Kamala Harris, poised to make history tonight, will urge Americans to 'move past the bitterness'

Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to make history Thursday night as the first Black woman and first Indian American to accept a major party presidential nomination with a call “to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past.”

Her speech is expected to frame her vision as nonideological and “practical” as she courts moderate voters who have concerns about the economy but reservations about electing former President Trump.

Her election offers “a chance to chart a new way forward,” Harris planned to say, according to excerpts of her speech released Thursday evening. “Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” she planned to say. “A president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical and has common sense.”

The speech reiterates attacks on Trump and the Project 2025 document — which lays out an extensive right-wing populist agenda — that was written for him, but he has since tried to disavow.

“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she planned to say. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. … Consider the power he will have — especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled he would be immune from criminal prosecution.”

The moment will be heavy with symbolism, with many women at the Democratic National Convention at Chicago’s United Center wearing white to commemorate the suffrage movement. But Harris has so far used this week’s convention to make a case beyond the history, emphasizing her personal biography, the party’s loosely defined “freedom” agenda and the case against returning Trump to the White House.

Her speech traces her upbringing by her late mother, Shyamala Harris, who at age 19 “crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer.” Harris seldom mentions her father, Donald J. Harris, an economist and Jamaican immigrant who divorced from her mother when she was a child. And he is not included in the excerpts.

“It was mostly my mother who raised us,” Harris plans to say, describing the small rented apartment she lived in for a time in the East Bay flats — “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.”

Harris planned to cite her high school friend Wanda, who was sexually abused by her stepfather, as her inspiration for becoming a prosecutor.

The contest is essentially a toss-up at this point, according to pollsters. But Harris’ elevation to the top of the ticket just over a month ago, after President Biden stepped aside, has given Democrats hope that they have a chance.

Harris, the vice president for four years, has sought to portray herself as a tough prosecutor who put away violent criminals when she was San Francisco’s district attorney and went after big banks when she was California’s attorney general.

Trump has sought to portray her as a San Francisco liberal and a failed “border czar,” a title Harris rejects because she was tasked by Biden to improve conditions for migrants in other countries and did not have direct control over the southern border.

But she has sought to defuse the issue by going after Trump for scuttling a bipartisan border enforcement deal this year and will likely do so again Thursday.

She has also blasted Trump over abortion rights, calling attention to his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who two years ago overturned Roe vs. Wade. Harris has led Democratic political efforts on the issue, which helped the party perform better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections and is again a large motivator for women voters who form the party’s backbone.

Harris is also expected to pitch the party’s economic agenda, which includes subsidies for first-time home buyers, anti-price gouging measures on groceries and expanded child tax credits. Though most recent economic indicators have been positive, polls show the economy is voters’ biggest concern, in large part because of inflation.

“We know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success,” she planned to say. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. This is personal for me. The middle class is where I come from.”