Savor the party’s newfound “hope”, remember that in this crazy campaign against Donald Trump, nothing is won: Kamala Harris will solemnly accept the Democratic nomination on Thursday in Chicago.
The 59-year-old vice president, after electrifying her camp, wants to address all of America, according to a senior member of her campaign team, who requested anonymity.
“There is no second chance to make a good first impression,” notes political scientist Larry Sabato. “Voters have seen Kamala’s style. Now they need Kamala’s program.”
His speech will come at the end of a euphoric, even frankly overexcited convention, which attracted millions of television viewers each evening when the famous speakers took to the stage.
“When Kamala comes on stage, the room is going to go wild,” imagines Amanda Taylor, a Missouri delegate we met Wednesday night. “I’m ready!”
Kamala Harris will take advantage of this audience to introduce herself to a country that does not necessarily know her very well, after almost four years in the thankless position of vice president.
Meanwhile, the vice president and her husband Doug Emhoff exchanged messages on X-rated TV on Thursday celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary.
“To the best companion I could hope for: Happy Birthday Dougie,” the vice president wrote.
Middle class
The Democrat, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, will discuss her middle-class childhood and her commitments as a former California prosecutor, according to the source already cited.
She will oppose her Republican rival, who says he is the only one capable of stopping the country’s “decline”, with a resolutely optimistic vision of the American destiny, according to her campaign team.
The FiveThirtyEight website, which aggregates opinion polls, gave Kamala Harris about a three-point lead over Donald Trump in national voting intentions on Wednesday.
This gap is in no way a guarantee of victory, 74 days before an election which will be played out, as in 2016 and 2020, in a handful of key states.
So much can happen between now and then: in four mind-boggling weeks, America has seen its current president, Joe Biden, abandon his candidacy, and its former president, Donald Trump, fall victim to an assassination attempt.
“Close election”
What will be the impact if, for example, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. throws in the towel and supports the 78-year-old billionaire? According to US media, he is preparing for it.
“No matter how much incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, this is going to be a close election in a deeply divided country,” former President Barack Obama warned Tuesday.
For many Democratic delegates, the momentum is sweeping away uncertainties. “I have no doubt, none, that she’s going to win,” Edwina Martin, 60, who came from New York, told AFP.
” Freedom “
In this battle, Kamala Harris and her campaign intend to challenge the Republican Party’s defense of a central value of its rhetoric, liberty — in English, “Freedom” — as the title of the Beyoncé song that has become the vice-president’s campaign anthem.
“When Republicans talk about freedom, they’re talking about the freedom for the government to invade your doctor’s office, the freedom for corporations to pollute your air and your water,” his running mate, Tim Walz, attacked Wednesday.
“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we’re talking about the freedom to have a better life” and “the freedom for your children to go to school without fear of being shot in the hallway,” the Minnesota governor said as he accepted the Democratic nomination.
Responding to this speech, Donald Trump called Tim Walz “incapable” Thursday morning on Fox News, repeating that his rival is a “crazy leftist” who wants to push America into “communism.”
The 78-year-old billionaire once again attacked the Democrat on immigration, a subject at the heart of his campaign and which he is due to address on Thursday during a trip to Arizona, a state bordering Mexico.
The White House also denounced on Thursday the remarks of Donald Trump, who overnight designated Josh Shapiro as the “Jewish governor” of Pennsylvania. “It is anti-Semitic, dangerous and hurtful to attack a compatriot by pointing out, in a derogatory manner, his Jewish faith,” Herbie Ziskend, a spokesman for the Biden-Harris administration, told the press, believing that the Republican was reducing the Democratic governor to his Jewishness by accusing him of doing nothing for Israel.