Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her campaign’s closing argument Tuesday during a primetime address on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., within sight of the building she hopes to occupy in 2025. Despite reports suggesting the speech would be “optimistic and forward-looking,” Harris was primarily focused on attacking her opponent, Donald Trump, whom she denounced as a “petty tyrant” who was “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
Voting for her, Harris implied, was the only reasonable and patriotic choice. “This election is more than just a choice between two parties and two different candidates,” she said. “It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division.” Harris, who has served as vice president for nearly four years, repeated her vow to “turn the page and start writing the next chapter” while reminding voters of the “armed mob” that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Roughly 75,000 Harris supporters attended the event, according to the campaign, though some election observers questioned why she was speaking in the nation’s capital—one of the most Democratic areas in the country—rather than a closely contested swing state such as Michigan or Pennsylvania. It was also the only event on Harris’s schedule for the day, raising questions about the vice president’s stamina.
Harris attempted to portray herself as a unifying candidate who would “seek common ground and common sense solutions.” She promised to “build consensus and reach compromise to get things done,” even if it meant listening to “people who disagree with me.” At the same time, she warned of the dire consequences Americans would invite upon themselves by electing Trump to a second term. “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” she said. “That is who he is, but America, I am here tonight to say that is not who we are.” She went on to accuse the former president of plotting to throw his enemies “in jail.”
Despite having served as vice president since 2021, Harris acknowledged that “some people are still getting to know who I am.” It wasn’t the most reassuring message, considering the election is just a week away. On the bright side, Harris finally delivered a somewhat coherent answer to the question of what she would do differently as president compared to Joe Biden. (A low bar to clear, but still.) “My presidency will be different because the challenges we face are different,” she said, adding that her “biggest challenge” would be to “lower costs”—something the Biden-Harris administration didn’t have time to address, apparently. Her first priority, however, would be passing a federal law to restore abortion access. At least that’s what Harris told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News over the weekend.
Harris debuted a new talking point Tuesday in an effort to introduce herself to voters. “I’ve lived the promise of America,” she repeated at least three times throughout the speech. “And I see the promise of America.” She explained that her mother, the one who gave her a middle-class upbringing, had instilled in her “a drive to hold accountable those who use their wealth or power to take advantage of other people.” Alas, voters hoping to gain a clearer understanding of what Harris actually believes were presumably disappointed. Harris, for instance, promised to “quickly remove” illegal immigrants, a somewhat jarring remark given her previous support for decriminalizing undocumented immigration. She has yet to provide a compelling explanation for her dramatic evolution on the issue, which polls indicate is a top concern among the electorate.
The speech was somewhat subdued compared to Harris’s comments during a CNN town hall event last week, when she attacked Trump as a “fascist” and compared the former president to Adolf Hitler. On Monday, she told former NFL star Shannon Sharpe that Trump would “terminate the Constitution,” abolish free speech, and ban gun ownership. Perhaps her campaign heeded the advice of Future Forward USA Action, the leading super PAC supporting Harris’s candidacy, which recently warned Democrats that calling Trump a Nazi was “not that persuasive,” according to their internal messaging tests.
Reports suggest some Democrats are worried that Harris has been too focused on attacking Trump. “Her economic message hasn’t broken through,” one Democratic donor told the Hill. “And the economy is the issue most people care about. She narrowed the gap a little on the issue, but she’s left a lot of people wondering about her vision.”
Democrats in Michigan, where Harris campaigned over the weekend, expressed similar concerns about the vice president’s negative approach in the final stage of the campaign, a marked contrast from the “joyful” vibes with which she launched her candidacy over the summer. “It doesn’t play well in communities that are struggling to make ends meet, and that’s the problem. They’re talking to the wrong people,” Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, a former state representative and Harris supporter, told Politico. “We can’t keep campaigning on modes of fear.”
That message has yet to sink in among Harris’s partisan advocates in the mainstream media. “The stakes are literally life and death for every woman in this country,” MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said this week. “It’s not hyperbole. It’s not exaggeration.” Former Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines warned former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki on her MSNBC show that they “might be sharing a cell in, you know, six months from now.” Journalists at the Washington Post are still throwing tantrums in public after the paper’s billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, declined to let the editorial board publish an endorsement of Harris that wouldn’t have changed anyone’s mind.
Hours before Harris took the stage on Tuesday, Trump offered a harsh assessment of his opponent’s closing message. “She’s running on a campaign of demoralization,” the former president said. “And really, it can have a campaign of destruction. But really, perhaps more than anything else, it’s a campaign of hate. It’s campaign of absolute hate.”
The election remains excruciatingly close. Trump leads Harris by less than half a percentage point, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average.
