PHILADELPHIA—Kamala Harris closed out her presidential campaign by reassuring the thousands of supporters who had waited for hours in the cold that they would ultimately emerge victorious.
“You will decide the outcome of this election, Pennsylvania,” she said just before midnight at her last rally of 2024. “So with only a few hours left, we still have work to do. And as you’ve heard me say before, we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work. And make no mistake, we will win.”
The crowd broke into some of its loudest chants of the night, crying out “We will win!” over and over again.
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Standing in front of the Rocky steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which she called, “a tribute to those who start as the underdog and climb to victory,” the vice president delivered an optimistic message.
“We will win because when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” she said. “We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division. We’re done with that.”
Her Republican rival, Donald Trump, criticized the moment in his final campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Monday night,
“She had a rally today, she couldn’t had had more than 100 people there,” the former president said.
“She had a rally, screaming, ‘We’re going to win, we’re going to win,’ and they wouldn’t follow her, they wouldn’t say it.”
Harris, meanwhile, hit all her usual talking points on her history of taking on big banks, scammers, and predators, her plans to work on a to-do list instead of stewing over an enemies list, and her pledge to protect reproductive freedom. She did not mention Trump by name.
“From the beginning, ours has not been a fight against something, it has been a fight for something,” she said.
The rally was the capstone celebration of one of the shortest presidential campaigns in American history. It featured star performances from the likes of Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin. Attendees formed lines for funnel cakes and burgers, made friendship bracelets, and pressed in close to the security barriers to catch a glimpse of the vice president.
Harris delivered the closing lines of her standard stump speech with a smile in her voice.
“Are we ready to fight for it?” she asked, as the crowd delivered a resounding yes. “And when we fight, we win.”
Find the Daily Beast’s coverage of the 2024 election here. Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast.
