Harris’ Big Moment: Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

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For thirty-seven minutes in primetime on Thursday night, vice president Kamala Harris wowed Democrats inside Chicago’s United Center. Just as expected.

The weeklong political Woodstock Festival (a.k.a. the Democratic National Convention) wrapped up with the traditional presidential nominee’s acceptance speech. And Harris spent much of her big moment sharing the spotlight with someone who wasn’t even there.

“We have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said at one point. 

Well, unless your name happens to be Donald Trump.

Harris began her remarks with a standard biographical sketch, touting herself as the girl who fought her way out of the Bay Area like the ‘Little Engine That Could.’ It wasn’t long, though, before she turned her guns in Trump’s direction.

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Honestly, it felt as though Harris spent half her speech spewing vitriol at the former president. Turning a deaf ear to Joe Biden‘s call to tone down the rhetoric in this race – a call Biden himself ignored in his own rant earlier this week – Harris utterly demonized the former president.

Candidates are never lacking harsh things to say about their opponents – but Harris turned “going low” into an art form during her address.

After leading delegates in chanting, “we are not going back,” Harris launched into Trump with a vengeance. She repeated all the DNC’s Greatest Hits — from the shopworn January 6 “insurrection” indignation to the Project 2025 nonsense that alarms no one but themselves — portraying Trump as a modern Narcissus hellbent on destroying the U.S. amid an orgy of self-worship.

But the most telling parts of her speech were the parts left unsaid…

Harris rhetorically thumped her chest in outrage as she vowed to defend one of the convention’s favorite buzz phrases, “reproductive freedom”— while neglecting to mention abortion on demand up to and including the ninth month of pregnancy.

She was syrupy sweet when vowing to create “an opportunity economy” for all Americans — while not saying a word about the catastrophic economic plan she rolled out in North Carolina last week, which included provisions for price controls and tax hikes that the New York Times estimated would cost $5 trillion over a decade.

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Harris promised to fight for the Democrats’ cherished “voting rights” — without a peep about how those measures would gut voter integrity laws and ultimately bring balloting under federal control.

There was a pledge to “reform our broken border” and create an “earned path to citizenship” for illegal aliens — yet no mention of the millions of illegal immigrants who flooded into the country while she served (and still serves) as “border czar.” 

Harris did mention the “C Words” once in passing (something about stopping “the pollution that fuels the climate crisis” — but nary a word about the Green New Deal and the climate change obsession that is seriously hamstringing the nation’s ability to meet its growing demand for power. 

Also noticeable by its absence Thursday night: Any mention of Harris’ accomplishments as vice president. (Though in all fairness, hers is a job where you don’t get to do much beyond saying, “great idea, boss!”)

It was rah-rah, feel good, Orange Man bad, let’s keep the same Biden-Harris agenda rolling on for another four years…. without that pesky Biden part dragging us down.

Finally, it was over. Harris was joined on stage by her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, for the obligatory handclasp. As Beyonce’s “Freedom” blared over the sound system, 100,000 balloons (red, white, and blue, of course) cascaded onto the 4,695 delegates below.

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Harris-Walz represents the most liberal ticket Democrats have put forward since McGovern-Eagleton (or McGovern-Shriver, as it wound up being) was advanced back in 1972.

Can they sell these far left policies? Or… was the convention’s eschewal of substance a sign they don’t think they need to?

There’s also reason to question the wisdom of attacking Trump with the laser-focused intensity Harris displayed Thursday night. Opinions of the 45th president are so firmly entrenched by this point Harris was largely preaching to the choir.

As Lincoln once observed, “people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

But will such perpetual demonization work with voters?

With the worst inflation in half a century still evaporating paychecks, with the border no closer to being secure, with the government belatedly admitting we have 818,000 fewer jobs than we previously thought and with a rogue’s gallery of bad guys around the world from Pyongyang to Beijing to Tehran to Moscow eager to make trouble, Harris’ messaging will eventually need to incorporate some substance, right?

Or is that what the supplicant sycophants in the mainstream media are for?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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