Vice President Kamala Harris gave the public its first real look into her nascent presidential campaign with a stop at her organization’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday night.
Harris’ first applause line came when she discussed her background as California attorney general and as a courtroom prosecutor.
“In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, earning cackles while she beamed, clearly enjoying the joke. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
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She gave the public a snippet of her biography, discussing how she specialized in cases involving sexual abuse as a young prosecutor, how she put a for-profit college out of business, and how she created one of the country’s first environmental justice units.
Harris juxtaposed her record with that of Trump, who she pointed out was found liable for sexual abuse, ran a scammy for-profit college, and tried to cut deals with oil lobbyists.
“But make no mistake, all of that being said, this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump,” Harris said. “There is more to this campaign than that. Our campaign has always been about two different versions of what we see as the future of our country.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”
She said building up the middle class would be a defining goal of her presidency, and name-checked Project 2025 as an initiative that would weaken it. She stressed voting rights, universal background checks, red flag laws and an assault weapons ban, before turning to abortion rights.
“If Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state, but we are not going to let that happen,” Harris said. “It is this team here that is going to help, this November, to elect a majority of members of the United States Congress who agree the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as President of the United States, I will sign it into law.”
She then asked the audience what kind of country they wanted to live in, “A country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law? Or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?”
After Biden endorsed Harris on Sunday, almost all of the most prominent Democrats in the country, including almost all of the party’s other rising stars, followed his lead.
“It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and win,” Harris said Monday, nodding to calls from some Democrats for an open process. But an open process will be hard to come by if there’s no volunteer to challenge her, and as she spoke, Harris appeared to have all but locked up the Democratic nod, bringing hope to a party that had been sagging under the weight of Biden’s stumbles.
New “Harris for President” and “Kamala” signs could already be seen on the walls just over a day after Biden ended his run. But Harris revealed that some things wouldn’t change; Harris announced she was keeping on Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez-Rodriguez, and his campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, to lead her organization.
