Kamala Harris will on Thursday night face the biggest test of her political life so far when she addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago in an effort to persuade American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.
The vice-president’s rocket-fueled campaign is still barely a month old following Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from seeking re-election in the face of a disastrous debate performance and questions over his age and mental acuity.
Harris, and her vice-presidential pick, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, have quickly overturned the election’s narrative, turning a solid Trump lead in the polls over Biden into a slight – but clear – advantage over the former Republican president.
In addressing the Democratic convention on Thursday night – and by proxy the wider US electorate watching in their millions on television – Harris will be making a direct pitch to voters to back her vision for the United States.
The last night of the joy-fueled convention in Chicago will feature another long list of speakers – secretaries, senators, governors, congressmen and activists.
Notable speakers include rising stars such as the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and the Arizona senator Mark Kelly; Democrats running in swing races such as the Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey, the Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin and the Arizona congressman Ruben Gallego, who is running for an open Senate seat in his home state.
Attenders will also hear from gun control advocates, including the Georgia congresswoman Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed in a “stand your ground” killing, as well as members of the “Tennessee Three” who were expelled from the state legislature after demanding action on gun control. Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt, will also speak, along with other survivors and the families of victims of gun violence.
Thursday night’s theme is “For Our Future”. The evening will end with Harris’s historic acceptance speech in which she will become the first woman of color to accept a major party’s presidential nomination.
Harris’s campaign has sought to portray a more optimistic, future-focused view of the country than her rival, and perhaps also than that of the president, who based much of his pitch on dark warnings of Trump’s autocratic sympathies.
Over the course of the week at the convention, the audience has heard from the Democratic party’s most powerful players, who threw their support unequivocally behind Harris. Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi all gave prime-time speeches, as did some of the party’s rising stars, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now it is expected that Harris’s speech will seek to lay out her personal story as she bids to become a historic president: the first female president and the first woman of color due to her south Asian and Black background.
Harris’s communications director, Michael Tyler, said the vice-president would share her personal story as the daughter of a working mother raised in a middle-class neighborhood, and a prosecutor who fought on behalf of sexual assault survivors and homeowners who lost everything in the foreclosure crisis.
He said she would share her “optimistic vision for America’s future, a new way forward” and draw a contrast with Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, a conservative policy blueprint from which the Republican ticket has tried to distance itself.
“On that stage tonight, you’ll see a champion for working people all across the country, a defender of our fundamental freedoms and a prosecutor who will make the case against Donald Trump,” he said. “Most importantly, what you’ll see is the next president of the United States.”
Across three days so far, speaker after speaker has already hailed Harris as a change-agent who would not only defeat Trump but lift the country higher, ushering in a new chapter of possibility and seek to return US politics to some semblance of normality since Trump came on to the political stage eight years ago.
The Harris campaign – and especially the outspoken Walz – has also displayed sharp elbows and an ability to insult and poke fun at Trump.
The switch in the polls and newfound edge has impressed many observers. “She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her,” David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama, said.
Certainly it seems to have unsettled Trump and his campaign. Trump has adopted a policy of directly insulting Harris and inventing a series of nicknames for her while trying to paint her as a leftwing extremist and questioning her racial identity. But the jibes have had little effect and even drawn criticism from some senior Republicans.
They have not blunted her lead. Harris consistently tops Trump by three or four points in recent head-to-head surveys and has also improved her standing in the handful of key states that are crucial to victory. While the electoral contest remains impossibly close, she has widened the battleground once more from the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to once again include Sun belt states such as North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.
This week, however, has added a new hurdle for Harris, with the independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr posturing to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. This could mean some critical independent voters would back the Republican candidate.
“RFK was obviously funded in large part by Maga donors,” said Tyler during a press briefing on Thursday. “He carried a lot of Maga talking points throughout the campaign.”
Kennedy’s campaign said he would address the nation in Phoenix on Friday “about the present historical moment and his path forward”.
“My message is not for him,” Tyler said. “My message is for many of the undecided voters, many of whom found a home with him in the early stages of this campaign. If they were feeling disaffected about the state of the race, if they were looking for a new way forward ... then there’s a home for them in Kamala Harris’s campaign.”
Throughout the convention so far, Democratic speakers have tried to make Trump seem small and diminished. They have sought to keep him on the back foot and in a reactive mode, responding to attacks and being kept off-balance.
The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, compared Trump to an “old boyfriend” who has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people.
“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason,” Jeffries said.
“Kamala Harris has always understood the assignment,” said Laphonza Butler, a California senator and friend of Harris’s.
On Wednesday night, Walz offered a full-throated attack on Trump, a defense of his record running Minnesota and a passionate advocacy for Harris. After criticizing the Trump campaign, he led the crowd of cheering delegates in a chant of: “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”
Democratic convention highlights:
Tim Walz’s acceptance speech channeled grit and empathy
Muslim Women for Harris disbands and withdraws support for candidate
Democrats issue warning over Project 2025
Meet the 200 TikTokers at the DNC
What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
