Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic party’s nomination for president in front of a cheering crowd of delegates in Chicago on Thursday night with a speech pitched directly at the moderate and undecided voters who will decide November’s election.

While Donald Trump has tried to depict the vice-president as a radical leftist, Harris cast herself as a candidate who is “realistic, practical and has common sense” and could chart a “new way forward” for the US.

Here are the highlights from her primetime address.

Defining herself: ‘Never do anything half-assed’

Although Harris has been vice-president for nearly four years, it was critical for her to reintroduce herself to Americans unfamiliar with her life story.

She started with tales of her upbringing in California as the daughter of immigrants and recalled how her mother, a researcher from India, taught her to “never complain about injustice, but do something about it” and to “never do anything half-assed”.

Harris, who served as a prosecutor in California for the bulk of her career before she became a senator and then Joe Biden’s second-in-command, cast herself as a defender of ordinary Americans. “My entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people,” she said.

Attacking Trump: ‘An unserious man’

Since Harris launched her campaign last month, she has shifted her party’s message against Trump, casting him as a weak, selfish and small-minded candidate rather than a powerful, menacing strongman. On Thursday night, Harris stuck to that tone, describing the former president as an “unserious man”.

But she also warned that a Trump victory would be devastating. “The consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” she said. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”

Harris warned that Trump’s policies would seek to “pull our country back into the past”, setting up one of her campaign’s top slogans: “America, we are not going back.”

Protecting abortion rights: ‘They are out of their minds’

Access to abortion care and reproductive rights have been central messages of the Harris campaign, galvanising the Democratic party base and young and women voters. On Thursday night, Harris once again put the issue front and centre.

“Friends, I believe America cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives. Especially on matters of heart and home,” she said. “But tonight, too many women in America are not able to make those decisions.”

Harris placed the blame for a rollback of abortion rights across the country squarely on Trump, who nominated three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the 50-year precedent of Roe vs Wade. She warned that further rights could be stripped away under a second Trump presidency.

“He plans to create a national anti-abortion co-ordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions,” Harris said. “Simply put: they are out of their minds.”

Her economic agenda: ‘The middle class is where I come from’

Harris spent a chunk of her speech talking about the US economy, saying strengthening the middle class would be a “defining goal” for her presidency as part of building what she called an “opportunity economy”.

“This is personal for me. The middle class is where I come from,” Harris said.

She fleshed out that vision during her speech, saying she would seek to cut taxes for middle-class households, end a housing shortage and protect pensions and healthcare for the elderly.

“As president, I will bring together labour and workers, small business owners and entrepreneurs, and American companies to create jobs, grow our economy and lower the cost of everyday needs like healthcare, housing and groceries,” she said.

She also took a jab at Trump, arguing: “He doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends. And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5tn to the national debt.”

Foreign policy: ‘I know where the United States belongs’

Harris made some of the most detailed comments on foreign policy of her campaign to date, outlining a muscular projection of US power on the global stage. “As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said.

Harris vowed to stand with Ukraine and Nato allies and said she would ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century”.

She also tore into Trump for “cosying up to tyrants and dictators like [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un”, whom Harris said were “rooting” for the former president to win in November.

“They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat,” Harris said. “In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.”

Harris also did not shy away from addressing the war in Gaza, the thorniest international issue facing the White House, which has split the Democratic party and triggered protests against her inside and outside the convention hall in Chicago this week.

“Now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done,” she said, declaring a commitment to both Israel’s defences and to ending the suffering in Gaza.

When she closed out her discussion of the Middle East with a call for the Palestinian people’s right to “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination”, the delegates offered resounding applause.