Before Vice President Kamala Harris hit the stage to accept her party’s nomination for president Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, her campaign told reporters what to expect.
Harris campaign officials leaked to the press that the sitting vice president would reintroduce herself to Americans, despite being the second most powerful person in the country for the past three and a half years.
And although questions linger about Harris’ policy positions despite her becoming the presumptive nominee shortly after fellow Democrats forced President Joe Biden out of the race a month ago, Harris was expected to take aim at The Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, a policy agenda for the next conservative administration.
Finally, the vice president was expected to brush past the difficulties America has experienced under the Biden-Harris administration and make a patriotic plea to move forward.
The gravity of Thursday night’s speech was not lost on Harris. The New York Times reported that her speech was a reworked version of the convention speech she planned to deliver as Biden’s running mate. Harris has had multiple full-length rehearsals, complete with teleprompters, while on the campaign trail in three different time zones.
As it turned out, Harris’ nearly 40-minute speech was full of fluff—”joy” is what the Harris campaign calls it—but light on some details.
1. No Explanation of Why Biden Is Out
Harris opened her speech by thanking Biden, her current boss, who was on vacation in California.
“When I think about the path that we have traveled together, Joe, I am filled with gratitude,” Harris said. “Your record is extraordinary, as history will show, and your character is inspiring.”
If such is the case, why isn’t Biden accepting the nomination?
As quick as Harris was to thank Biden, she was even quicker to move on without providing any answers to that question. This despite the fact that Biden harbors ill will for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., former President Barack Obama, and other top Democrats who orchestrated his ousting.
Despite forcing Biden out of the race a month ago, Democrats have failed to give the American people concrete answers on why the switch was made.
Was it Biden’s polling, his health, or something else? Did she personally notice any problems with his mental sharpness over the years?
Harris seems to prefer keeping the American people in the dark.
2. Biographical Details
The unexpected Democratic nominee also failed to shed light on some other important details in the biographical account she delivered at the beginning of her speech.
Harris pitched herself as a paragon of the middle class. “The middle class is where I come from,” she told the crowd.
Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, whom she mentioned frequently throughout the speech, was a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The lab is affiliated with University of California, Berkeley, the institution where Gopalan received her Ph.D. in nutrition and endocrinology in 1964.
Harris’ father, Donald Harris, received his Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1966.
How many middle-class children do you know who have two Ph.D. parents?
After her parents separated when she was a child, Harris said, her family lived in a “beautiful working-class neighborhood” of Berkeley. Today, home prices in that neighborhood are north of $1 million. The position Harris’ mother once held at the Lawrence lab carries a six-figure salary today.
In the retelling of her life story, Harris moved quickly from her youth to her career as a prosecutor. When she was just starting her law career, however, Harris was the center of a scandal that shook up politics in San Francisco.
In 1993, three years after getting admitted to the State Bar of California, Harris began dating Willie Brown, speaker of the California Assembly, despite the fact that Brown was in his 60s and married to Blanche Vitero. In 1994, Brown appointed Harris to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, a job that paid Harris $97,088 per year.
Six months later, Harris was put on the California Medical Assistance Commission, which earned her another $72,000 per year. Harris received $400,000 in compensation from the positions she earned simply by being Brown’s publicly flaunted mistress, as reported by SF Weekly.
3. Her Policies
Harris is still holding back her policy positions despite being at the top of the Democratic ticket for nearly a month.
Instead, the Harris campaign has offered a soft launch of her released policies so far by leaking them through anonymous campaign officials, as reported by Axios.
While Harris attempted to paint a stark contrast between herself and her opponent, former President Donald Trump, the way in which Harris sought to illuminate their differences made Trump sound like the incumbent.
“Donald Trump is an unserious man,” Harris told delegates. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”
“We know what a second Trump term would look like,” Harris later added.
During her approximately 38-minute speech, Harris mentioned Trump 15 different times.
Meanwhile, Harris spent only a minute of her speech laying out her vision for the U.S. economy, which she described as “an opportunity economy where everyone has the chance to compete and a chance to succeed.”
Not once during Harris’ speech did the word “inflation” cross her lips.
Nevertheless, reporting from The New York Times outlined one of Harris’ quietly rolled-out policy proposals: A tax hike of $5 trillion. Harris would raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and restructure taxes on long-term investments and inheritances, even in instances where investment gains haven’t been realized.
Whether Harris knows this is her current tax plan remains undetermined, as she promised Thursday night to “pass a middle-class tax cut” if elected president.
