ANALYSIS — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night stood a few hundred yards from the Oval Office and urged voters to block Donald Trump from returning to power there.
The Democratic presidential nominee addressed tens of thousands of supporters on the Ellipse, a park with the White House’s south front lit up behind her, one week until Election Day. It was the same spot where then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, whipped a throng of his loyalists — some he knew were armed, according to a special House committee — into a frenzy before they stormed the Capitol.
“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is,” Harris said “But America, I am here tonight to say: That’s not who we are.”
While it was the same venue, Harris delivered a much different message from that infamous day nearly four years ago, when a clinging-to-power Trump told his backers “we fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have tried striking a messaging balance since late-July between focusing enough on their economic agenda and warning voters that a second Trump term would feature too few “guardrails” and, potentially, too many enablers and mechanisms for Trump to abuse his power — and even upend American democracy.
“It is time to stop pointing fingers,” she said. “And time to start locking arms.”
To be sure, Harris’ Ellipse speech focused on her entire closing argument and had plenty of upbeat lines, as well as her declaring that this would be “the most important vote you will ever cast.” But as she stood on and spoke from the same ground Trump did before local police declared a riot scene at the Capitol, the objective of her main message was clear: a warning about her opponent’s plans and motives.
‘Put them in jail’
The vice president went hard at Trump off the top — even as a random siren blared in the background for several minutes — seeking to draw a sharp contrast between what would be her first and his second term. She described, again, her agenda for an “opportunity economy,” while contending Trump has vastly different plans.
“Donald Trump has told us his priorities for a second term,” she said. “He has an enemies list of people he intends to prosecute.
“This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” Harris said several days after Trump, during a roundtable with Latino voters in Miami where he veered among unrelated topics, said he would possess “extreme power” in another term.
Harris, as she did repeatedly during the rare campaign event at the Ellipse, went after Trump describing his political opponents, legal foes and journalists as the “enemy from within” and the “enemies of the people.”
During what amounted to a reorganized update to her Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance speech, she said: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.”
Harris has gone on a campaign swing with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a Trump critic and former vice chairwoman of the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — and Trump’s role.
‘Different path’
Harris at several points tried using the former president’s often-harsh words against him, a tactic during his political career that has riled him up when reporters have done so while questioning him.
“Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him,” she said, after noting Trump’s pledge to free his supporters who have been convicted of serious crimes since Jan. 6 — calling some of them “violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers.”
The vice president also described her opponent as proposing policies that would mostly benefit the country’s wealthiest, telling the crowd on the Ellipse that “this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better” and later urging voters to resist any temptations to “submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
“America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind. More chaos. More division,” she said. “And policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else. I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote.”
She vowed to “build consensus” in order to “get things done.” She repeated her applause line following a “Kamala! Kamala!” chant that Trump would return to the Oval with an “enemies list” but she would walk in with a “to-do list.”
As she and Trump have done during their truncated contest, Harris did not mention that lawmakers and analysts have predicted small margins in the House and Senate come January, likely making it extremely difficult for the eventual winner to get major legislation through Congress.
‘Razor-close’
Steve Santarsiero, a Pennsylvania state senator and chair of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, predicted during an interview Tuesday in his Newtown office a “razor-close” finish both nationally and in his crucial swing state.
“Here at the ground-game level, we’re in a get-out-the-vote mode,” Santarseiro said. “But at the campaign level, and certainly for the vice president and Gov. Walz, they’re in a persuasion campaign right up until the very end.” Perhaps that’s one reason Harris vowed on the unique stage to seek bipartisan consensus. And that’s a big reason why she reiterated her health care and other domestic policy pitches.
“I pledge to seek common ground and common-sense solutions to make your lives better. I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress,” Harris said, promising to listen to supporters and “to people who disagree with me.”
Harris addressed her supporters and the country as polls continued to show a tightening race, both nationally and in the seven key battleground states that campaign officials and analysts say will determine who becomes the 47th president. A Reuters-Ipsos poll released earlier Tuesday showed Harris’ national lead shrinking to 1 percentage point (44 percent to 43 percent, with a 3-point margin of error).
Polling average calculations from ABC News’ 538 showed the duo also in a dead heat in the “blue wall” battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In terms of all seven tightly contested states, neither led by more than 2 percentage points in any state. Trump stumped Tuesday evening in must-win Pennsylvania, with a rally in the competitive Allentown area.
Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters earlier Tuesday that they were seeing signs Trump voters were “mode shifting” to casting early ballots, but they didn’t see signs the former president was attracting new voters.
“They’re always going to be voting, in 2020 certainly they’re voting on Election Day. We are seeing them vote more and earlier, but what we’re not seeing is signs of overwhelming enthusiasm of people that aren’t going to vote,” she said.
Harris is scheduled to take her closing arguments on the road, with a senior Harris campaign official saying she will travel to every battleground state in the days before Election Day. Expect her to repeat the themes of her Ellipse remarks at each stop.
“I pledge to be a president for all Americans,” she said. “To always put country above party and above self.”
Niels Lesniewski contributed to this report.
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