“Kamala, Kamala, Kamala”.
So chanted the Democratic voters gathered in a Milwaukee gymnasium to watch Vice President Kamala Harris’ first speech as the presumptive presidential nominee.
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Harris finally had to gesture to the crowd to quiet down, before saying she was happy to be back in Wisconsin.
– The road to the White House goes through Wisconsin. We are counting on you, she said.
She calls it a “great honor” to have worked with Joe Biden, and to have received his support for the presidential candidacy.
Then she points the same boot at rival Donald Trump as during yesterday’s speech to party colleagues, where she compares him to criminals she dealt with during her time as a prosecutor.
– I would have been more than happy to compare merits with him, she then says.
The abortion issue was raised
After devoting the first part of the speech to Trump, Harris then got into politics. She says that she and the Democrats want a strong middle class, because a “strong middle class is a strong United States”.
– We believe in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty. Where every worker can join a union and where every person can afford healthcare, childcare and paid parental leave.
Donald Trump wants to turn back the clock in the United States, says Harris. She brings up the example of abortion – which was the segment of the speech where the cheers were perhaps the loudest.
– We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Trump’s extreme abortion ban. As President of the United States, I will write it into law.
Freedom or Chaos
The speech then ends with a rhetorical question to the audience, about which country the voters want to live in after the election is decided this fall.
– A country with freedom, compassion and legal certainty? Or a land of chaos, fear, and hatred?
The USA connoisseur: “More of a pep talk”
There were no big news in Harris’s speech, says US expert Jakob Stenberg.
– It was more of a pep talk to the grassroots. Quite a lot of fluff and empty words, but also some party politics.
Political scientist Emma Ricknell agrees that there was some fluff in the speech, but that Harris did not speak entirely in clichés.
– It also became very clear that she doesn’t talk about herself that much, but it’s about a “we”. The contrast is very clear with Donald Trump, who usually talks a lot about himself, says Ricknell.