Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Named as Time 2020 Person of the Year

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named TIME Magazine's Person [...]

By Allison Schonter

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. Announced Thursday night during a special NBC broadcast, the selection marked the first time the title has been bestowed upon a vice president as well as a president, according to the magazine. Biden and Harris beat out a shortlist including President Donald Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci and frontline healthcare workers, and the movement for racial justice.

Biden, who was former President Barack Obama's vice president, was elected the 46th president of the United States in November, with Harris elected as the nation's first woman as well as first Black and South Asian American vice president. In selecting Biden and Harris as the Person of the Year, TIME editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal noted the honor was given "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."

"The selection of Person of the Year is rarely easy, and this year was far more difficult than most," Felsenthal added during the Thursday night broadcast, according to USA Today. "In Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, we have two individuals whose election mirrored and moved the major stories of this year and whose fates will shape the nation's role in the world and the future of the American experiment."

TIME has named a person of the year, originally called the Man of the Year, annually since 1927. The selection represents "an individual but sometimes multiple people who greatly impacted the country and world during the calendar year." The honor typically goes to an individual, though in recent years, the magazine has recognized multiple people and groups or movements. In 2017, "The Silence Breakers" of the MeToo movement were bestowed the honor, with "The Guardians" named in 2018. Those included in the group included four journalists whose work landed them in jail or cost them their lives — Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo — as well as the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Maryland, the site of a mass shooting, NBC News reports. In 2019, the honor went to young climate activist Greta Thunberg, with TIME noting a year after selecting "the youngest person ever named Person of the Year, we move to one of the oldest in the 78-year-old President-elect." Trump won the honor in 2016.

Along with naming Biden and Harris Person of the Year, TIME on Thursday also named Korean K-Pop band BTS Entertainer of the Year. Gitanjali Rao, a 15-year-old scientist, was named the magazine's first-ever Kid of the Year, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan was named Businessperson of the Year. LeBron James was named Athlete of the Year.

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