Kamala Harris calls Donald Trump a ‘petty tyrant’ in final pitch to voters

The results of each occasions proceed to be felt throughout the nation, with greater than 20 states now proscribing abortion and the nation bitterly divided on partisan strains, with hundreds of thousands of Individuals refusing to simply accept that the 2020 election was official.

As kamala Harris argued: “It doesn’t need to be this manner.”

However this simply wasn’t an anti-Trump speech, nor may it’s. Since she was elevated to the highest of the Democratic ticket, the problem Harris has constantly confronted is that many citizens nonetheless don’t actually know who she is – even progressive Democrats.

“They’re telling us they haven’t heard sufficient from Harris about her plans to handle the affordability disaster, curb company energy and scale back healthcare prices,” stated Joseph Geevarghese, govt director of Our Revolution, a progressive group billing itself as the largest within the US.

“Many are disillusioned by her embrace of figures like Dick and Liz Cheney, and a troubling quantity are contemplating voting third social gathering or abstaining altogether,” Geervarghese stated referring to the previous Republican vice chairman and his daughter. Each have endorsed Harris.

Harris additionally sought to make use of her speech to stipulate elements of her coverage agenda – the first-ever ban on price-gouging on groceries, increasing youngster tax credit to oldsters of newborns, restoring federal abortion protections and implementing the bipartisan border deal that Trump killed.

All will in all probability require Congressional approval and due to this fact rely upon who wins the Home of Representatives and Senate in subsequent week’s election.

She additionally gave a glimpse of what motivates her – “There’s one thing about individuals being handled unfairly or missed that, frankly, simply will get to me” – and the way her values had been formed by her Indian mom and Jamaican father – “I grew up as a baby of the civil rights motion”; “I lived the promise of America”.

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She differentiated herself from Biden– who was notably watching from the White Home, not there in particular person – by saying that whereas it was an honour to function his deputy, “my presidency will probably be totally different as a result of the challenges we face are totally different”.

“Our prime precedence as a nation 4 years in the past was to finish the pandemic and rescue the economic system,” she stated. “Now, our greatest problem is to decrease prices – prices that had been rising even earlier than the pandemic and which might be nonetheless too excessive. I get it.”

Whether or not sufficient voters imagine her is the large query. Because the marketing campaign hits its remaining week, polls present the race stays neck and neck, and neither Trump nor Harris have a transparent benefit within the seven battleground states that may determine the election.

Trump was in essentially the most consequential battleground of all whereas Harris spoke – the essential swing state of Pennsylvania – making an attempt to scrub up the continued backlash of his Madison Sq. Backyard Rally.

Earlier, he defended the occasion as “an absolute love fest” with out immediately addressing the racist joke made by comic Tony Hinchcliffe about Puerto Rico being “a floating island of rubbish”.

In pre-empting Harris’ remarks, he accused her of waging a “marketing campaign of hate”, warning voters that the nation could possibly be destroyed if she received the presidency.

“Her message has been a message of hate and division, and my message has been about saving our economic system and securing our border,” he stated.

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With one week till election day – and about 50 million Individuals having already voted – there aren’t many undecided voters left to succeed in. However Harris is banking on the truth that regardless of being on this race for lower than 100 days, she has constructed a broad sufficient coalition to win them over.

“Everyone knows who Donald Trump is,” she stated, reminding voters how “he stood on this very spot practically 4 years in the past and despatched an armed mob to america Capitol to overturn the need of the individuals in a free and truthful election that he knew he misplaced.”

“However that isn’t who we’re.”