On Thursday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared as the final speaker for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, delivering her acceptance speech to become the party’s presidential nominee to an exuberant crowd of delegates and supporters, as well as to the nation watching at home.
Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket was probably not what she was expecting at the beginning of this year, as her boss, incumbent President Joe Biden, was mounting a run for a second term. But after a disastrous debate performance against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump raised doubts about Biden’s mental acuity, Biden, facing pressure from within his own party, dropped out of the race in mid-July.
Immediately after, Biden suggested that Harris be his replacement, and just days after his departure from the race, Harris secured enough delegates’ support to become the presumptive nominee, receiving the official status weeks later during a virtual roll call vote of delegates in early August.
Since that time, there has been a resurgence of energy within the Democratic Party. Indeed, throughout the week, the DNC has taken on a celebratory atmosphere, including a “ceremonial” roll call vote that featured a DJ and live performances, and delegates expressing optimism with Harris now as the candidate.
“I am just so excited, I am pumped up! I am elated, I feel hope, I feel — I feel like an American!” New York delegate Gloria Middleton said to Truthout on the convention floor Wednesday.
Although the scenes from inside the United Center appeared to show a party in unison, outside the building, uncommitted delegates dedicated to attaining a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo against Israel staged a sit-in, demanding that a Palestinian person be allowed to take the stage at some point during the week. Early on Thursday morning, those delegates and their allies were told by the DNC that no such speaker would be given the chance to address the convention.
“When Israeli families spoke about their loved ones as hostages, we watched, and we grieved with them as they were given the floor to share their stories. When it came time for us to share our voices, the doctors that have been in Gaza, the people who have lost entire families, generations wiped out, we were told we were not allowed,” Fatima Abed, an uncommitted delegate from Hawaii, said to Truthout.
“The Democratic Party silencing Palestinian voices is blatant discrimination and is re-traumatizing to individuals such as myself and other Palestinians in this movement. We will not stay silent,” Abed added.
Demands for an end to U.S. support for the genocide in Gaza also manifested in massive demonstrations numbering in the tens of thousands that occurred near the DNC throughout the week, including one on the night of Harris’s big speech.
Harris appeared onstage late in the evening on Thursday. The Democratic candidate for president recognized that hers was an unusual journey to the nomination.
She started by thanking the current president. “To our President Joe Biden, when I think about the path that we have traveled together, I am filled with gratitude,” Harris said.
“The path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected,” Harris also quipped, acknowledging the unprecedented nature of her nomination. “But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys.”
Harris described much of her biography to the audience in the United Center, and to those watching at home, including her youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, and her experience in high school helping a friend, Wanda, who was sexually abused by her stepfather, describing it as one reason she decided to become a prosecutor.
Harris criticized her Republican opponent throughout her speech, framing a vote for herself as a rejection of the “bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past” that he represented and “a chance to chart a New Way Forward.” She also promised that, regardless of anyone’s political persuasion, she would be “a president for all Americans.”
“You can always trust me to put country above party and self, to hold sacred America’s fundamental principles,” Harris said, alluding to flaws in Trump’s character, “from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.”
In a second term, Trump would abuse the presidency even more than he did before, Harris said, especially since the Supreme Court expanded presidential immunity standards earlier this year in response to his actions while in office, and because of the plans laid out in the far right, Trump-aligned Project 2025.
Said Harris:
Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. How he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States. Not to improve your life. Not to strengthen our national security. But to serve the only client he has ever had: Himself.
Harris returned to an oft-touted phrase among speakers during the course of the DNC — “we’re not going back.” She repeated the line several times in her speech.
“We are charting a new way forward, to a future with a strong and growing middle class,” Harris said, promising to defend Social Security and Medicare, preserve the Affordable Care Act, re-establish a federal defense of reproductive rights, and create “an opportunity economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed,” by promising to lower prices on common goods, end the housing shortage, and implement a middle-class tax cut affecting 100 million Americans.
Despite these pledges, Harris also signaled support for a hawkish, anti-migrant and right-wing agenda internationally. She promised to sign into law the immigration border deal that the Biden administration had brokered with Democrats and Republicans in Congress, which Trump upended when he demanded all Republicans oppose it in order to hurt Biden politically. That immigration bill would have taken the U.S. on a rightward trajectory on immigration, preventing a majority of migrants seeking asylum from being able to enter the country, for example, in violation of international law.
Towards the end of her speech, Harris turned her attention to foreign policy, hawkishly declaring that the U.S. would win the “competition for the 21st century” against China and promising to take “whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests” against Iran. “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Likely acknowledging the demonstrations happening all week long, as well as the negotiations the DNC has had with uncommitted delegates seeking stronger actions to protect Palestinians in Gaza being subjected to months of genocide, Harris tried to take a “both sides” approach by calling out the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, while also recognizing the “devastating” loss of lives within Gaza in the months since — neglecting to name, however, the state of Israel and the flow of U.S. military aid as the cause of the mass killings, starvation, displacement and famine faced by Palestinians.
“Now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done,” she said.
She added:
President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.
In her concluding remarks, Harris struck a patriotic note, calling on her supporters to be “worthy of this moment” in U.S. history.
“It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth,” Harris said.
“Let’s write the next great chapter in the greatest story ever told,” she added.
“Harris’ biggest applause line of the night was on Palestinian freedom,” said the account of the Uncommitted National Movement. “Let’s go get an arms embargo.”
The two major parties having now completed both of their respective conventions, the general election season now begins in earnest.
Polling demonstrates a huge turnaround over the past month or so, from when Biden was the presumptive nominee to Harris now leading the ticket. Whereas Biden was trailing Trump before, Harris, as of Thursday evening, leads Trump nationally by 3.6 points, based on an aggregate of polling data collected by FiveThirtyEight. That lead is notable because it comes before the traditional “bump” in polling numbers that typically happens for a candidate following their party’s convention week.
The map at Taegen Goddard’s Electoral-Vote.com also shows Harris leading Trump in the Electoral College, though she’s only doing so by a slim margin, 278 to 250. Some of the swing state polls where she is “winning” are also well within the margin of error, indicating that it’s still a very close race overall between Harris and Trump.
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