Kamala Harris stood before the warmly lit White House on Tuesday night, American flags behind her and in the hands of the estimated 75,000 people in the crowd before her.
She talked about America as the greatest idea humanity ever created. “Here’s what I promise you,” she said. “I will always listen to you even if you don’t vote for me. I will always tell you the truth even if it is difficult to hear. I will work every day to build consensus and reach compromise to get things done. And if you give me the chance to fight on your behalf, there is nothing in the world that will stand in my way.”
Days before, Donald Trump stood at the very center of Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, cast in a red, blue and purplish glow beneath a Jumbotron reading “Trump will fix it,” surrounded by a crowd of red hats from floor to rafters. “We will not be invaded. We will not be occupied. We will not be overrun. We will not be conquered. We will be a free and proud nation once again,” he said at the end of six hours of other speeches that had gone in very dark places. The night began with a scene from “Patton” and ended with a man serenading Mr. Trump and the arena with “New York, New York.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris have gone beyond the places that people might expect campaigns to go, including podcasts to reach certain voters and thematic locations for specific messages: Mr. Trump’s dark claims about migrants and crime (Colorado) and Ms. Harris’s case about the grim realities and indignities of abortion bans (Texas).
But they’ve saved their closing messages for the biggest possible symbolic locations, in front of the largest crowds. Mr. Trump’s offered a vision of a world wrecked without him that required his brutal, lightning-strike approach (New York), Ms. Harris’s case was for a practical, constitutional president focused on real-life concerns like housing and child care costs, aware and accepting of the fact that not everyone will vote for her (the Ellipse in Washington).
Most people will see their speeches in clips on TV or TikTok or maybe on a YouTube or Instagram livestream. But if you’re there in these places, waiting in line to get in, waiting for the speeches to start, hearing Ms. Harris in an arena or Mr. Trump on a rally stage in the next six days, it can feel as if you’re at the center of the universe.
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