Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic occasion’s nomination for president in entrance of a cheering crowd of delegates in Chicago on Thursday evening with a speech pitched instantly on the reasonable and undecided voters who will determine November’s election.
Whereas Donald Trump has tried to depict the vice-president as a radical leftist, Harris solid herself as a candidate who’s “life like, sensible and has widespread sense” and will chart a “new manner ahead” for the US.
Listed here are the highlights from her primetime handle.
Defining herself: ‘By no means do something half-assed’
Though Harris has been vice-president for almost 4 years, it was essential for her to reintroduce herself to Individuals unfamiliar together with her life story.
She began with tales of her upbringing in California because the daughter of immigrants and recalled how her mom, a researcher from India, taught her to “by no means complain about injustice, however do one thing about it” and to “by no means do something half-assed”.
Harris, who served as a prosecutor in California for the majority of her profession earlier than she grew to become a senator after which Joe Biden’s second-in-command, solid herself as a defender of extraordinary Individuals. “My complete profession, I’ve solely had one shopper: the folks,” she mentioned.
Attacking Trump: ‘An unserious man’
Since Harris launched her marketing campaign final month, she has shifted her occasion’s message towards Trump, casting him as a weak, egocentric and small-minded candidate somewhat than a robust, menacing strongman. On Thursday evening, Harris caught to that tone, describing the previous president as an “unserious man”.
However she additionally warned {that a} Trump victory could be devastating. “The results of placing Donald Trump again within the White Home are extraordinarily critical,” she mentioned. “Simply think about Donald Trump with no guardrails, how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the USA to not enhance your life, to not strengthen our nationwide safety, however to serve the one shopper he has ever had: himself.”
Harris warned that Trump’s insurance policies would search to “pull our nation again into the previous”, establishing certainly one of her marketing campaign’s prime slogans: “America, we aren’t going again.”
Defending abortion rights: ‘They’re out of their minds’
Entry to abortion care and reproductive rights have been central messages of the Harris marketing campaign, galvanising the Democratic occasion base and younger and ladies voters. On Thursday evening, Harris as soon as once more put the problem entrance and centre.
“Pals, I consider America can’t really be affluent until Individuals are absolutely in a position to make their very own choices about their very own lives. Particularly on issues of coronary heart and residential,” she mentioned. “However tonight, too many ladies in America are usually not in a position to make these choices.”
Harris positioned the blame for a rollback of abortion rights throughout the nation squarely on Trump, who nominated three Supreme Court docket justices who voted to overturn the 50-year precedent of Roe vs Wade. She warned that additional rights could possibly be stripped away underneath a second Trump presidency.
“He plans to create a nationwide anti-abortion co-ordinator and drive states to report on ladies’s miscarriages and abortions,” Harris mentioned. “Merely put: they’re out of their minds.”
Her financial agenda: ‘The center class is the place I come from’
Harris spent a piece of her speech speaking concerning the US financial system, saying strengthening the center class could be a “defining objective” for her presidency as a part of constructing what she referred to as an “alternative financial system”.
“That is private for me. The center class is the place I come from,” Harris mentioned.
She fleshed out that imaginative and prescient throughout her speech, saying she would search to chop taxes for middle-class households, finish a housing scarcity and shield pensions and healthcare for the aged.
“As president, I’ll deliver collectively labour and employees, small enterprise homeowners and entrepreneurs, and American corporations to create jobs, develop our financial system and decrease the price of on a regular basis wants like healthcare, housing and groceries,” she mentioned.
She additionally took a jab at Trump, arguing: “He doesn’t really struggle for the center class. As a substitute, he fights for himself and his billionaire pals. And he’ll give them one other spherical of tax breaks that can add as much as $5tn to the nationwide debt.”
Overseas coverage: ‘I do know the place the USA belongs’
Harris made among the most detailed feedback on international coverage of her marketing campaign thus far, outlining a muscular projection of US energy on the worldwide stage. “As commander-in-chief, I’ll guarantee America all the time has the strongest, most deadly preventing drive on the planet,” she mentioned.
Harris vowed to face with Ukraine and Nato allies and mentioned she would be sure that “America, not China, wins the competitors for the twenty first century”.
She additionally tore into Trump for “cosying as much as tyrants and dictators like [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un”, whom Harris mentioned had been “rooting” for the previous president to win in November.
“They know Trump received’t maintain autocrats accountable as a result of he needs to be an autocrat,” Harris mentioned. “Within the enduring wrestle between democracy and tyranny, I do know the place I stand and I do know the place the USA belongs.”
Harris additionally didn’t shrink back from addressing the warfare in Gaza, the thorniest worldwide concern going through the White Home, which has break up the Democratic occasion and triggered protests towards her inside and out of doors the conference corridor in Chicago this week.
“Now could be the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire accomplished,” she mentioned, declaring a dedication to each Israel’s defences and to ending the struggling in Gaza.
When she closed out her dialogue of the Center East with a name for the Palestinian folks’s proper to “dignity, safety, freedom and self-determination”, the delegates provided resounding applause.