Kamala Harris’ closing campaign speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday evening was a mirror image of the Jan. 6, 2021, Ellipse rally that Donald Trump incited into violent insurrection. Whereas Trump’s remarks fueled distrust and even hatred of the democratic process, Harris’ speech sought to convince skeptical Americans that democracy is still a system worth protecting.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” Harris told a crowd estimated at over 75,000 supporters who stretched from the Ellipse to the grounds of the Washington Monument. “I am here tonight to say: That is not who we are.”
Harris’ speech sought to convince skeptical Americans that democracy is still a system worth protecting.
That could be said as much about the fragile state of American democracy as about Harris’ toss-up of a race against Trump. Harris vowed to chart “a different path” from Trump’s division, pledging to “seek common ground and common-sense solutions to make your lives better.”
Harris’ remarks also offered a not-so-subtle throwback to 2020 and 2022, when President Joe Biden decided — against the advice of consultants and pundits — to focus his closing arguments on the importance of protecting democracy from authoritarian threats. Biden knew better than the commentators, and his decision to emphasize democracy fended off Trump in 2020 and the mythical Red Wave of 2022. Now Harris is hoping some of that magic rubs off on her own campaign.
It seems there’s reason for such hope. This week’s New York Times/Siena College poll found that nearly 8 in 10 Americans feel democracy is under threat. Voters also make no mistake about where that threat is coming from. As a growing number of his former Cabinet officials and military leaders have made clear over the past weeks, Trump poses a clear and present danger to our country’s most fundamental democratic safeguards.
There are plenty of voters who disagree with Harris’ reverence for democracy. One of them, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, was released from federal prison Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for refusing to cooperate with the official investigation into the Jan. 6 attacks. One of Bannon’s first acts as a free man was to call on Trump to prematurely declare victory next Tuesday in an effort to undermine public faith in vote counting efforts.
Others are more direct. The House Freedom Caucus leader, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., made headlines last week when he floated the idea of simply giving North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes to Trump before the results are counted. Harris’ reasoning was that Trump would probably win the state anyway, so why bother with the inconvenience of democracy at all? The outrageous proposal drew hardly a peep of protest from Trump’s lapdog Republican lawmakers.
But Harris didn’t confine herself to a high-minded defense of democracy. After months of Trump’s putting Democrats on the back foot about the economy, she took the fight to the GOP with a powerful explanation of how four years of a “Trump sales tax” would be disastrous for people’s bank accounts.
Harris hammered Trump on trade, pointing out that his tariff policy would amount to “a 20% national sales tax on everything you buy that is imported. Clothes, food, toys, cellphones, a Trump sales tax that would cost the average family nearly $4,000 more a year.”
The high-priority focus on the economy in Harris’ remarks is an acknowledgment that many swing voters still trust Trump more on economic issues. But Harris also took the opportunity to press one of Trump’s economic weak spots: the continued popularity of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The high-priority focus on the economy in Harris’ remarks is an acknowledgment that many swing voters still trust Trump more on economic issues. “You will pay even more if Donald Trump finally gets his way and repeals the Affordable Care Act, which will throw tens of millions of Americans off their health insurance and take us back to when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions,” Harris said to cheers. “Well, we are not going back.” Abortion rights loomed large in Harris’ speech, as they have throughout this campaign — the first presidential election since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in 2022. “I believe in the fundamental freedom of Americans to make decisions about their own bodies,” Harris said. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America.” More than that, Harris made the case that America’s democracy is inextricably connected to its healthy economy and flourishing people. She argued that accepting the future Trump proposes requires gutting America’s economy and trampling fundamental human rights. Harris paid tribute to that idea in her closing moments, urging Americans to unite in “our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency and our faith in a better future.” In just one week, voters across the nation will have the opportunity to decide which future they want for their country and for themselves. Tonight, Harris made that choice clear.
Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on X, @themaxburns. 
