The speech Vice President Kamala Harris delivered Thursday night in Chicago was remarkable. I think it will go down as one of the best convention speeches ever, right up there with Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1976 convention in Kansas City.
Reagan’s speech was an impromptu one delivered because President Ford invited him on stage after Ford won the tightly contested Republican nomination. Ford, a moderate badly damaged by the conservative Reagan, would go on to lose to Jimmy Carter, and four years later Reagan…you know the rest of the story.
Back then, Regan told voters to fear being No. 2 to Russia. He said it was dangerous. His campaign slogan — “Make America 1st Again” — worked.
“A New Way Forward,” is the slogan for the Harris campaign. She too spoke about Russia last night, but she told us, “Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”
She drew clear distinctions between herself and Trump on a number of issues, including immigration and the economy, two areas Republicans have urged Trump to own. A former prosecutor, Kamala told us she has always represented the people. She told us Trump’s only client has always been himself.
She pinned Trump to Project 2025, extreme policies crafted by Trump allies that he has mostly tried to distance himself from. On conservative plans to roll back reproductive rights, including access to IVF, Kamala asked: “Are they out of their minds?” The crowd at the Democratic National Convention erupted.
The crowd responded the same way when she finished talking about Gaza. I thought she threaded the needle beautifully there, and I loved the personal stories she shared and the similar ones speakers at the convention shared about her. Her husband, for example, told us she makes a mean brisket for Passover. We also learned Kamala, the daughter of immigrants, worked at McDonald’s to help pay for college. Her mother told her and her sister never to do anything half-ass.
What Kamala and the Democratic Party have done in the last 30 days is extraordinary. She has not allowed Trump or MAGA Republicans to define her. She has instead controlled her narrative, and last night was her time to hit a home run and she smashed it out of the park.
She has the momentum, a former high school football coach by her side, and even a slight lead in the polls. But progressives should guard against over-confidence. This will be a very close race decided by a handful of states: Michigan. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Last night, Harris spoke mostly to independent voters and Republican voters disenfranchised by Trump.
There was a huge build up to her accepting the nomination, and you could almost feel the emotions at the United Center when she said, “In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.”
This does not feel like a speech written by a speech writer. I’m sure one wrote sections of it, but I think Kamala wrote most of it.
Her speech offered something for everyone other than billionaires. She was warm, funny, smart, and presidential. Her speech was clear-eyed and both forceful and poetic. She had to be pleased when she heard the crowd repeatedly chant: “USA! USA!” She was not afraid of alienating young Democrats with her patriotic closing.
“Let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told,” she said.
Tony Manolatos is public affairs specialist who also co-hosts a podcast, Dear San Diego, that is sponsored by Times of San Diego. You can email him at tony@manolatospa.com.
