‘Changing America's Story’, Joe Biden And Kamala Harris Named TIME 2020 'Person Of The Year'

US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been chosen as Time magazine’s 2020 'Person of the Year'.

(Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been named as Time magazine’s 2020 ‘Person of the Year’. "For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world," Time said, AFP reported on Friday. The magazine said: “Together, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered restoration and renewal in a single ticket. And America bought what they were selling: after the highest turnout in a century, they racked up 81 million votes and counting, the most in presidential history, topping Trump by some 7 million votes and flipping five battleground states.” Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were chosen ahead of three other finalists: frontline health care workers and Anthony Fauci, the racial justice movement, and President Donald Trump. The publication put pictures of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as its cover photo, with the title ‘Changing America's story’. US President-elect Joe Biden beat incumbent Donald Trump in a historic presidential election that saw record-breaking turnout.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME's 2020 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/o97QNlSBrl pic.twitter.com/KuoBoebBN4

— TIME (@TIME) December 11, 2020

Biden, 78, who served two terms as vice president to Barack Obama, will become the oldest person to assume the office of US president when he is sworn in on 20 January. Harris will become the first woman, the first Black and the first person of Asian descent to be inaugurated vice president. Time has named a person of the year since 1927. The selection represents “an individual but sometimes multiple people who greatly impacted the country and world during the calendar year”, the magazine says.

When asked by TIME what he would like people to say about him after four years in the White House, Biden replied: "That America was better off and average Americans are better off the day we left than the day we arrived. That's my objective."

Harris is the first Vice President-elect to be named Person of the Year. She said in an interview with TIME that Biden's administration would have to tackle a host of issues from the White House, including the pandemic, an "economic crisis" and a "long-overdue reckoning on racial justice."

(With agency inputs)