DNC 2024, day four: Key takeaways from Kamala Harris's big speech
One month after announcing her candidacy, Vice President Kamala Harris delivers the most important speech of her life. This is Yahoo News' succinct wrap up of day four of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Here’s what you need to know:
?? Big picture
What a difference a month can make. When President Biden abruptly announced on July 21 that he was ending his reelection campaign, the D.C. chattering class — and no small number of Democrats — were skeptical about Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Donald Trump.
And with good reason. For years, polls had shown that the vice president’s favorable rating was almost as bad as her boss’s, with about 54% of Americans viewing her unfavorably and just 36% viewing her favorably. One reason Biden reportedly hung on so long is that he was worried Harris would lose.
But Harris’s numbers have skyrocketed since she kicked off her candidacy. Her favorability has shot up almost 10 percentage points and her unfavorability is falling fast. The vice president now leads Trump by more than 3 points nationally — a gap that might widen more after the convention.
Pundits seeking to explain this sudden shift have mostly credited changing conditions: the sense of relief among Democrats of having a new, not-81-year-old candidate to vote for. “Irrational exuberance,” said David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former strategist.
Yet with her acceptance speech Thursday, Harris showed that she has changed too. Gone is the confusion and calculation of her failed 2020 primary bid; clarity and confidence have taken their place. Effort has given way to ease. And that, as much as anything, is what Democrats are responding to.
"I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” Harris vowed on stage in Chicago. “A president who leads — and listens. Who is realistic. Practical. And has common sense. And always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.”
?? Key takeaways
Harris finds her voice. During the 2020 Democratic primary, Harris struggled to pick a lane. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was attracting progressives with promises of “big, structural change.” Biden was cornering the Black vote. Harris contorted her campaign to squeeze between them somehow. She wound up sounding … inauthentic.
But running against Trump instead of other Democrats has liberated Harris to be herself — or rather, the best political version of herself.
The contrasts almost write themselves. Younger woman of color vs. older white man. Middle class vs. silver spoon. Immigrant family vs. family separation. Future vs. past. Service vs. self. Care vs. cruelty. Prosecutor vs. criminal.
Those are the contrasts Democrats have been pushing all week in Chicago, and they culminated Thursday in Harris’s speech.
“To be clear, my whole career, I’ve only had one client: the people,” Harris said. But “just imagine [how] Donald Trump … 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’s ever had: himself.”
Telling her story — on her terms. Harris has never given a major convention speech. (Her 2020 vice-presidential acceptance speech was cramped by the COVID-19 pandemic.) So Thursday was the candidate’s chance to tell her life story — and to tell it in the most politically advantageous terms possible.
The framework she selected was revealing. “I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys,” Harris said at the start — and indeed, her mother’s journey from India, and the biracial family it eventually formed, were far from typical. But Harris presented her childhood in a “small East Bay apartment” — surrounded by “firefighters, nurses and construction workers” and a “trusted circle” of family friends — as something most Americans can identify with.
“The middle class is where I come from,” Harris said. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”
From there, Harris could have focused on her time in the Senate or the White House. But she — and most of the rest of the night’s speakers — chose instead to emphasize her career in California as a prosecutor, standing up “for women and children against predators who abused them”; “for homeowners facing foreclosure against big banks”; “for veterans and students being scammed by big, for profit colleges”; “for workers being cheated out of wages”; and “against cartels that traffic in drugs and guns and human beings.”
The point? That Harris isn’t a politician so much as a protector — and that she’ll be the same as president. “These fights were not easy,” she said. “We were underestimated at practically every turn. But we never gave up, because the future is always worth fighting for. And that is the fight we are in now — a fight for America’s future.”
Kamala in chief. Anyone paying even a little attention to this week’s DNC would be familiar, by now, with Harris’s favorite theme: that she wants to “move America forward” while Trump wants to “take us back.” Predictably, Harris reprised that message in her acceptance speech, warning that her rival would cut taxes for the wealthy, gut the social safety net and restrict reproductive rights if reelected — just like he did in his first term, according to Harris.
But the most interesting part came when the vice president followed a lesson her mother used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.
Playing on biases about women in power, Trump likes to claim that people wouldn’t respect Harris as president; that she wouldn’t be strong enough on the world stage; that she’s weak.
On Thursday, Harris used her acceptance speech to show (and not just tell) voters what she’d be like as president by directly addressing her own party’s most contentious debate, the war in Gaza — and acknowledging both “Israel’s right to defend itself” and Palestinian suffering.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past ten months is devastating,” Harris said. “So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking."
“President Biden and I are working to end this war," Harris said as the delegates cheered, "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.”
On foreign policy in general — from Ukraine to China to NATO — Harris argued that, contrary to his claims, it’s Trump who’s weak, not her.
“I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un, who are rooting for Trump,” Harris said. “Because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable — because he wants to be an autocrat.”
‘Tough, tested and a total badass.’ That’s how Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer described Harris in her remarks, and it was a sentiment that echoed throughout the evening’s speeches. If earlier nights were about “freedom” and “joy,” Thursday was mostly about turning Trump’s greatest perceived strength, his “toughness,” on its head.
“We don’t know what the next four years will bring, but what we do know is this,” Whitmer said. “Through it all, your life won’t stop. You’re going to have to get to work, pick up the kids and pay your bills. And then one day, when you’re just trying to get everyone out the door, a news alert goes off. Something happened. Something hit the fan. You’ll ask, ‘Is my family gonna be OK?’ And then you’ll ask, ‘Who the hell is in charge?’”
“What if it’s him? What if it’s that man from Mar-a-Lago?” she continued. “I know in a crisis we’ll need someone strong enough to come up with a plan. [And] I know who I want as our commander-in-chief.”
Chris Swanson, the sheriff of Genesee County, Mich., vouched for Harris on crime. Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona vouched for her on veteran’s issues. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vouched for her on foreign affairs. The list goes on.
But perhaps the most convincing testimony came from former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who detailed his post-Jan. 6 disillusionment with Trump’s GOP — a party led by “a weak man pretending to be strong.”
“As a conservative and a veteran, I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy,” Kinzinger said. “Whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency and of fidelity to this nation.”
Swing state candidates show up. One quick and dirty way to gauge how a party is feeling about its November prospects — and the potential coattail effects of its presidential ticket — is to see how many battleground Senate candidates show up to speak at the convention. The more the merrier.
This year’s tally was about 50/50. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen and New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich sat Chicago out — likely because they were more worried about losing votes in the middle than gaining votes on the left.
But if a flagging Biden were still the nominee, that list probably would have been a lot bigger.
With Harris topping the ticket, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Reps. Gallego of Arizona, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Colin Allred of Texas — the Democratic Senate nominees in their respective states — all came, saw and spoke on Thursday night.
Keeping control of the Senate will be a heavy lift for Democrats in November. Yet Slotkin’s remarks suggested that Harris’s focus on freedom and patriotism is making things easier, not harder for swing state candidates like her — and that Harris’s momentum could boost Democratic turnout even in more middle-of-the-road places.
“Proudly claim your patriotism,” said Slotkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst. “Do not give an inch to pretenders who wrap themselves in the flag but spit in the face of freedoms it represents.”
??? Thursday’s notable speakers
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly
Former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords
Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren
The Rev. Al Sharpton
Actress Kerry Washington
Actor and comedian D.L. Hughley
Singer Pink
Actress Eva Longoria
Musical group the Chicks
Public policy advocate Maya Harris, Kamala Harris’s sister
Lawyer Meena Harris, Kamala Harris’s niece
California Sen. Alex Padilla
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy
Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin
Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego
Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark
Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath
Colorado Rep. Jason Crow
New York Rep. Pat Ryan
Texas Rep. Colin Allred
Florida Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost
?? Political terms you should know
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How Kamala Harris prepared for the biggest speech of her life. "Soon after she became a presidential candidate one month ago, she told advisers that she saw this speech and any fall debates as the most pivotal moments of the abbreviated race, according to three people familiar with her thinking." [New York Times]
‘Excited to show up for her’: mixed-race voters finally feel seen with Harris’s nomination. "Today, about one in 10 Americans – 33.8 million people – identify as mixed race. The rapid rise of multiracial people could not only affect the 2024 election, but reshape American electoral politics since mixed-race people tend to be young and the country’s white population is aging." [The Guardian]
Democratic convention denies speaking spot to Gaza War critics. "The 'uncommitted' campaign had sought speaking time on the DNC’s main stage for a representative of their group, which had won support from hundreds of thousands of voters. They initially requested two slots ― the other for a doctor who had served in Gaza, to address the humanitarian crisis there ― but later in the week said they sought only one: a Palestinian American speaker." [HuffPost]
The next primary is already brewing. "The story of the convention and the current presidential nominee is far more important and interesting than any hypothetical campaign that now, with a new nominee, may not start until as late as 2032 (if Harris wins a couple of terms). Having said that, I can’t let the convention week go by without at least acknowledging those who are doing the 'just in case Kamala doesn’t win' preparation for a 2028 run." [NBC News]
