On the final night of the Democratic National Convention, expectations were high and rumors were rife.
Speculation about a surprise guest (Taylor Swift? Beyoncé?) turned out to be wishful thinking.
It doesn't matter.
Kamala Harris crushed it.
The vice president was always the star attraction of the four-day event and her acceptance speech on Thursday night was always intended as the grand finale.
From the moment she stepped out flashing her high-wattage smile, Harris commanded the stage with a purpose and passion that eluded her the last time she ran, aimlessly and unsuccessfully, for the White House.
In just over 37 minutes, Harris capped what has been a remarkable month of political luck and success with a powerful speech that positions her firmly for the final stretch of this fiercely contested presidential campaign.
Our columnists, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria — who, between them, have not attended a Swift or Beyoncé concert — got over their disappointment at the no-show and gathered themselves to share these thoughts.
Barabac:In anticipation of this convention, I scoffed at the hype surrounding the announcement of the most important speech of her career that Harris gave on Thursday night. Not because it wasn't true, but because it was so predictable and trivial.
That being said, it is was A political moment of enormous significance, and Harris delivered it impeccably. I have followed her career since her days as San Francisco district attorney and have never seen her deliver a better speech.
She was tough, authoritarian, forceful and, yes, cheerful.
What do you think?
ChabriaThere was not much to criticize in this speech. In short, it sounded presidential, which was precisely what I was aiming for.
Over the course of the week, we have seen dozens of loud, raucous speeches, the kind that are standard at rallies and that are meant to inspire with their energy. But in this setting, with its made-for-television sound system, many of them have seemed overly theatrical and just plain loud to viewers at home.
Harris took a different approach. Her speech was meant to inspire both in its content and its delivery. She appeared confident, calm and, above all, in control. It was her time to sell herself to undecided voters and she delivered an impeccable speech.
Barabac:The Democrats' indulgent and careless scheduling has led to other speakers appearing well beyond prime time on television, when, crucially, the most people are watching.
That wasn't a problem Thursday night.
Harris, a former courtroom prosecutor, knows how to hone an argument. She had a lot of ground to cover (she's that rare combination of famous and largely unknown) and she did it with clarity and forensic precision.
She offered her life story, beginning when she was a child, described her career as a politician and prosecutor, leaning heavily toward her role as California attorney general, fighting crime and protecting consumers, and outlined a vision of what a Harris presidency would look like.
Harris promised that strengthening and expanding the middle class would be “the defining goal of my presidency.”
He promised to cut taxes for the middle class, fight to restore abortion rights nationwide, “end America’s housing shortage” (the presidency doesn’t come with a magic wand, so good luck with that), and fix the country’s broken immigration system by signing bipartisan legislation that Trump rejected on political grounds.
Chabria: But neither did he shy away from difficult issues. Gaza and the US response to the Israel-Palestine conflict have been a subtext of this convention. While the huge, disruptive protests that many feared or expected did not materialize, there were protests. And there was a hard but unsuccessful effort to get a Palestinian speaker on the agenda.
Harris addressed the issue head-on, with clear position statements.
“I will always defend Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the Hamas terrorist organization caused on October 7,” he said.
He then headed to Gaza.
“At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past ten months is devastating,” Harris said. “President Biden and I are working to end this war so that Israel is safe, the hostages are freed, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”
This part of the speech garnered some of the loudest and longest applause. A speech won't make this problem go away for her, of course, and it shouldn't: Biden and Harris must keep their promises.
But attacking it directly and clearly shows the kind of accountability we look for in leaders.
He also directly attacked Donald Trump. What did you think of that part of his comments, Mark?
Barrabac: She criticized Trump, citing his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot, his felony conviction for election interference and a jury's finding that he was liable for sexual abuse.
“Imagine Donald Trump without guardrails,” he said, citing the get-out-of-jail-free letter handed to him by a docile Supreme Court.
But Harris left it to the imagination, describing a litany of atrocities that await Trump if he returns to the Oval Office: journalists and his political opponents jailed, January 6 insurrectionists on the loose, the military whipping up the country's citizens to crack down on dissidents.
Strong material.
Chabria:It certainly gave us a sense of what it must have been like in a courtroom. And it drove Trump crazy. He was on his Truth Social platform tweeting like a maniac. What struck me was how stale Trump's comments were — he labeled her a communist, he blamed her for the border — compared to what Harris was saying on stage.
For those all-important swing voters, she is really offering something new, something that wasn’t on Biden’s shortlist. Swing voters are always a mystery because you don’t know if they’re just not paying attention, if they’ve already made up their minds and don’t want to say anything, or if they’re just working according to their own idiosyncratic criteria. But if there are voters looking for a candidate with a fresh edge, she’s the one.
In addition to Harris, the convention did a good job last night with the speakers who preceded her. Her grandnieces did a nice exercise in pronouncing her name (which even Bill Clinton didn't pronounce correctly). Eat it. It's not hard.
Four of the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five, also gave a powerful speech, reminding us how Trump still believes in their guilt decades after the real rapist and DNA cleared them. I was struck by how Trump’s language around that case and those black teenagers now mirrors his language around immigrants.
But the one who got me was sexual abuse survivor and human rights advocate Courtney Baldwin, a Californian who was “bought and sold” through the website Backpage.com when she was a teenager, she said.
It was the attorney general's office under Harris (and Deputy Attorney General Maggy Krell, now running for the California State Assembly) that shut down that site with a novel legal strategy and a lot of ruthlessness.
Harris is an advocate for victims of sexual abuse, and it's a part of her past that's often mentioned but still little understood: For all the panic about human trafficking on the right, Harris has actually put many pimps behind bars.
“She protected people like me all her life,” Baldwin said. “I know she will fight for all of us as president.”
Was there anything else that caught your eye, Mark?
Barrabac: Let’s face it. As a woman, Harris faces questions about her toughness, especially on defense and foreign policy. But Trump, with his uncanny fawning attitude toward authoritarianism, made it easy for the vice president to draw a direct contrast.
She vowed never to be overcome by flattery, like some vain former president, and said she would always ensure the United States had “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Take that, Putin!
One of the most interesting things to watch in recent years has been the political role reversal that has taken place in Trump's Republican Party from an isolationist, Russia-loving party. Now it is the Democrats who are championing the Cold War.
Look at all the American flags filling the convention hall and hear those recurring chants of “USA!”, “USA!” and you would have thought you were at one of Ronald Reagan's Republican conventions.
Chabria: Republicans love to demonize women, both individually and collectively. Remember how they treated Hillary? They literally accused her of staying artificially young by sacrificing children in a secret lair beneath a pizza parlor.
Harris will no doubt see mounting pressure to label her as something more than just bad politics, something evil.
But that kind of individual attack can no longer be separated from the collective attack. Women in general now feel attacked by the abortion issue, and that makes Harris' gender-based aggression perceived differently than Clinton's.
As Harris said: “You have to ask yourself why exactly they don’t trust women. Well, we trust women. We trust women.”
Any final thoughts, Mark?
Barrabac: Harris has always been extremely prepared, so her spectacular performance (it is a performance, after all) was no surprise.
The vice president's strong suit is big events — a major speech, a congressional hearing — where the mood is controlled.
When he leaves Chicago, he will return to the messy and unpredictable election campaign and have at least one debate with the wild and unpredictable Trump.
Who knows what crisis might unfold in the next 70 days or what blunders Harris might make. Can her good fortune continue?
The path from now until November is unclear, but he is certainly leaving the convention on the right foot.
And a short note on programming, that's all from Chicago. Thanks for joining us and we hope you'll join us for more updates.
