With her acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president, Kamala Harris simultaneously made American history and invited the nation to help her craft the next chapter of it.
In the most consequential speech of her career, Ms. Harris asked Americans to see her as the embodiment of the country’s traditional values, rather than a rejection of them. It was a message intended to reassure voters that, as much as her background and identity represent change, Ms. Harris also represents a through line to the nation’s founding ideals.
Her remarks amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that even an evolving nation may be uneasy with handing power to those who have not historically had it. And they offered an explicit counterargument against an opponent who is promising Americans a return to an idealized and insular past dominated by a white Christian male majority.
While she didn’t mention her race and gender, Ms. Harris offered an implicit understanding that some Americans may be uncomfortable with being led by a Black woman. Her approach marked a notable break with Hillary Clinton, the only other woman to capture a major party nomination, who highlighted her barrier-breaking past and possible future as a central theme of her 2016 campaign.
Ms. Harris’s speech was also a recognition that many Americans may be unfamiliar with her experience, her beliefs and her governing style — and that she was afforded less time than any other nominee in recent history to win over a fiercely divided nation.
“I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “You can always trust me to put country before party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.”
She wore a sharp dark suit — instead of suffrage white — signaling power and strength rather than the history-making proposition of putting the first woman in the White House.
She cast herself as a “realistic, practical” leader rather than the “radical liberal” depicted by her Republican opponents. She directly confronted some of the most persistent concerns voters have about her positions, talking about her approach to immigration, border security and economics. And she expressed foreign policy views that echoed not just those of President Biden but decades of conventional views about national security, the value of democracy at home and abroad and international relations.
It’s Donald J. Trump, she argued, who has abandoned the values that make America great.
“Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable, because he wants to be an autocrat himself,” she said, as the convention hall exploded in cheers. “As president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.”
Ms. Harris also used the speech to position herself as a champion of the middle class, a well-worn appeal of political campaigns. She highlighted a recently unveiled platform she described as the “opportunity economy,” which she said reflected her own upbringing in a household with a budget, where opportunities were cherished.
By contrast, throughout the convention, Ms. Harris’s surrogates pointed to Mr. Trump’s privileged upbringing to portray him as out of touch and said that he grew his fortune by cheating hard-working Americans.
Over the course of four days, speaker after speaker at her convention sought to familiarize voters with Ms. Harris and reassure the nation that the vision she is putting forward of an inclusive nation wasn’t all that different from the reality of many American homes.
The convention depicted a country where men happily play a supporting role, where family is made in many ways and systemic hurdles to opportunity are removed. And the roster of speakers made it clear that that broad vision also includes Republicans and even those who supported her opponent, Mr. Trump.
In his remarks, Doug Emhoff, the first “second gentleman” in history, talked of his “blended family” and urged Americans to trust Ms. Harris with their future as he did with his family’s when he married her 10 years ago.
Maya Harris, Ms. Harris’s sister, described their mother’s immigrant journey from India to the United States and the opportunities she sought for her daughters as a “distinctly American story.”
“Kamala understands we have so much more in common than what separates us,” said the younger Ms. Harris. “She knows the measure of our success isn’t just winning an election, it’s about who we bring along and lift up in the process.”
Even the vice president’s two young nieces pitched in to help familiarize voters with Ms. Harris and push back against deliberate Republican mispronunciations of her given name, leading the Democratic delegates in a thunderous call-and-response lesson in how to pronounce it: “Comma! La!”
Much has changed since 2008, when Democrats sent the first Black man into the White House. Same-sex marriage has been legal for nearly a decade, multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group in the country and women have more representation in the federal government than ever before.
“The facts are that this is a much more diverse country than has ever been in our history,” Senator Laphonza Butler, a Democrat from California and a close ally of Ms. Harris’s, said in an interview a few hours before Ms. Harris took the stage. “And whoever, whichever party, whichever candidate, figures out how to build that coalition, is going to be the winning party, the winning candidate, every single time.”
The question will be whether Democrats can successfully sell their message without stoking the forces of opposition or being dismissed as performative.
Minutes after she left the stage, Mr. Trump called into Fox News to reject the idea that Ms. Harris was winning over female, Hispanic and Black voters, as polling suggests.
“She’s not having success; I’m having success,” he said in a meandering interview. “I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters, doing great with Black men, I’m doing great with women.”
Already, Mr. Trump has been unable to resist attacks on Ms. Harris’s race and gender. So far, they’ve fallen largely flat. When he questioned her Blackness in front of an audience of Black journalists, he faced widespread rebuke, including from a handful of members of his own party. But there’s also little doubt that nastier personal attacks will come this fall, if not from Mr. Trump himself, then from his allies.
Ms. Harris is largely ignoring those attacks, pushing back by trying to make Mr. Trump appear smaller than he has ever been. In her telling, the Republican president who has energized and infuriated Democrats for nearly a decade, is the American outlier, an “unserious man” who is a vestige of a regressive past and “easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.”
In a signal of how deeply some Democrats believe the country has shifted, some now see Ms. Harris’s identity not as an electoral liability but as a superpower that will goad the former president into making additional unforced errors.
“She’s bringing out really like the worst of him, because he’s running against her and he can’t believe it,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “If that’s what he wants the election to be about, it’s great.”
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