Before Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday night to accept her party’s nomination for president, her campaign team told reporters what to expect.
Harris campaign staff leaked to the press that the incumbent vice president wanted to reintroduce herself to the American people, even though she has been the second most powerful man in the country for the past three and a half years.
And while questions remain about Harris’s policy positions, even though she became the presumptive nominee shortly after her Democrats withdrew a month ago, Harris was expected to target the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, a policy agenda for the next Conservative administration.
Finally, the Vice President was expected to put aside the difficulties America has experienced under the Biden-Harris administration and make a patriotic appeal to look forward.
Harris was well aware of the importance of her speech Thursday night. The New York Times reported that her speech was a revised version of the convention speech she planned to give as Biden’s vice presidential nominee. Harris has completed several extensive rehearsals with teleprompters in three different time zones during her campaign.
As it turned out, Harris’ nearly 40-minute speech was full of empty phrases—the Harris campaign calls them “joy”—but contained no details.
1. No explanation as to why Biden is out
Harris opened her speech by thanking her current boss Biden, who was on vacation in California.
“When I reflect on the journey we have traveled together, Joe, I am filled with gratitude,” Harris said. “Your accomplishments are extraordinary, as history will show, and your character is inspiring.”
If that is the case, why doesn’t Biden accept the nomination?
Harris was quick to thank Biden, but even quicker to move on without answering that question, despite Biden’s hostility toward former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-US), former President Barack Obama, and other leading Democrats who engineered his ouster.
Although Democrats pushed Biden out of the race a month ago, they have failed to give the American people concrete answers as to why they made this change.
Was it because of Biden’s poll numbers, his health, or something else? Has she personally noticed any issues with his mental fitness over the years?
Harris seems to prefer to keep the American people in the dark.
2. Biographical information
The unexpected Democratic candidate also failed to mention some other important details in her biographical report at the beginning of her speech.
Harris portrayed herself as a model of the middle class. “I come from the middle class,” she told the crowd.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, whom she mentioned frequently in her speech, was a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The laboratory is affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, the institution where Gopalan received her doctorate in nutrition and endocrinology in 1964.
Harris’ father, Donald Harris, received his doctorate in economics from UC Berkeley in 1966.
How many middle-class children do you know whose parents both have doctorates?
After her parents separated when she was a child, her family lived in a “beautiful working-class neighborhood” of Berkeley, Harris said. Today, real estate prices in that neighborhood are over a million dollars. The position Harris’ mother once held at Lawrence Lab now carries a six-figure salary.
In retelling her life story, Harris moved quickly from her youth to her career as a prosecutor. However, just as she was beginning her legal career, Harris found herself at the center of a scandal that rocked San Francisco politics.
In 1993, three years after being admitted to the California bar, Harris began a relationship with Willie Brown, the Speaker of the California Assembly, even though Brown was over 60 and married to Blanche Vitero. In 1994, Brown appointed Harris to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, a job that paid Harris $97,088 a year.
Six months later, Harris was named to the California Medical Assistance Commission, which paid her an additional $72,000 a year. Harris received $400,000 in compensation for the positions, which she earned simply by being Brown’s publicly displayed mistress, SF Weekly reported.
3. Your policies
Although Harris has been at the top of the Democratic ticket for almost a month, she is still holding back on her political positions.
Instead, the Harris campaign offered a soft launch of her previous policies by leaking them through anonymous campaign staff, Axios reported.
While Harris attempted to draw a stark contrast between herself and her opponent, former President Donald Trump, the way Harris highlighted the differences made Trump sound like the incumbent.
“Donald Trump is an untrustworthy man,” Harris told the delegates. “But the consequences of Donald Trump’s return to the White House are extremely serious.”
“We know what a second Trump term would look like,” Harris later added.
During her approximately 38-minute speech, Harris mentioned Trump 15 times.
Harris spent just one minute of her speech outlining her vision for the U.S. economy, which she described as “an economy of opportunity, where everyone has a chance to compete and succeed.”
During Harris’ speech, the word “inflation” did not pass her lips even once.
Still, a New York Times report outlined one of Harris’s quietly unveiled policy proposals: a $5 trillion tax hike. Harris would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and restructure the taxation of long-term investments and inheritances, even in cases where no investment gains were made.
Whether Harris knows that this is her current tax plan remains unclear, as she promised Thursday night that if elected president she would “implement a tax cut for the middle class.”
