CHICAGO – Vice President Harris accepted the Democratic nomination here on Thursday with a speech that was characterized by an intense patriotic tone.
But they (*5*)also took the fight to former President Trump in a combative style.
Harris has reached this point after an extraordinary sequence of events triggered by the disastrous debate between President Biden and Trump on June 27.
Since Biden announced on July 21 that he would not seek a second term, Harris has gone from a vice president with tepid approval ratings and an uncertain future to the narrow frontrunner in a race that could make her the first female president.
The Vice President gave a nearly 40-minute speech at the United Center, which was filled to the rafters with cheering Democrats.
Here are the key findings:
A passionate embrace of patriotism
Not surprisingly, one nominee’s acceptance speech contains some ritualized patriotic tones.
But Harris went much further.
She described her candidacy for the presidency as an attempt to bring recent hope and unity to the country and to gain more respect for the United States in the rest of the world.
“I see a nation ready to move forward, ready for the next step in the incredible journey that is America,” she said toward the end of her speech. “I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless faith that has built our nation and inspired the world.”
Critics of Harris would argue that it is narcissistic to frame her campaign in such general terms. But the vice president is clearly trying to build a campaign based on inspiration – and that has been in low supply for Biden.
At the same time, Harris accused Trump and his allies of being fundamentally unpatriotic because they tend to focus on what they see as the country’s failings.
Her opponents, said Harris, are constantly “denigrating America and talking about how terrible everything is.”
Between the lines of the speech, the appeal to patriotism also sounded like an attempt to defend Harris against attempts to “exclude” her – a black woman of South Asian descent.
Time will tell whether she succeeds in fending off the attacks. But she has tried very tough.
Harris relies on the power of biography
The election will likely be decided by a miniature group of undecided voters – and it is sheltered to assume that many of them have not yet formed a firm opinion about Harris.
Although she served as vice president for nearly four years – and previously served in the Senate – many Americans on Thursday were unaware of the exact details of her background.
Harris attempted to satisfy that curiosity in some of the most lively passages of her speech, which focused on her family and upbringing.
She remembered “a home full of laughter and music – Aretha, Coltrane and Miles.”
She spoke fondly of her early life in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood with firefighters, nurses and construction workers.”
Perhaps most moving was her memory of her mother as “a brilliant, 5-foot-tall woman with dark skin and an accent,” adding, “Even as a child, I saw how the world sometimes treated her.”
Harris also attributed her early career as a prosecutor to a arduous time in her youth when her friend Wanda told her she had been sexually abused by her stepfather.
Harris said she would become a lawyer “to protect people like Wanda… Everyone has a right to safety, dignity and justice.”
Hard blows against Trump
“When we fight, we win” has become one of the slogans of Harris’ campaign – and one of the slogans of this convention. The vice president delivered some tough blows on Thursday evening.
In one of the most poignant comments, Harris called Trump “an unserious man” but warned that “the consequences of Donald Trump returning to the White House are extremely serious.”
She spoke out clearly about Trump’s behavior on and around January 6, 2021.
She called his false claims of voter fraud an attempt to “throw away your votes,” adding that during the riots, “he did the opposite when politicians from his own party begged him to call the mob back and send help.”
There were also more implicit but clear jabs at Trump, such as when she promised veterans that she would “never belittle their service and sacrifices,” or when she promised to “put the country before her party and her own interests” and adhere to “a peaceful transfer of power.”
Harris’ claim that Trump would go even further if elected for a second term is equally exact.
“Imagine Donald Trump without guardrails,” she warned.
Passion, but no change in Gaza policy
The issue of Israel and the Palestinians is by far the most divisive issue within the Democratic Party, which is otherwise trying passionately to unite behind Harris.
The protests here did not reach the scale or level of unrest that some had expected.
Harris addressed the issue passionately in her speech, but did not bring about any significant policy change.
She said it was time to negotiate a hostage deal and began to vigorously defend Israel’s right to self-defense.
She insisted that “the people of Israel must never again be subjected to the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas inflicted on October 7.”
She then acknowledged that “what happened in Gaza” – local health authorities say more than 40,000 people were killed – was “devastating.”
She called the suffering “heartbreaking” and said she hoped for a day when the Palestinian people could recognize their right to “self-determination.”
For the activists most outraged by the Biden administration’s support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this will be an unsatisfactory response.
But Harris believes she will ultimately lose only a few votes on this issue – and that any failure to defend Israel could have dire electoral consequences.
Apply pressure on abortion, play defense on immigration
Many Democrats believe that abortion will be their strongest issue in this year’s election campaign. Republicans argue that immigration is the Democrats’ biggest weakness.
It was no surprise, therefore, that Harris campaigned vigorously for the former and sought to mitigate the political threat to the latter.
She pointed to some of the implications of overturning Roe v. Wade, insisting that a second Trump term would allow the former president and his allies to “restrict access to contraception, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban.”
On immigration, she pointed to Trump’s central role in thwarting a bipartisan border agreement proposed earlier this year.
She stressed that she recognizes the importance of border security and said there is a need to “reform our broken immigration system.”
Critics will say such promises are trite. And Republicans believe Harris’ political vulnerability remains.
But she has at least made her case forcefully and tried to push back against Trump.
