Kamala Harris will tell her personal story to Americans on the last day of the Democratic Convention.
Chicago:
Kamala Harris is set to deliver the biggest speech of her political life on Thursday as she accepts the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago after a historic reversal in the 2024 race for the White House.
The 59-year-old US vice president will focus on upbeat vibes after electrifying her party in the space of one heady month since President Joe Biden withdrew from the contest.
Now Harris will tell her personal story to the American people, using her televised speech to the Democratic National Convention to contrast her optimism with Republican Donald Trump’s darker tone.
“It’s going to blow the roof off,” said Amanda Taylor, a 47-year-old representative from Missouri.
Harris and her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, also exchanged messages on X on Thursday for their 10th wedding anniversary.
“To the best partner I could ask for: Happy Birthday, Dougie,” the vice president wrote, saying, “Forever to go. Happy birthday @VP. I love you.”
But as Democrats’ hopes soar and Harris leads in the polls, they know the battle is far from won.
From Barack and Michelle Obama to Bill Clinton, leading figures have warned all week that Harris faces a brutal fight to defeat the 78-year-old Trump.
The sheer speed of her astonishing rise to the top of the ticket also means that Harris remains an unknown quantity for many American voters.
Pioneering as the first female, Black and South Asian vice president in U.S. history — and now seeking to become the first female U.S. president — her role has kept her largely in the background for the past four years.
– ‘Fight for freedom’ –
Harris will try to remedy that in her speech. She will talk about being raised by a working mother and knowing the challenges faced by families hit by inflation, a campaign official said on condition of anonymity.
She will contrast her confident vision for America’s future with what her campaign calls Trump’s dark, conservative inspiration for a second term in the Oval Office, the official said.
Speaker after speaker has focused on the idea of freedom at the Democratic convention as the party focuses on what it says are Republican plans to further restrict abortion and strain democratic institutions.
On Wednesday, Harris’ energetic running mate Tim Walz formally accepted the party’s nomination, saying, “Kamala Harris is going to stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life you want to live.”
But Harris has made few policy announcements since becoming the Democratic standard-bearer, especially when it comes to the economy, a major election issue.
She should take advantage of her first major speech in a presidential setting because “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression,” political analyst Larry Sabato told AFP.
– ‘Kamala vibes’ –
“Voters already have the Kamala vibe. Now they need the Kamala agenda,” said Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia. A lack of economic policy “could defeat her faster than the limit,” he added.
But when it comes to the atmosphere, Democrats are in full party mode, unrecognizable from the party steeped in despair after 81-year-old Biden’s catastrophic debate performance against Trump.
The Obamas raised the roof in Chicago on Tuesday, with the ex-first lady declaring that “hope is making a comeback” under Harris.
On Wednesday, Clinton, talk show host Oprah Winfrey and musicians Stevie Wonder and John Legend were the warm-up acts for Walz, the governor of Minnesota.
Biden’s farewell speech on Monday, when Harris made a surprise appearance on stage to give him a hug, already seems like a distant memory.
While the transition has been dizzying for Biden and the Democrats, it has completely rattled Trump.
In a rollercoaster summer, he survived an assassination attempt only to see his thought victory turned upside down by a new and much younger opponent.
Trump will be in Arizona at the Mexican border on Thursday to highlight Harris’s weakness on illegal immigration.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
