Harris says she knows ‘Trump’s type’ in campaign launch speech

J.Just over 24 hours after President Biden dropped his bid for a second term, his vice president entered what was now his campaign headquarters to cheers and applause. Campaign staff had already replaced many of the “Biden-Harris” posters plastered on walls with new ones that read “Kamala” and “Harris for President.” As he approached the microphones to give his first campaign speech in his new role, his team began chanting, “Ka-ma-la! Ka-ma-la!”

It was Kamala Harris’s debut as the supposed head of her party’s ticket. But she wasn’t giving the speech alone. Biden, still recovering from COVID-19, was called on the phone from his beach house in Rehoboth, Del., to thank his campaign team and praise his chosen successor. “I knew you weren’t going anywhere, Joe,” Harris enthused.

“I’m watching you, boy, I love you,” Biden said.

The moment acted as a kind of bridge between a campaign that had just ended and one that was just beginning. In less than a day, a rush of swift endorsements and an unexpected fundraising appeared to mute any serious challenge to Harris taking over Biden’s mantle. His campaign, which has started calling itself “Team Harris,” says it raised $81 million in fundraising in its first 24 hours and signed up 28,000 new campaign volunteers.

On Monday afternoon, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential figure among Democrats who notably did not join the wave of support on Sunday, broke her silence and said she had “complete confidence” that Harris would lead Democrats “to victory in November”. For much of the party leadership, it was a sign that a nomination fight had become increasingly unlikely.

Before her nomination is official, Harris will have to work to secure the votes of 1,976 convention delegates. “It is my intention to go out and win this nomination and win,” Harris told the campaign team. She previewed the twin drivers of her message: prosecuting the case against Donald Trump and painting for voters a vision for the country that expands rights and access to prosperity beyond the wealthy.

She said that in her long career as a prosecutor, she faced perpetrators of all types: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who stole from consumers, cheats who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Harris reviewed in detail how her prosecutorial record aligned with Trump’s history of legal troubles. She said she has prosecuted sexual assaults and noted that “Donald Trump was found responsible by the jury for committing sexual assault.” She said he has won lawsuits against for-profit colleges and that Trump’s own Trump University was forced to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement. She said she won trials against big banks for fraud in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, and a New York jury convicted Trump of fraud.

“This campaign is not just about us against Donald Trump,” she said, and someone in the room shouted, “Preach!”

Harris then transitioned to the heart of her political argument. “Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time when many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights,” she said. “We believe in a better future that makes room for all Americans,” she said.

A Harris administration, she said, would be designed to usher in “a future where no child has to grow up in poverty,” where more people can buy a home and accumulate wealth, and where there is greater access to family leave and affordable child care. Careful. She said she would fight to build a country where “the government should not tell a woman what to do with her body,” promising to sign a bill to protect abortion access if voters elect enough Democrats to control the House and the Senate. Senate.

She presented the elections as a choice between two visions for the country: “A country of freedom, compassion and the rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate.”

The speech was the culmination of a whirlwind two days for Harris, who began work on launching her campaign at noon on Sunday, moments after Biden called her and said he was dropping out of the race and endorsing her. It was the weekend and she was at the vice president’s house on Observatory Hill in Washington, D.C., so she didn’t bother taking off her Howard University sweatshirt and sneakers as she pulled the levers of political power she would need to assume. command of the Democratic Party. Over the next 10 hours, she spoke with more than 100 Democratic power players, governors, union leaders, lawmakers and organizers, according to a person familiar with her time.

The flurry of calls began to bear fruit almost immediately when several of her potential rivals for the top job came forward and supported her, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. At campaign headquarters on Monday, Harris announced that she had asked Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon to remain as Harris’ campaign chairman.

In the coming weeks, Harris will face a formidable to-do list. She has to bring Biden’s sprawling campaign apparatus under her control. She needs to secure the support of delegates before the party convention begins on August 19. She needs to choose a running mate. And she needs to win over an influential contingent of the Democratic Party who remain convinced she lacks the political acumen to defeat Trump. Some of these skeptics have already been impressed by what they’ve seen so far.