CNN
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Vice President Kamala Harris capped probably the most extraordinary months in fashionable political historical past Thursday night with a speech that rallied Democrats round themes of patriotism — and solid Donald Trump because the enemy of basic American ideas.
“Within the enduring battle between democracy and tyranny, I do know the place I stand. And I do know the place the USA belongs,” she mentioned.
With the cadence of a courtroom prosecutor, Harris delivered on the promise many Democrats noticed in her when she launched her first presidential marketing campaign 5 years in the past, and when Joe Biden selected her as his operating mate in 2020.
Harris went straight at her Republican rival. She laid out the previous president’s authorized troubles. She blamed him for the horrors some ladies have confronted amid the implementation of strict state-level abortion legal guidelines. She issued a reminder of what she referred to as the “chaos and calamity when he was in workplace.”
‘Out of their minds’: Kamala Harris goes after Trump and GOP on abortion
“In some ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she mentioned. “However the penalties of placing Donald Trump again within the White Home are extraordinarily critical.”
Harris additionally delved deeper into her personal coverage positions, significantly on overseas coverage. She mentioned she’d be a president who’s “life like, sensible and has frequent sense” — a transparent rebuttal to Trump’s effort to model her as too liberal.
The variations between Harris’ speech in Chicago and the one Trump delivered final month on the Republican conference in Milwaukee couldn’t have been extra stark — and set the stage for the dash to the November 5 election, with head-to-head confrontations in debates but to return.
Listed here are eight takeaways from the fourth and remaining night time of the Democratic Nationwide Conference:
Harris delivered a easy message to Individuals: You don’t should reside like this anymore.
At instances explicitly and at all times written into the subtext of her remarks, Harris supplied voters a clear break from the Trump period and its grinding uncertainty and political upheaval.
“We aren’t going again,” Harris mentioned, repeatedly, as she and others – together with the chanting hundreds contained in the United Heart – have accomplished since she grew to become the presumptive nominee. However as a lot because the slogan is a rebuke of Trump’s insurance policies and a promise of progressive change, it additionally resonates extra narrowly as an assurance for the instant time period.
To “not return” to even just a few weeks in the past, earlier than her marketing campaign took flight.
Harris’ marketing campaign has additionally talked at nice size about “freedom,” in search of to reframe points corresponding to reproductive rights as a query of presidency interference.
At stake within the election, Harris mentioned, have been “the liberty to reside protected from gun violence, in our faculties, communities, and locations of worship; the liberty to like who you like overtly and with pleasure; the liberty to breathe clear air, drink clear water, and reside free from the air pollution that fuels the local weather disaster; and the liberty that unlocks all of the others: The liberty to vote.”
On this night time, although, it was onerous to not additionally hear the supply of “freedom” from the anger and divisions, each elementary and petty, which have outlined a lot of the previous decade of American life.
Harris has lengthy struggled to open up about her private story. Not anymore.
Over the course of her quick marketing campaign, she has talked extra about her mom, about her childhood rising up center class, the daughter of two immigrants and lecturers, and her journey into political workplace.
On Thursday, Harris talked about how her father, economist Donald Harris, inspired her to run free on the playground when her mom cautioned her to watch out. She advised the viewers about her late mom, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a biomedical scientist who wished to treatment breast most cancers and raised her two daughters after her divorce. And he or she talked concerning the tight-knit neighborhood that helped increase her and her sister, Maya.
“My mom was a superb, 5 foot tall, brown lady with an accent, and because the eldest baby, I noticed how the world would typically deal with her,” Harris mentioned. “However my mom by no means misplaced her cool.”
The vice chairman didn’t explicitly evaluate her upbringing with the previous president’s, however different audio system this week have made a extra direct distinction between her childhood and Trump’s life because the son of an actual property mogul.
Harris once more recalled a childhood expertise that helped form her profession path. In highschool, her buddy Wanda Kagan confided in Harris that she was being sexually abused by her stepfather, Harris mentioned that her buddy ought to keep together with her household.
“This is among the causes I grew to become a prosecutor, to guard folks like Wanda,” she mentioned.
All through her 2020 presidential marketing campaign, Harris sought to flee the label that she was a “cop” and out of step with the left on prison justice reform points. However as she’s sought to introduce herself to the general public as a presidential candidate, she’s leaned into her resume as a energy. Every night time has highlighted her work preventing transnational gangs, sexual abusers and company dangerous actors.
A number of of her former colleagues, from her time within the Alameda County district lawyer’s workplace to her years as California lawyer normal, appeared Thursday night time to make the case that she approached her job with compassion and grit.
“For Kamala, working towards legislation was at all times about defending the weak and giving the victims a voice,” mentioned Amy Resner, a former deputy district lawyer for Alameda County and a longtime buddy.
Lisa Madigan, the previous lawyer normal of Illinois, spoke about working with Harris in the course of the monetary disaster to forestall households from being foreclosed upon. Nathan Hornes, a former pupil at Corinthian Schools, a defunct for-profit faculty, addressed her profitable effort to prosecute the college for defrauding college students.
One of the hanging testimonies got here from Courtney Baldwin, a youth organizer and human trafficking survivor, who spoke of how Harris labored to close down the web site that traffickers used to pressure her and others into intercourse work.
“She’s protected folks like me her entire life,” Baldwin mentioned.
Trump and plenty of different Republicans for years have made a present out of mispronouncing Harris’ first identify.
Thursday night time, Harris’ two younger grandnieces, Amara and Leela Ajagu — with an help from actress Kerry Washington — appeared onstage to ship a message: It’s really easy that youngsters can do it.
“First you say comma, like a comma in a sentence,” Amara mentioned.
“You then mentioned la, like la, la, la, la, la,” Leela added in a sing-song voice.
Kamala Harris’ grandnieces train DNC crowd easy methods to pronounce her identify
A number of Harris members of the family adopted.
Amara and Leela’s mom, Harris’ niece Meena Harris, mentioned that the vice chairman “guided me; now she’s guiding my very own youngsters.” Harris’ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, mentioned that when the 2 met when she was 14, Harris “was affected person, caring and at all times took me critically.”
“She taught me that making a distinction means giving your entire coronary heart and taking motion,” mentioned Harris’ goddaughter, Helena Hudlin.
Later, Maya Harris, the vice chairman’s sister, talked about their mom, who died in 2009.
“I so want that Mommy might be right here tonight,” she mentioned. “I may simply see her smiling, saying how proud she is of Kamala. After which, with out lacking a beat, she’d say, ‘That’s sufficient, you’ve obtained work to do.’”
Even earlier than Biden ended his reelection marketing campaign, Harris was a number one voice within the administration on gun management. Thursday night time cemented that, because the conference highlighted the non-public tales of individuals affected by gun violence – from mass shootings to murders on the hand of abusive companions.
Individuals impacted by gun violence converse at DNC
The technique mirrored using abortion storytellers via the week. In opposition to a black backdrop, audio system shared their experiences of loss.
In a video, Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath shared her story spoke of changing into a dad or mum earlier than her son was murdered in 2012. McBath, who has pointed to her son’s demise as her inspiration for operating for workplace, mentioned she realized “firsthand the facility of telling our tales” when she labored for gun management teams like Mothers Demand Motion.
“You’ve simply heard mine, however there are lots of extra to inform,” she mentioned, earlier than turning to moms who misplaced their youngsters within the mass shootings on the Sandy Hook and Uvalde faculty shootings; Melody McFadden, who misplaced her mom to home violence; and Edgar Vilchez, who misplaced a classmate.
The gun violence portion of the night time closed with former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived a capturing at a marketing campaign occasion in 2011.
“I virtually died, however I fought for my life, and I survived,” Giffords mentioned.
Trump has a protracted historical past of weaponizing racial resentments for political acquire — together with pushing “birtherism” throughout Barack Obama’s presidency and imposing a ban on journey to the USA from six majority Muslim nations.
However the first occasion of Trump using that model of politics was the “Central Park 5.”
In 1989, 5 Black and Latino boys have been wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a girl jogging in New York Metropolis’s Central Park. Trump, then only a New York actual property developer, took out and signed full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the boys to be executed.
“Deliver again the demise penalty. Deliver again our police!” the advertisements learn in big kind.
These boys have been later exonerated — 4 of them in 2002; the final in 2022 — after one other man confessed to the assault and DNA proof confirmed his involvement.
And on Thursday night time, 4 of the 5 appeared on stage on the DNC.
“Each day as we walked into courtroom, folks screamed at us, threatened us, due to Donald Trump,” Korey Clever mentioned.
Yusef Salaam, who’s now a New York Metropolis councilman, mentioned Trump “wished us useless.”
“He has by no means modified, and he by no means will,” Salaam mentioned. “That man thinks that hate is the animating pressure in America. It isn’t. Now we have the constitutional proper to vote. Actually, it’s a human proper. So allow us to use it.”
In the long run, “Uncommitted” delegates elected by main protest votes towards the Biden administration’s coverage in Israel and Gaza have been shut out of the conference.
Leaders of the Uncommitted Nationwide Motion – who all mentioned they have been dedicated to voting for Harris – publicly agitated to have a Palestinian American handle Democrats contained in the United Heart.
Then, on Wednesday night time, they obtained phrase from conference organizers that, as an Uncommitted spokesman advised it, the marketing campaign “says the reply is not any.”
The group reacted by starting a sit-in exterior the conference. It lasted for about 24 hours and attracted a raft of progressive lawmakers and antiwar activists. Nonetheless, regardless of a surge of assist from the United Auto Staff and different influential teams, Democrats stood by their determination.
Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted co-founder, referred to as it a self-defeating transfer – one that might solely make it harder to win again voters in swing states like Michigan.
“I really feel dangerous for (the DNC and Harris marketing campaign) as a result of they’re out of step with the vast majority of the Democratic base,” Alawieh mentioned. “Nearly all of Democratic voters imagine that Palestinian human rights are a precedence alongside each different precedence we have now.”
Harris herself didn’t ignore the difficulty. She pledged to assist and defend Israel, condemned the atrocities of Hamas’ October 7 assaults and insisted that the administration was decided to safe an enduring peace within the area.
“On the identical time,” she continued, “what has occurred in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many harmless lives misplaced. Determined, hungry folks fleeing for security over and over The dimensions of struggling is heartbreaking.”
How do you measure momentum? Political observers confer with crowd measurement, donations and voter registration, however this conference supplied one other normal: movie star appearances.
The DNC has seen a number of stars this week, from Lil Jon’s shock look in the course of the star-studded roll name to Oprah Winfrey’s speech Wednesday night time. Celebrities corresponding to Mindy Kaling and Tony Goldwyn hosted numerous nights of the conference, and progressive nation artists corresponding to Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris and Jason Isbell carried out all through the week.
Stevie Surprise carried out “Larger Floor” and John Legend paid tribute to Prince – of Gov. Tim Walz’s house state of Minnesota – along with his performing companion Sheila E. Pink carried out “What About Us” on the ultimate night time, which was hosted by “Scandal” star Washington.
Solely the conference organizers know who sought an invitation after Harris turn out to be the nominee, nevertheless it’s clear that her ascension coincided with a burst of power that was clear within the programming.
After which there was the query of whether or not Beyoncé would carry out. Her tune “Freedom” has turn out to be the anthem of Harris’ run and the soundtrack of some marketing campaign movies. Hypothesis grew all through the week that Beyoncé would make an look, and a number of other sources near conference planners mentioned they believed she would come. However late Thursday, the artist’s group went on the report.
“She was by no means scheduled to be in Chicago,” the singer’s consultant advised CNN.