harris also tweeted a video showing Americans from diverse backgrounds over "America, the Beautiful" by Ray Charles.

"This election is about so much more than Joe Biden or me," she wrote.

"It's about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let's get started."

Given Biden's age, it is thought likely she will contest the next Presidential election for the Democrats in 2024.