US Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver the most important speech of her political life on Thursday when she accepts the Democratic Party's nomination for president a month after the party forced President Joe Biden out of the race.
Harris' presidential ambitions were always clear, but they were undermined by her shaky 2020 campaign and rocky tenure as vice president. Since rising to the top of the ticket, she has tightened the race against Republican Donald Trump.
Her energetic campaign speeches have generated huge enthusiasm among voters. If Harris wins on November 5, she will be the first black South Asian woman elected president.
In her speech, Harris, 59, plans to talk about her life as the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother and outline her plans to confront rising costs and promote personal freedoms, including abortion rights, aides said.
They said he would also make a strong denunciation of former President Trump.
“There's a guy who wants to divide us, and she's going to argue that we just can't let that happen, that this is America and everyone can rise up together,” said Cedric Richmond, a campaign co-chair and longtime adviser to Harris. Reuters.
Convention delegates got a sneak peek on Monday, the first night of the convention, when Harris unexpectedly took the stage to the tune of Beyoncé's “Freedom.”
“This November we will come together and declare with one voice as one people: we are moving forward,” he said.
Speculation in the halls of the convention is rife as to whether Beyoncé will appear on stage Thursday. The campaign declined to comment.
Harris has raised a record $500 million in a month and has narrowed the gap or taken the lead over Trump in many opinion polls in battleground states. Nationally, she leads Trump 46.6% to 43.8%, according to a compilation of polls by FiveThirtyEight.
