Opinion

Did Kamala Harris meet the moment?

With me are my wonderful colleagues Michele L. Norris and David Von Drehle, who both know something about campaign speeches, having heard about a thousand of them.

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Matt Bai: I want to start out the same way I did when David and I talked about Donald Trump’s acceptance speech last month. What grade would we give Harris’s speech tonight, and why? Michele, you first!

Michele Norris: Tactically, it was a very strong speech. A story of contrasts. She introduced herself to the public by explaining her biography and leaned hard into the storyline that she is descended from people who chose America. A contrast to a party that is using immigration as a cudgel.

Matt: David?

David Von Drehle: A-plus. The best since Bill Clinton’s “Man From Hope” remarks in 1992. The bedeviling trick in these things is to match the poetry on the page to the authentic voice of the speaker. For example, people wrote beautiful speeches for John McCain, but they never sounded like John McCain. This was a brilliant speech that sounded completely believable in her voice.

Michele: She was steady and strong and passed the commander in chief test. And the contrast between her and Trump could not be more clear in explaining that she has spent a career in public service working for the people. She was at her strongest halfway through when she went into prosecutor mode. That is clearly her comfort zone, and we got a glimpse of what a debate between Harris and Trump would look like. She will be criticized because the speech was short on specifics and her comments on Gaza will not lower the temperature. But on national security, she was strong and resolute regarding America’s standing and her ideals of what a future America should be.

David: The great lines are worth noting, but perhaps more salient was the rockiest, most perilous passage: her 5.0 degree-of-difficulty straddle on the war in Gaza. She charged right in and defended Israel, and just as it felt as though the room might split, she affirmed the humanity and suffering of the Palestinians. She then moved into a peroration on the subject that everyone was able to cheer for. And, behold, she had her boat through the impossible strait.

Matt: I agree. That was the one moment when I thought she almost lost part of her crowd, and she managed to keep them on board. I’m going to give her an A. She had two jobs tonight, I think: One, to tell her own story and reintroduce herself to the electorate as an inspiring figure, and two, to at least meet the minimum standard for a real governing vision, given how little time she had to put that together. I thought she did both of those things quite well and probably exceeded expectations. And the Beyoncé song was awesome. The only reason I’d withhold the “plus” is because I’m a hard grader, and also I thought the economic section, which matters, felt dutiful and squishy. Wanting to build the middle class is not an agenda. But that’s a small complaint.

David: That moment about Gaza was when I realized how much better she has gotten since her debut on the presidential campaign stage five years ago. And, indeed, one theme of this convention for me is that people can learn to be better speakers. Michelle Obama was solid when we met her; on Tuesday night, she was extraordinary. Pete Buttigieg was tedious five years ago; now, he is charming. And Harris, a very average speaker. To go back to that perilous passage, if she had paused for a moment to acknowledge or push back or even listen to the grumblings that were audible in the room, she could easily have created the negative sound bite to define the night. But she kept going, realizing that momentum was on her side and that the room wanted her to succeed and to bring them back to their bliss. A few people are born with that confidence, but several speakers this week have shown that it can be acquired through hard work and practice.

Matt: It’s interesting you mention the debate, Michele, because I think this night was really a warm-up for that one. That’s when I think Americans will really take their measure of her. If she comes through the debate as strongly as she did this speech, the election will be hers to lose. Also, Michele, as I was watching Harris speak tonight, I kept thinking about what it must be like for women of color to witness this moment. We saw some clips of that emotion in the audience, too. Did that affect you?

Michele: People will naturally focus on what her candidacy means to Black voters, immigrant voters and Black women in particular. But I am curious about how her message and her ascendance will land with White women. Let us remember that in the past two elections, a majority of White women voted for Donald Trump. Things are different in a post-Dobbs world, but this is tricky terrain for Harris. And it is interesting that she didn’t lean into her potentially history-making role as the nation’s first female president in an attempt to appeal to (White) women. Her closing argument focused on her competency and Trump’s contempt for democracy and American norms.

Matt: Really, after Hillary Clinton’s speech on Monday, there was very little talk, if any, about the proverbial glass ceiling. But women are obviously very much aware. Probably better to leave it unsaid.

Michele: That said, with only 74 days left, the Harris-Walz team has to harness that enthusiasm and figure out how to fuel their ground game because that is where elections are won and lost.

Matt: It’s kind of amazing to think that President Joe Biden was still running less than six weeks ago, isn’t it? It felt like he was completely out of mind on Thursday. The party pivoted so quickly.

David: Another way to think about this speech and this convention: Every poll going back to 2015 has shown that a majority of Americans would prefer not to vote for Trump. The people who put him over the top the one time he won were people who wished they’d had an alternative. Given that, the test for Harris and the Democrats this week was: Is this an attractive alternative for people who don’t want to vote for Trump? If so, Harris wins. I think she did herself a lot of good by that measure.

Matt: Maybe Adam Kinzinger did her some good on that score, too. I thought his moral clarity when speaking to fellow Republicans was really striking. He did not mess around.

David: A couple of my Republican friends raised the roof for Kinzinger in texts.

Matt: You guys get a lot of texts. I’m not that popular.

David: You have to give to get, Matt.

Matt: Sounds like a lot of the people chatting on our site thought Harris’s speech was too heavily weighted toward the hall, rather than audience at home. I really didn’t. But perhaps she too could have made a more explicit pitch to conservatives. It was an opportunity.

David: What do we even mean by “conservatives” in this context? I am very conservative on things like patriotism, self-discipline, honesty, freedom, thrift. I think she spoke to those. For people who think “conservatism” means Trump, there is no way to talk to them. That’s like saying war is peace. Trump is the least conservative president of my lifetime and maybe ever. He is a shocking radical.

Matt: True. I think we’re talking about cultural conservatives, right? People who don’t trust the left on social issues but would rather not vote for Trump.

David: What issues are those when you get down to it? Abortion and same-sex marriage. The religious conservatives have the wrong end politically on both of them. Tim Walz ended the culture war for this cycle on Wednesday with five words: “Mind your own damn business.” That has always been the default position of the American people.

Matt: “Mind your own damn business” and “Kamala for the people” were the two best slogans to come out of this week for Democrats. I’d keep them both for the duration. One other thing that struck me about this convention: There’s always been this central imbalance in the Democratic Party. It relies so heavily on a huge majority of Black voters, but the top echelon of the party was always overwhelmingly White. It struck me several times this week that something had really shifted there. You saw and heard a party in which Black leaders were prominent and in charge.

Michele: Yes. Black leadership and influence in the party are evident. But I wonder whether the Democrats missed a chance to make more overt outreach to the Latino diaspora.

Matt: It felt to me like a party that was no longer trying to downplay a critical constituency to broaden its appeal. There were an awful lot of Latino voices and faces, too. But I feel like that’s been true for 20 years. Let’s wrap it up with one last question for you both: Did you have a favorite moment from the week as a whole? Something that stands out? Or that seemed especially terrible?

David: I was impressed that Biden bravely delivered a speech so bad that he took off the table any possible thought that pushing him out was a mistake.

Michele: One thing that had struck me throughout the convention is the running threads of empathy and joy. If we were playing a drinking game where you had to sip every time someone mentioned those words, we would all be more than a little tipsy. This is striking to me. Seems that Democrats might have worried more about being labeled as namby-pamby, softie liberals in the past. Not anymore. Let’s face it. Even if you don’t dig the rhythms or the policy or the diversity in the room, this is a party that knows how to create a space that is based on optimism and joy.

Bai: I was playing the “inflation” drinking game. And I’ve been stone cold sober all week.