Vice President Kamala Harris made history Thursday night as the first Black woman and first Indian American to accept a major party presidential nomination, calling on the country “to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past.”
“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination,” the California Democrat said to a roaring crowd of Democratic delegates, waving vertical “Kamala” signs. If elected, she would be the first Californian in the Oval Office since President Reagan.
Her nearly 40-minute speech combined a telling of her personal story with a sharp indictment of former President Trump as an unfit leader who “fights for himself and his billionaire friends.” She framed her vision as non-ideological and “practical” as she courts moderate voters who have concerns about the economy but reservations about electing Trump.
Her election offers “a chance to chart a new way forward,” Harris said. “Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” she said. “A president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical and has common sense.”
But even as she called for unity, she levied searing attacks on Trump and the Project 2025 document — which lays out an extensive right-wing populist agenda — that was written for him, but he has since tried to disavow.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said, laying out his role in inciting a violent mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “Consider the power he will have — especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.”
“Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” she said. And “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.”
Trump, in a fundraising email to supporters afterward, called it “the worst speech ever!” while accusing Harris of espousing a “dangerously liberal agenda for America.”
Appearing via phone on Fox News just after the address, Trump said his Democratic opponent was all talk and no action, given that she already serves as vice president.
“But she didn’t do any of it,” he said. “She could have done it 3½ years ago. She could do it tonight, by leaving the auditorium and going to Washington, D.C.”
Harris’ moment was heavy with symbolism, with many women at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago’s United Center wearing white to commemorate the suffrage movement and Beyoncé‘s power anthem “Freedom” blasting through the speakers during the balloon drop at the end.
But Harris used the speech and this week’s convention to make a case beyond the history, emphasizing her personal biography, the party’s “freedom” agenda and the case against returning Trump to the White House.
She traced her upbringing by her late mother, Shyamala Harris, who at age 19 “crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer.” There, she met her father, Donald J. Harris, an economist and Jamaican immigrant who was divorced from her mother when she was a child.
“It was mostly my mother who raised us,” Harris said, describing the small rented apartment she lived in for a time in the East Bay flats — “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.”
Her mother faced discrimination as a small woman with an accent but taught Kamala and her sister, Maya, “to never complain about injustice, but do something about it,” values reinforced at civil rights protests going on around her.
Maya Harris, who helped introduce her sister, also spoke of their mother as a motivator with high expectations. “I can just see her smiling, saying how proud she is of Kamala,” she said, imagining her late mother watching the historic evening.
“And then, without missing a beat, she’d say, ‘That’s enough. You’ve got work to do,’” she said.
The contest is essentially a toss-up at this point, according to pollsters. But Harris’ elevation to the top of the ticket just over a month ago, after President Biden stepped aside, has given Democrats hope that they have a chance.
Harris, the vice president for almost four years, has sought to portray herself as a tough prosecutor who put away violent criminals when she was San Francisco’s district attorney and went after big banks when she was California’s attorney general.
Trump has sought to portray her as a San Francisco liberal and a failed “border czar,” a title Harris rejects because she was tasked by Biden to improve conditions for potential migrants in other countries and did not have direct control over the southern border. Record high border stops, which have recently declined, are one of Harris’ biggest political liabilities.
She tried to defuse the issue by going after Trump for scuttling a bipartisan border enforcement deal, promising she would sign it, while also working on legislation to create legal pathways to citizenship for those here illegally.
She also blasted Trump over abortion rights, calling attention to his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who two years ago helped overturned Roe vs. Wade. Harris has led Democratic political efforts on the issue, which helped the party perform better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections and is again a large motivator for female voters who form the party’s backbone.
“Let’s be clear about how we got here,” she said. “Donald Trump hand-picked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom, and now he brags about it.”
The speech also featured a larger discussion of foreign policy than has so far been featured on the campaign trail. She contrasted her record on defending Ukraine from Russia as part of a larger contrast with Trump, whom she accused of cozying up to dictators. Harris continued her effort to strike a balance in tone on one of her most difficult political issues: the war between Israel and Hamas.
“The scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” she said. “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.”
Harris also pitched the party’s economic agenda, which includes subsidies for first-time home buyers, anti-price gouging measures on groceries and expanded child tax credits. Though most recent economic indicators have been positive, polls show the economy is voters’ biggest concern, in large part because of inflation.
“We know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success,” she said. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”
Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this report.
