It was Kamala Harris’ debut as the presumed head of her party’s ticket. But she wasn’t delivering the speech alone. Biden, still recovering from COVID-19, had been patched in on the phone from his beach house in Rehoboth, Del., to thank the campaign staff and praise his chosen successor. “I knew you weren’t going anywhere Joe,” Harris enthused.
“I’m watching you kid, I love you,” Biden said.
The moment functioned like something of a bridge from a campaign that had just ended to one that was just getting started. In less than a day, a rush of rapid-fire endorsements and a fundraising windfall seemed to silence any serious challenge to Harris taking over Biden’s mantle. Her campaign, which began calling itself “Team Harris,” says it brought in $81 million in fundraising over those first 24 hours, and signed up 28,000 new campaign volunteers.
By Monday afternoon, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential figure among Democrats who had notably not joined in the wave of endorsements on Sunday, broke her silence and said she had “full confidence” Harris would lead Democrats “to victory in November.” Across much of the party’s leadership, it was a signal that a nomination fight had become increasingly unlikely.
Before her nomination is official, Harris will have to work to ensure she has the votes of 1,976 convention delegates. “It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination, and to win,” Harris told her campaign staff. She previewed the twin engines 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 in her long career as a prosecutor, she’s taken on perpetrators of all kinds: “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Harris reviewed at length how her prosecutorial record lined up with Trump’s history of legal troubles. She said she’d prosecuted sexual assaults, and noted “Donald Trump was found liable by jury for committing sexual abuse.” She said he’d won cases against for-profit colleges and Trump’s own Trump University was forced to pay a multi-million dollar settlement. She said she’d won judgments 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 versus Donald Trump,” she said, and someone in the room shouted, “Preach!”
Harris then transitioned to the thrust of her policy argument. “Donald Trump wants to take our country backward to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights,” she said. “We believe in a brighter 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 build wealth, and where there is expanded access to family leave and affordable child care. She said she would fight to build a country where “the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” vowing to sign a bill to protect access to abortion if voters elect enough Democrats to control the House and Senate.
She presented the election as a choice between two visions for the country: “A country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate.”
The speech was the capstone of a whirlwind two days for Harris, who began work on her campaign launch midday Sunday, moments after Biden called her and told her he was dropping out of the race and endorsing her. It was the weekend and she was at home in the Vice President’s house on Observatory Hill in Washington, D.C., so she didn’t bother changing out of her Howard University hoodie and sneakers as she pulled the levers of political power she would need to take command of the Democratic Party. Over the next 10 hours, she spoke with over 100 Democratic power players, governors, union leaders, lawmakers, and organizers, according to a person familiar with her day.
The flurry of calls started to pay off almost immediately, as several of her would-be rivals for the top job came out and endorsed 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 Monday, Harris announced that she had asked Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon to continue as head of the Harris campaign.
In the coming weeks, Harris faces a formidable to-do list. She has to wrangle Biden’s sprawling campaign apparatus under her control. She has to lock down the support of delegates before the party’s convention starts on August 19. She has to pick 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. Already, some of those doubters were impressed by what they’ve seen so far.
