I’d like to say I predicted Kamala Harris would be the first female US president, but I didn’t quite

Ten years ago, I spotted a remarkably Blairite candidate for the office of California’s attorney general, writes John Rentoul

Everyone knows 14 vice presidents have become presidents (AFP/Getty)

When blogging was having its brief day in the sun, 10 years ago, I wrote a short post on the Independent’s Eagle Eye site. All it said was: “Kamala Harris has just been elected attorney general of California. She has written an article headlined ‘Smart on crime’. You read it there first. Space, watch this.”

I have no idea why I wrote “watch this space” in the wrong order, but you get the message. And I wrote “you read it there first” instead of “you read it here first” because the “there” was a link to Politico, then a new US online-only journalism company.

My post was merely drawing attention to what the Politico article, by Ben Smith, called the “growing buzz among Democrats about Kamala Harris”. Smith called her a “rising political star” and quoted predictions of a bright future. “She’s a rare talent who will be a national figure shortly,” said Chris Lehane, a former Clinton aide.

So it didn’t require any special knowledge to know that she could be a future presidential contender. But I was struck by her 2009 article about crime, in which she said: “We must be tough on serious and violent offenders while we get just as tough on the root causes of crime.” This was an unmistakable echo of Tony Blair, 16 years earlier, promising to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, which is why I put the headline on my post: “Smart on crime, smart on the causes of crime.”

Not only did she promise to get tough on serious criminals, she had a plan to reduce reoffending, which meant her pitch as attorney general was to keep people safe while saving public money. You don’t get more Blairite than that.

So I read up on her life story, which everyone now knows: economics professor father from Jamaica; medical researcher mother from Chennai, India; parents divorced when she was seven; California prosecutor. I can’t say I did as thorough a job as the Joe Biden campaign will have done on her record, but I couldn’t see anything that would prevent her rising higher.

When she was elected to the Senate in 2016, she was immediately in contention for the presidential election this year. But her candidacy never really took hold. She had one or two moments as senator, including her courtroom-drama-style questioning of Brett Kavanaugh at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, but her primary campaign failed to break through last year and she withdrew from the race in December.

Since Bernie Sanders pulled out in April, however, leaving Biden as the presumptive nominee, she has been the favourite to be chosen as his vice-presidential running mate. Despite speculation about other candidates, including a sudden betting surge last week on Susan Rice, national security adviser to Barack Obama, I remember months ago a US commentator emphatically declaring: “It’s going to be Kamala Harris. It was always going to be Kamala Harris.” And on Tuesday, it was.

Everyone knows how significant that choice is. Actuarially, Biden, 77, can expect to live for another 10 years, but there is a significant chance that, if he is elected in November, his vice president would need to step up to the top job. Everyone knows 14 vice presidents have become presidents. Everyone knows that, after Hillary Clinton failed to make history four years ago, we are close to the possibility of a female president again.

The only thing I failed to grasp, in my 10 years of following Harris closely, is how to pronounce her name. I discovered this week that she is not Kuh-MARler but CALM-erler. Not since I called him Pete Butty-gig have I been so embarrassed.