Savor the party’s newfound “hope”, remember that in this crazy campaign against Donald Trump, nothing is won: Kamala Harris will solemnly accept the Democratic nomination on Thursday in Chicago.
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The 59-year-old vice president, after electrifying her camp, wants to address all of America, according to a senior member of her campaign team, who requested anonymity.
“There is no second chance to make a good first impression,” notes political scientist Larry Sabato. “Voters have seen Kamala’s style. Now they need Kamala’s program.”
His speech will come at the end of a euphoric, even frankly overexcited, convention that has attracted millions of television viewers every evening when the famous speakers take the stage.
Kamala Harris will take advantage of this audience to introduce herself to a country that does not necessarily know her very well, after almost four years in the thankless position of vice president.
Middle class
The Democrat, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, will discuss her middle-class childhood and her commitments as a former California prosecutor, according to the source already cited.
She will oppose her Republican rival, who says he is the only one capable of stopping the country’s “decline”, with a resolutely optimistic vision of the American destiny, according to her campaign team.
The FiveThirtyEight website, which aggregates opinion polls, gave Kamala Harris about a three-point lead over Donald Trump in national voting intentions on Wednesday.
This gap is in no way a guarantee of victory, 74 days before an election which will be played out, as in 2016 and 2020, in a handful of key states.
So much can happen between now and then. In four mind-boggling weeks, America has seen its current president Joe Biden abandon his candidacy, and its former president Donald Trump fall victim to an assassination attempt.
“Close election”
What would be the effect, for example, if independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threw in the towel and supported the 78-year-old billionaire? According to American media, he is preparing for it.
“No matter how much incredible energy we’ve managed to generate in recent weeks, this will be a close election in a deeply divided country,” former President Barack Obama warned Tuesday.
“It remains a tough battle,” also warned his wife Michelle Obama, another darling of the party.
In this battle, Kamala Harris intends to challenge the Republican Party’s defense of a central value of its rhetoric, freedom, in English, like the title of the Beyoncé song that has become the vice-president’s campaign anthem.
“Freedom”
Republicans promise to defend individual liberty against an intrusive government that piles on taxes, regulations and prohibitions.
The vice president uses the word to refer to rights and protections guaranteed by public authorities, including the right to abortion.
“When Republicans talk about freedom, they’re talking about the freedom for the government to invade your doctor’s office, the freedom for corporations to pollute your air and your water,” his running mate, Tim Walz, attacked Wednesday.
“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we’re talking about the freedom to have a better life” and “the freedom for your children to go to school without fear of being shot in the hallway,” the Minnesota governor said as he accepted the Democratic nomination.
The former Republican president presents his rival as a “crazy leftist” who wants to push America into “communism.”
On Thursday, the 78-year-old billionaire will travel to Arizona, a state bordering Mexico, and will take the fight to a territory he considers favorable: illegal immigration.
On his Truth Social network, he accused “Comrade Kamala” on Wednesday of having “unleashed on America a scourge of crimes and rapes committed by migrants,” an accusation that is not confirmed by police statistics.
