Kamala Harris accepts Democratic presidential nomination, urges Americans to unite the country
Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants who’s seeking to become the nation’s first Black and South Asian woman president, told the nation Thursday that ”the middle class is where I come from” as she vowed to be a passionate uniter as president.
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” she told a crowd that’s been eagerly waiting all week to applaud and celebrate their newly anointed hero.
Harris vowed to be “a president who leads – and listens. Who is realistic. Practical. And has common sense.”
The vice president accepted the Democratic presidential nomination with a speech both rousing in part and somber in part, at times deeply personal and at times sharply political.
“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written on the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination,” she said to loud cheers as vertical “Kamala” signs bobbed up and down.
Speaking to a country that’s still not wholly familiar with her story, Harris described where she came from.
“America, the path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys,” she said.
“My mother Shyamala Harris had one of her own. I miss her every day – and especially right now. And I know she’s looking down tonight, and smiling.”
She pivoted to politics, vowing to cut taxes for the middle class and lower consumer prices, and to fight hard for abortion rights. She offered a strong contrast with Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” Harris said.
“Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes,” she said.
She recalled the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. “He fanned the flames,” Harris said. Then she noted he was convicted in May of 34 felony counts involving falsifying business records.
If elected, Harris said, he would “serve the only client he ever had, himself.”
Middle class roots
Harris, 59, was born in Oakland. She’s the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, an Indian immigrant who was a cancer researcher, and Donald Harris, an economics professor at Stanford University who came to the U.S. from Jamaica.
“My mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer,” Harris said.
She recalled her childhood, at first a home “filled with laughter and music….at the park my mother would say stay close. My father would say with a smile, run, Kamala.”
Her father, she said, taught her to be fearless, but her parents divorced and her mother raised her and her sister. She rented a small apartment in the East Bay.
“In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the flatlands. We lived in the flats — a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride,” Harris recalled.
There was a warm, nurturing community there. “Family who loved us, believed in us and told us we could be anything and do anything,” she said.
Her mother “never lost her cool. She was tough, courageous, a trailblazer in the fight for women’s health…she taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it.”
She talked about when she became interested in being a lawyer, citing the moment she learned that her best friend Wanda was being sexually abused by a stepfather.
“I immediately told her she had to come stay with us. And she did,” Harris said. “That is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor, to protect people like Wanda because I believe everyone has a right to dignity, to safety, to justice.”
Harris’ vision
Once she introduced herself, Harris’s speech turned to her vision–and some hardball politics.
She was California’s attorney general and then U. S. senator, winning the vice presidency on Biden’s ticket in 2020.
“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past. A chance to chart a New Way Forward,” she said, perhaps trying to coin a phrase that would take its place among other Democratic plans such as the New Deal and Great Society.
Harris painted herself as a lifelong fighter for consumers and the middle class. As attorney general, she said, she fought big banks. She talked about fighting against cartels who traffic in guns and drugs.
“These fights were not easy and neither were the elections that put me in those offices. We were unestimated at practically every turn but we never gave up,” she said.
Harris pledged to be sensitive to middle class needs, saying building the middle class “will be a defining goal of my presidency. And I’ll tell you, this is personal for me. The middle class is where I come from.”
She insisted “we are not going back” to the days of Trump as the crowd chanted the phrase over and over.
She vowed to lower the cost of health care, groceries and other essentials, “and we will end America’s housing shortage.”
Trump, on the other hand, “doesn’t actually fight for the middle class.” He’ll give billionaires another round of tax breaks, she said.
Trump will fight abortion rights, she said. “Why is it they don’t trust women? Well we trust women,” Harris said.
Too many freedoms are in jeopardy, she said. She listed the right to breathe clean air and water, the right to love who you want, the freedom to vote among other rights.
She vowed to conduct a muscular foreign policy, standing strong with Ukraine in its war against Russia. She insisted it was time to get a ceasefire and hostage deal done to end the Israel-Hamas war, while giving Israel strong support.
“What has happened in Gaza over the last 10 months is devastating,” she said. “The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war, so that Israel is secure…and the Palestinian people can recognize their right to dignity and security.”
That line got the biggest ovation of the night.
Harris then got lofty. “Everywhere I go —in everyone I meet—I see a nation ready to move forward. Ready for the next step, in the incredible journey that is America.”
She described a country where “in unity there is strength.”
“America let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for,” she concluded. “Endless possibilities.”
This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 9:34 PM with the headline "Kamala Harris accepts Democratic presidential nomination, urges Americans to unite the country."
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