Kamala Harris accepts the Democrats’ nomination to be president
On Thursday night Kamala Harris accepted the Democrats’ nomination to be president. Just over a month after Joe Biden exited the race and passed her the baton, this was the most important speech of Kamala Harris’s career.
Harris emerged on the blue carpeted stage at 9:31 pm to thunderous cheers. She is the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be a major party nominee for U.S. President. Harris told her story on the historic night. Harris was in control, shared her values, told the country where she comes from and where she wants to take it, while also contrasting herself with Trump. Harris painted herself as a regular, blue-collar kid, who understands the needs of people and the value of hard work and discipline.
“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past,” Harris said. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
The Vice President also prosecuted the case against Trump. Recalling how Trump sent an armed mob to the US Capitol to overturn his election defeat, she warned: “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 vowed: “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.”
Harris, 59, neutralized Republicans’ age argument and weaponized it against them. Trump is 78, the oldest nominee in American history. Donald Trump spent months framing President Joe Biden as a doddering old man who couldn’t be trusted with the country’s future. Now Trump is facing a similar attacks from Americans.
A University of New Hampshire poll released this week surveyed residents in Vermont. The poll found that 61 percent of voters aged 65 and older in Vermont found Trump’s physical and mental fitness to be “very poor.” Other age demographics were slightly less bleak about Trump’s health, with 58 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds identifying Trump as in “very poor” health, 40 percent of 35- to 49-year-olds, and 37 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds. Just 14 percent described Trump’s health as “very good,” while 12 percent described his health as simply “good.”
Kamala Harris’s speech ended four days of high-energy speakers extolling Harris as an everywoman driven by service and combating injustice who gets the struggles of the middle class.
During Harris’s 37-minute presidential acceptance speech, Donald Trump posted 48 times on his Truth Social network. “There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III,” Donald Trump wrote. The former US president fired off a volley of ripostes, rebuttals and angry calls to TV stations. Immediately after the speech, Trump called Fox News and delivered a rambling, live on-air tirade that was eventually cut off by the network’s hosts.
Harris now has just over two weeks to prepare for what might be her only presidential debate against Trump, a Sept. 10 showdown on ABC. In a series of Truth Social posts on September 2nd, the Republican nominee and former president said his agreement to a Sept. 10 debate on ABC “has been terminated.”
Kamala Harris’s full speech to the Democratic National Convention