CHICAGO — Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president on Thursday night, casting her candidacy as a chance for the country to move forward rather than resign itself to a bleak future she said would follow her Republican opponent’s runoff election.
Harris took advantage of the fact that she had the largest television audience she likely will have on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, at least until her first debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump next month.
The vice president told her life story to the millions of Americans who watched, saying it helped advance her agenda of empowering the country’s middle class.
She described herself as a person who has spent her life serving society and bringing people together, in contrast to what she called the self-centered and divisive Trump.
“Throughout my career, I have had only one client: the people,” she said. “And so, on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or what language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever embarked on their own incredible journey, … on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination for president of the United States of America.”
She professed her patriotism several times in her roughly 40-minute speech. Toward the end, she called on Democrats in the arena and viewers at home to work to elect her on behalf of the country.
“Let’s go out and fight for this,” she said. “Let’s write another great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”
Americans across the country have made their assessments. Yvette Young, a longtime Philadelphia resident and project manager for SEPTA who attended the reception at Harris’ campaign office, said she thought it was an excellent and comprehensive speech.
“I think she covered every issue,” Young said. “She wasn’t afraid to call out Donald Trump for his nonsense and put in perspective how he’s hurt our country.”
A middle-class childhood
Harris has downplayed the historic nature of her candidacy — she is the first Black and South Asian woman to lead a major party and the first woman of any race to serve as president — but on Thursday she elaborated on the values instilled in her by her immigrant mother.
Her mother, a scientist from India, “was tough, brave, a pioneer in the fight for women’s health,” she said.
Harris described her upbringing as middle class, saying she was raised primarily by her mother after her parents divorced. Harris’ father was a Jamaican student who met her mother at a civil rights meeting, Harris said Thursday.
The vice president promised to be a champion for the middle class by creating what she called an “opportunity economy” that would unite labor, miniature businesses and workers. She also promised to “end America’s housing shortage” to lower the cost of everyday necessities.
Before the Harris Convention policy details revealed to stop price gouging, escalate child tax credit, limit rent increases and support first-time home buyers.
“We know that a strong middle class has always been essential to America’s success,” she said. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. That’s personal to me. The middle class is where I come from.”
Her speech was applauded by another person present at the event, Lindsay Davis, a Germantown resident and UX designer.
Davis believes Harris can raise a specific issue and thus sway undecided voters.
“A lot of the things she’s already said about making it easier for first-time buyers to buy a home have been, you know, huge,” she said. “I think it’s really big for, you know, younger people who aren’t boomers, I think Gen Z, Gen X, generation or whatever, all generations.”
A sense of justice
Harris’ mother also taught her daughters “to never complain about injustice, but to do something about it,” she said, echoing words former first lady Michelle Obama repeated in her speech Tuesday.
She added that the same sense of justice drove her to become a prosecutor, which she did while serving as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.
A top California attorney, Harris won a $20 billion settlement for California homeowners in a nationwide lawsuit against banks over exploitative lending during the 2008 financial crisis.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who was also the state’s attorney general at the time, said Thursday in remarks just before Harris spoke that he saw she was asking for much more than what the banks initially offered.
“America, we have a lot of great fights ahead of us,” he said. “And we have a hell of a fighter ready to fight them.”
Trump’s “dark agenda”
Harris described most of her policy goals in terms of contrast with those of her opponent, former President Trump.
She added that her administration will work to expand reproductive rights, while Trump will further restrict them.
Trump would like to implement a nationwide abortion ban “with or without Congress,” restrict access to contraceptives and require women to report miscarriages, she said.
“Why don’t they trust women?” she asked the crowd at the United Center. “Well, we trust women.”
She said that if she is elected and Congress passes legislation to restore the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, she would sign it into law. For that to happen, Democrats would likely need to not only control both chambers but also have 60 votes in the Senate.
On foreign policy, Harris said Trump will not stand up to dictators “because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”
She described the November election as “a fight for America’s future.”
The crowd began to chant, “We are not going back.”
She also asked the audience to imagine how hazardous Trump would be if he were in office, following a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Trump cannot be prosecuted for most of the actions he took while in office.
The second candidate
Harris spoke to a crowd where many women wore white, a nod to the suffrage movement.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who delivered the keynote address Monday, became the first woman to accept a major party’s presidential nomination at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, delivering her acceptance speech in a white pantsuit.
However, Harris was dressed from head to toe in black.
She performed on stage to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom”, which the campaign aims to promote created his own anthem. Beyoncé, however, did not appear in person, despite rumors that she would.
After Harris spoke, Democratic officials said, 100,000 red, white and blue balloons were released, a convention tradition. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, and her vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen Walz, held hands on stage and thanked delegates for their cheers.
An “unexpected” path to nomination
Harris admitted that her abbreviated path to the nomination, which began just 32 days ago, was highly unusual.
After President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid on July 21 and endorsed Harris, the party quickly rallied around the vice president.
She gathered the required number of delegates and, after a tiny vetting period, selected Walz. They soon hit the campaign trail in seven key battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Amid the chaos, she praised Biden for his leadership and accomplishments.
She did so again in the opening words of her speech on Thursday.
“Your record is extraordinary, as history will show,” she said. “And your character is inspiring.”
Republicans have criticized the process that led to Harris’ nomination, calling it a “coup” against Biden.
In a written statement ahead of Harris’ speech on Thursday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley repeated that claim and criticized Harris’ policy proposals, calling them “the most radical agenda ever presented at a major party convention.”
“After staging a coup to steal the nomination from Joe Biden just weeks ago, Kamala Harris will take the DNC stage to share her dangerously liberal agenda with Democrats gathered to crown her in Chicago,” he said.
Cornerstone for the convention
Harris’ nomination marked the end of a four-day convention that centered on the theme of passing the torch to the next generation, a theme echoed in speeches by longtime Democratic party figures such as former President Bill Clinton, who said, I loved “seeing all these young leaders.”
On the first night, Biden, who withdrew from the race last month, gave a farewell speech to the Democratssupporting Harris. The Obamas did Tuesday case for Harris, saying in his candidacy that “hope returns.”
When Harris gave her speech outlining her candidacy and vision for the country as a land of freedom and joy, A sit-in protest took place in front of the United Center building. Dozens of unaffiliated delegates who pushed for a Palestinian-American to be allowed to speak at the Democratic convention said their request was denied by the Harris campaign.
Harris said that in the arena, the administration’s top priority is negotiating an end to the war, the return of Israeli hostages and a enduring ceasefire.
“President Biden and I are working to end this war so that Israel is safe, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity,” she said.
At a campaign event in Philadelphia, Alina Taylor, a special education teacher who lives in Upper Dublin, said that as her district’s Democratic committeewoman, she plans to volunteer and support Harris’ campaign.
“I came here because I’m excited and ready to go,” she said.
Before her speech, Harris said she wanted her to talk about the economy and what she plans to do about reproductive rights.
“It’s very important because I want my daughters to have more rights than I did, and I don’t want them to have less,” she said.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter John Cole contributed to this report.
