‘Joyless’ Kamala Harris and ‘downhome’ Tim Walz might just be a winning ticket

Kamala Harris’s serious-minded speech after accepting the Democratic nomination for president showed substance – and, for all its downbeat tone, that she might yet scrape a victory over Donald Trump, says Mary Dejevsky

Kamala Harris’s 40-minute acceptance speech was half the length of that given recently by her presidential rival Donald Trump (AFP/Getty)

On a tumultuous night at the convention centre in Chicago, Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the US presidency, promising to unite, rather than split, Americans, and presenting herself as the diametric opposite of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

It was pure Americana as she spoke of “our nation” having “a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past”.

Her nomination itself made history, as she became the first woman from an ethnic minority – she is mixed race – to head the presidential ticket of either major political party. If elected, she would shatter one of the last US political glass ceilings; the first woman vice-president becoming the first woman president, assuming arguably the most powerful job in the world.

It is an achievement, it has to be said, that was more thrust upon her than sought, after Joe Biden was pressed into abandoning his run for a second term amid misgivings about his age and health, and nominated his vice-president – until then regarded as a somewhat lacklustre politician – as the bearer of the Democratic Party’s torch.

Her 40-minute speech – half the length, it was approvingly observed afterwards, of that given by Trump at the Republican Convention – was designed at once to introduce herself to American voters, with a lengthy preamble on her modest upbringing in California, the virtues of honesty and determination inculcated by her (Indian medic) mother, and her rise as a lawyer defending especially women’s rights, and to sketch out her policy priorities as president.

The two halves were by way of a response to perceived weaknesses in her campaign so far – that few people had a very good idea of who she really was, and still less of an idea about any specifics of a presidential programme.

For all the rapturous applause, ritual chanting and placard-waving – “There’s no going back” being one of the favourites – her speech, to this outside observer at least, underwhelmed. Business-like, competent, what was needed, were among immediate reactions.

She had opened, after quelling the uproarious reception, by saying she wanted to get down to business, and seemed intent on avoiding a bombastic show. This could have been part of the opposite-to-Trump message – whom she dismissed as an “unserious man” whose presidency could nonetheless have very serious consequences.

But it was nothing like the rhetorical tour de force of, say, a Barack Obama or a Bill Clinton in his prime, that the audience had not just been hoping for, but surely expecting, given the delight and enthusiasm she had conjured up at previous rallies, the Philadelphia extravaganza being a notable example, where she had introduced Tim Walz as her running-mate, the down-home one-time school football coach turned Governor of Minnesota.

Here, though, she was on her own. And what was unclear was how far this air of low-key gravitas and the inelegance of the text – its failure to “sing” – were a deliberate effort to dispel any air of frivolity, or whether it reflected something else.

She made relatively little of the “first woman” angle, for instance – perhaps to avoid parallels with the last female presidential nominee, who had lost, after all, to Donald Trump. She wore serious black, rather than the white many women in the hall wore to commemorate the suffragettes.

But was the “something else” perhaps a sudden awareness of the task she was taking on and the responsibilities that would await, should she succeed? On that Chicago stage, she looked nervous, and at times slightly vulnerable – in contrast to the effusive confidence she had evinced at previous rallies. Will the joyous, super-confident Kamala make a return?

As to the substance of her programme, which – it has to be said – had gained little detail in the retelling, it promises to be further to the left than perhaps any US presidential nominee has dared. The focus would be on the “middle class” – or the working class, if you translate it into European.

The aim would be lower prices and lower taxes for this pillar of American society; she would take on “Big Pharma” to lower prescription costs, make it easier for the lower paid to buy a house, and expand educational and professional opportunities for all. She would defend women’s “right to choose”, blaming Trump for the catastrophic situation of women with unwanted pregnancies following the Supreme Court’s revoking of the constitutional right to abortion across the US.

Surprisingly, perhaps, her section on foreign policy was among the strongest of her whole speech, with a firm expression of support for Ukraine, and a clearly articulated stance on the Gaza war, with unqualified support for the defence of Israel, alongside a clear-eyed view of the suffering and destruction in Gaza, and Palestinian rights.

Thus were the preliminary battle-lines drawn for the weeks of campaigning that remain until the election on 5 November. And the Democrats certainly left their convention on Thursday night in an optimistic, enthusiastic mood, not least perhaps because they had so recently glimpsed an alternative: going into an election with an aged and infirm president who looked increasingly doomed to lose.

Any idea that Harris is set on a straightforwardly upward trajectory to the White House, however, would be premature. Harris neatly skirted some of the potential pitfalls – her share of responsibility for the higher cost of living generated by Joe Biden’s economic policies; the foreign wars that the US was partly embroiled in, and her failed role as migration “tsar”. But some were “helpfully” pinpointed by Donald Trump in an inimitable live-tweet commentary, which asked, among other things, how she had used her time as vice-president, if the US was now plagued by so many ills?

The uncertainties ahead were a clearly coordinated set-piece of many prominent convention speakers, who warned of the risks of complacency at all costs and the likely closeness of the contest to come. There was also a common call to activists to treat their opponents with respect; the way Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of Trump supporters as “deplorables” had rebounded in 2016 seemed to be a lesson learned.

In all, the Democrats’ Chicago convention was perhaps the most carefully – and craftily – choreographed party convention for very many years, perhaps ever. Which is quite an achievement in a genre that stands or falls by its stage management.

It was only on the last night that some of the early questions that had accompanied Harris’s nomination returned. Was this new, serious Kamala the candidate Democrats, indeed, Americans, wanted – or was it the joy they were really after? Will Harris be able to recapture some of that smiling exuberance, once she is on the campaign trail? And how well equipped is she really, not just to take on the posturing and the policies of Donald Trump, but to do the job of US president?

At best, the convention would have banished such doubts. But, in the end, it didn’t. Skim off the joy, and precisely what remains?