Joe Biden, Kamala Harris named Time's 2020 Person of the Year

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2020.

Time announced the Biden-Harris ticket had been chosen for the honor Thursday night.

Editor-in-chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal said in an accompanying video that they represent "something historic."

Every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has at one time been named Time's Person of the Year, but Harris is the first vice president to share the title, Felsenthal said.

"Person of the Year is not just about the year that was but about where we're headed," he said.

The Democratic pair were chosen from a shortlist of candidates that included the movement for racial justice, front-line healthcare workers, infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and President Donald Trump, who won the honor in 2016.

In an editorial, Felsenthal wrote that if Trump was a force of disruption and division during his presidency, then Biden and Harris represent the future.

"Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and world views that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive," he wrote.

Biden and Harris are set to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Felsenthal wrote that the next four years will be a test for two leaders who were elected on a platform to unify a nation that has rarely been more divided.

"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, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are Time's 2020 Person of the Year," he wrote.

Earlier Thursday, South Korean boy band BTS was named Time magazine's 2020 Entertainer of the Year.