CHICAGO, Illinois — Kamala Harris will present herself as a patriotic woman of the people fighting for freedom Thursday night, when—no matter what she says—she’ll make history at the Democratic National Convention.
First, when she takes the stage around 10:45 ET, expect Harris to introduce herself to the American people, highlighting how she’s just like them. It’s a theme her campaign has hit over and over, with multiple mentions of her college job working at McDonald’s.
“The VP will tell her story of being raised by a working mother in a middle-class neighborhood,” a Harris-Walz campaign official shared. “That background means she knows the everyday joys and challenges experienced by middle-class families like hers, and shares those values.”
The first few nights of convention programming have set the stage for the vice president’s second task: calling out the Republican agenda and contrasting it with her focus on freedom. She’ll point out the “dangers posed by Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda” and seek to contrast her own vision for economic opportunity and “fundamental freedoms for all Americans,” the official said.
Finally, Harris will emphasize her patriotism and reclaim the American flag that has been hijacked by the MAGA faithful. Like the “USA” signs and chants that have ricocheted around the arena here this week, the message is meant to counteract the Republican attacks on Harris and other Democrats—including “childless cat ladies”—as un-American.
“She knows that loving your country means being willing to fight for its fundamental ideals,” the campaign official said. “She is driven by a deep sense of patriotism and a desire to be a president for all Americans.”
Her remarks are expected to be light on policy, heavy on feel-good oratory and attacks on Trump’s agenda. That pattern fits with what she’s done on the campaign trail so far, where she’s waded into policy just once—when outlining her economic proposal, which was largely panned. The platform drew more criticism than almost anything else she’s said so far, demonstrating the dangers of sharing specifics.
On the one hand, there’s little Harris will have to do to win over the hard-core Democrats attending the convention. When she merely stepped on stage Monday night to Beyonce’s “Freedom,” the crowd went wild. Some of the biggest applause lines this week from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Oprah Winfrey—some of the nation’s greatest oratorical talents—came when they dropped her name. And the uptempo music and celebrity guests that have kept the energy high all week will continue Thursday night, with scheduled appearances by The Chicks and Pink—and perhaps, even, Beyoncé?
But the crowd Harris really has to win over will be the voters watching at home. The notoriously cautious politician and her aides have been tinkering with the speech for the past month, according to Politico, after weeks already spent on the one she planned to give as the vice presidential nominee before President Joe Biden dropped out.
