Kamala Harris caps ‘unlikely journey’ to nomination with a highly personal speech at DNC

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Two months ago, Democrats were fantasizing about dumping Kamala Harris from the Democratic ticket so as to shake up a presidential race they feared Joe Biden would lose. Two years ago, leading party members were wondering if the President’s selection of a running mate had been a terrible mistake. Four years ago, Democrats cringed at Mr. Biden’s decision to run with a relatively untested California senator who had brazenly upbraided him in a 2019 party debate.

Thursday night – in a moment of wonder and history – Ms. Harris delivered her acceptance speech as the nominee of a party that had denigrated her, disparaged her, diminished her and very nearly dismissed her but that, in its desperation, has come to find inspiration in her.

“I’m no stranger,” she said in her speech, “to unlikely journeys.”

This was a journey unlike any other. The transformation in the party’s view matched the transformation in Ms. Harris’s performance and profile. While as vice-president she was tentative, as presidential nominee she is confident. While once she was a figure of derision, she possibly has become – miracle of miracles – a figure of destiny.

And that sense – that she was riding a jet stream of ascent – was apparent in her remarks before a party that now views her as an object of adoration. The disrespect had turned to respect, the debasement of her performance replaced by delirium about her potential. Her profile is different from the 2020 campaign, where she faltered.

“Now she doesn’t have to build a campaign structure from scratch and is getting the full service of the party,” Adolphus Belk Jr., who teaches political science and African American studies at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., said in an interview. “People are responding positively to hope – and she has reminded everybody that she is not an empty suit.’’

In the most critical speech of her career, she bid the country to move to “a new way forward, not as a member of any one party or faction, but as Americans. "

For all the soaring hopes and the soaring rhetoric – they provided the leitmotif in a joyful moment of optimism at a time of alienation – Ms. Harris faces the unusual and highly unanticipated set of challenges that, now that she is basically in a statistical tie with the former president, is more negative than positive.

Not making unforced errors. Not stumbling in next month’s debate with Mr. Trump. Not getting tied too closely to the anchor that gave her the opportunity in this race but also the liability in it (Mr. Biden). Not permitting her lyrical speech before thousands of cheering Democrats in the United Center and millions more at home to be the high point of her campaign.

The Democrats have raised her up, but as the Josh Groban song of that title warns, she inevitably will face stormy seas.

But that is for another day, a September song perhaps. Her United Center remarks were crafted by the former Barack Obama speechwriter Adam Frankel, who in the past has spoken about how “writing about things that are weighing on us can mitigate them” and who was influenced in his own writing, an agonizing memoir about surprises in his family history, by the words and cadences of Lady Gaga. Both those elements were present in Ms. Harris’s speech – the first time she had a mass audience, rendering this address her introduction to the people she seeks to lead.

It was a highly personal speech, rooted in her family’s middle-class background, her parents’ hopes for her and their determination to advance in a country that didn’t always welcome immigrants. That theme, she said, carried over to her career as a prosecutor, where she was “underestimated at practically every turn” – but, Ms. Harris continued, she “never gave up, because the future is always worth fighting for.”

The governing assumption in this campaign must be that Mr. Trump – at age 78 the elder in the race and with four years in the White House – is effectively the putative incumbent. So for her, as for all rivals to incumbents, the challenge is to prove that she can be seen as presidential.

Mr. Trump redefined the term between 2017 and 2021. But for all the implied imperative in the “We’re not going back” chant that echoed from the Section-300 level of Chicago’s hockey and basketball arena all week, Ms. Harris’s success depends in large measure on showing that in terms of personal style she, like her sponsor Mr. Biden, will in fact go back, to return to the respectful Oval Office dignity of Mr. Obama and of two Republican presidents of what now, some four decades later, must be classified as olden times, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Her remarks were a reflection of that effort – and for her views of her rival’s unsuitability for that office. “Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she said, “but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”

There was a deliberate equipoise in her remarks, a mix of domestic issues (health care, abortion, housing) and national-security matters (support for Ukraine and pledges to maintain military strength). But that balance was most striking when she spoke of continued support for Israel (and determination to bring home the hostages from Oct. 7, 2023) with a desire to end the civilian toll among Palestinians.

Throughout the speech – with traces of the crisp diction of Julie Andrews, the musical blast of Carol Burnett and of course the passion of Aretha Franklin by way of Otis Redding belting out “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” – the Democrats’ newly minted presidential nominee displayed a singular, signature Harris style.

Before the red, white and blue balloons fell, there was the traditional bow to “the pride and privilege of being an American.” But there also was the steely toughness that her allies said had been suppressed but not extinguished by four years in the subordinate, often-deadening role of the vice presidency. So when she referred to the Republicans’ anti-abortion efforts and the Trump team’s plans for a fresh offensive against abortion, she said, “They are out of their minds.”