Vice President Kamala Harris accepts Democratic Party nomination for president: NAJ screen shot

By Glynn Wilson –

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president Thursday night in Chicago in a near perfect presidential address peppered with calls for national unity and a prosecutor’s arguments against electing former President Donald Trump as an “unserious man” whose return to the White House would have devastating consequences for America and the world.

“The consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said. “Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election.”

Like a prosecutor making a closing argument, Harris prosecuted Trump on prime time national television, repeatedly accusing him of plotting to erode the democratic values and traditions of the United States if he somehow managed to garner enough votes to return to power in the White House.

“Consider what he intends to do if we give him power again,” she said, her voice rising, eyes gleaming, stepping into the moment like a new morning star. “Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol (on Jan. 6, 2021). His explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents, and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens!”

“Just imagine,” she said, “Donald Trump with no guardrails.”

Over and over, she compared her plans, approach and vision with Trump’s, accusing him of supporting the wealthy over the middle class, blocking a bipartisan border bill for political purposes and seeking to ban abortion across the nation, even forcing states to report on women’s miscarriages.

“Simply put, they are out of their minds,” she said, going beyond Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s famous line that they are just “weird.” She is making the charge that they are literally crazy, as in totally insane, and she may be right.

Harris did not specifically mention that she is the first woman of Black and South Asian descent to be a major party nominee, the New York Times just had to point out. But she recounted her own personal biography, describing growing up in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers” in the flatlands around San Francisco Bay.

She went on to say she was driven to be a prosecutor so she could protect people like a high school friend who had confided to her that she was being sexually assaulted by her stepfather.

“Every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge, and I said five words: Kamala Harris, for the people,” she said, pointing out that the people have always been her only client, while Trump’s only client ever has been himself.

On foreign policy, Harris tried to find a middle ground on an issue dividing her party: the war between Israel and Hamas. She vowed that she will ensure Israel never again has to face “the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7.” But she also said that “what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating.”

Harris said she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” (A few in the crowd screamed “Free Palestine!”) But then she showed empathy for Palestinians in a way that President Biden rarely did, saying she was working toward a world where “the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

She also put the “warrior” in joyful warrior.

“As commander in chief I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said, promising never to cozy up to dictators. “They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”

She closed with a plea to voters to choose optimism over darkness in the election in November.

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past,” she said, casting herself as someone who can bring a deeply divided country into the future and lead in the 21st century.

“America, let us show each other, and the world, who we are and what we stand for: freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities,” she said. “Together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

Pundits on every channel stumbled all over themselves in praising her performance. She knocked it not only out of the park, but out of sight. She is ready. WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!

The events of the past month give me hope for a future for American democracy, and the world. We could all be dreaming, of course. It could all come apart in Georgia on election night and in the weeks it takes to determine the winner with all the recount demands and lawsuits, all the way to the goddamn Trump Supreme Court, where Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito could take away our future forever.

Vote like your life depends on it, because it probably does. This must be a landslide election. Good night.

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