Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing for the biggest moment of her political life in a downtown Chicago hotel suite, looking to seize the opportunity to turn the momentum that brought her to the Democratic National Convention this week into a move that propels her to the Oval Office.
The enormity of the stakes is not lost on Harris, who has been thinking about her speech for weeks. Almost since President Joe Biden withdrew as the top candidate on the Democratic ticket, she has been mentally formulating the argument she hopes to make on the final night of the convention.
Kamala Harris has never been considered one of the Democratic Party’s top orators. But her experience as a prosecutor and distilling policy into understandable terms have helped her galvanize crowds since launching her candidacy less than a month ago.
Harris has been vice president for more than three years, but advisers believe Americans are largely unaware of her biography. Throughout the week in Chicago, bits of her past have been sprinkled into one speech after another, with her campaign trying to help define her on her terms — as a prosecutor, a fighter, the daughter of a middle-class single mother and more.
She is expected to hit those touchpoints and more in her speech on Thursday (22).
According to several Democratic aides and others involved in preparing her speech, Harris has refined the text extensively, working in part from the speech she delivers, almost verbatim, at her campaign rallies. At the Park Hyatt Chicago, where she is staying this week, she has practiced extensively and consulted with aides and family members to refine a speech intended to serve as a high-level introduction to American voters.
Since arriving in Chicago on Sunday night, Harris has spent the day behind closed doors, working with her staff at the address. She left on Monday to attend the first night of the convention and on Tuesday night to fly to Milwaukee for a campaign rally.
Since arriving in Chicago on Sunday night, Harris has spent the day behind closed doors, working with her staff at the address. She left on Monday to attend the first night of the convention and on Tuesday night to fly to Milwaukee for a campaign rally.
On Wednesday, she joined Biden on a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Middle East negotiators worked to salvage talks toward a deal to free hostages held by Hamas and implement a cease-fire in Gaza — a reminder of the day-to-day work she must now balance as she formally assumes the Democratic nomination.
But mostly, she has been consulting with her staff, which includes speechwriters but also senior advisers like her chiefs of staff Lorraine Voles and Sheila Nix, as well as family members like her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Since Biden ended his presidential bid a month ago, Harris’s convention speech has been a near-daily focus, with time built into her schedule to lay out the speech’s themes to a small circle of advisers.
Adam Frankel, who has been working as an adviser to the vice president since 2021, took a leading role in writing her speech. Frankel, 43, was part of former President Barack Obama’s speechwriting team and spent years studying John F. Kennedy’s historic speeches while working as a researcher for Ted Sorensen, a longtime confidant and speechwriter for the late U.S. president.
“This notion that eloquence has a real role in public life, that eloquence can mobilize people to bring about real change, is something that is obviously one of his great contributions and something that we are trying to fulfill,” Frankel once told an audience at the Kennedy Library.
A guide to Harris’s remarks can be found in several of her major speeches over the years, aides said, including her 2019 presidential announcement. She is not known for dwelling on her own history-making potential, but rather allowing others to tread that ground for her.
“If I have the honor of being your president, I will tell you this: I am not perfect. God knows I am not perfect,” she told supporters in January 2019. “But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity, and I will treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. And I will speak the truth.”
In the final hours before Thursday’s prime-time address, Harris’s focus has largely been on perfecting her delivery, sources said, trying to anticipate how the audience will receive and feel each line. This week has also provided ample opportunities for Harris to spend time with her family — including members of her husband’s family — who have come to Chicago for the political festivities.
Former Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, a close adviser, said even Harris sees her Thursday night speech as “her introduction to America in her own voice.”
Asked what key message Harris hopes to convey to Americans with her acceptance speech, Richmond said: “That she cares about them and that it’s not about her, it’s about them.”
“Her main goal is to let the American people know that she will wake up every day fighting for them,” he said.
Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris’ campaign for California attorney general and advised her for years, said he sees the vice president’s goal Thursday night as relatively simple.
“Your job is to introduce the nation to the Kamala Harris that many voters don’t yet know, and through your words, make clear as day the stark contrast between the positive, unifying vision of Harris-Walz and the doom and gloom of the Trump-Vance ticket,” Brokaw said.
This content was originally published in Kamala Harris prepares for the biggest moment of her political life on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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