By Michael D. Shear and Adam Nagourney New York Times
Reporting from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
Here is the latest from Chicago.
Vice President Kamala Harris ceremonially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on Thursday night in a speech that alternated between calls for unity and stinging rebukes of former President Donald J. Trump as an “unserious man” whose return to the White House could have devastating consequences for the United States.
“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 together.
Like a prosecutor making a closing argument, Ms. Harris denounced Mr. Trump point by point, repeatedly accusing him of preparing to systematically erode the democratic values of the country if he returns to the White House.
“Consider what he intends to do if we give him power again,” she said, her voice rising. “Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol. 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 vision with Mr. Trump’s, accusing him of supporting the wealthy over the middle class, blocking a bipartisan border bill and seeking to ban abortion across the nation and force states to report on women’s miscarriages.
“Simply put, they are out of their minds,” she said.
Ms. Harris did not specifically mention that she is the first woman of Black and South Asian descent to be a major party nominee. But she recounted her own personal biography, describing growing up in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers.” 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.
On foreign policy, Ms. 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.”
She closed with a plea to voters to choose optimism over darkness in the election in November.
“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.
This story was first published by the New York Times
