Kamala Harris’s first few weeks as the Democrats’ 2024 godsend have been fun, but the drumbeat to get serious is growing louder. The New York Times: “Trump’s tax plan could add trillions to the national debt. Harris’s is a mystery.” The New Yorker: “Harris’s campaign Web site, meanwhile, does not even have a policy section, or an articulation of beliefs.” The Washington Post: “If she hopes to prevail, Ms. Harris needs to present her ideas.”
Well, as luck would have it, there’s a perfect opportunity just around the corner to satisfy those demands for specifics at an event in which Harris will have the stage to herself and tens of millions of people will be listening to her every word. She is, of course, the star and the closing speaker of the Democratic National Convention and can use the spotlight to explain all the policy details she’d pursue if she were elected president of the United States…
Nah.
On Friday, before the convention, Harris will lay out a bit of economic policy substance during a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. But she is unlikely to use the podium in Chicago next week to roll out proposals for changes to marginal tax rates or suggestions for how to end the carnage in Gaza. She will want to come across as serious, but she doesn’t want to puncture the joy balloon that has been energizing Democratic crowds and lifting her up in the polls.
Harris’s main goals next Thursday night will be to introduce herself to that large cross section of Americans who are not obsessive politicos but are just starting to pay attention to the race for the White House, and to sell herself to anyone unsure of her ability to lead the country. She will cite facts and examples from her record in public office to illustrate accomplishments. But Harris will probably lean most heavily on broad themes and visions while trying to forge a personal connection with voters by talking about her own compelling rise from humble roots: the child who grew up in a working-class Berkeley neighborhood as the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants to become California state attorney general, US senator, and vice president. “Telling her story as part of the larger American story and as an example of what is possible in this country is going to be inspiring,” says Jon Favreau, the former top speechwriter for Barack Obama who went on to cofound Crooked Media and cohost Pod Save America. “It’s also going to help inoculate her from the darker charges by Trump and JD Vance that she is other, that she is not like us.”
Retailing her biography for political purposes has not always come easily to Harris. “Men have no problem talking about how great they are,” says Ashley Etienne, who was a senior aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and to Vice President Harris. “Women want to talk about you. She had to get comfortable talking about herself. It’s very different than Barack Obama. I mean, he ran a whole tour talking about himself for two years before he ran for president.” Two Obama speech writing alumni, Adam Frankel and Megan Rooney, are leading the drafting of Harris’s convention speech as the Democratic nominee for president. Frankel had already been crafting a convention speech for Harris as the vice presidential nominee. “He’s very good at uplift,” says Favreau, who hired Frankel to work for Obama’s 2008 campaign. “He was close for a long time with Ted Sorensen, so Adam has a lot of JFK, RFK kind of style.” Rooney, who had been on President Joe Biden’s White House team, was hired as the Harris campaign’s director of speech writing. “Megan is, I think, the best in the business at bringing somebody’s humanity through in a speech,” says Dan Schwerin, who was director of speechwriting for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run, with Rooney as his deputy. “And having written for Hillary and for Michelle Obama, she knows as much as anyone about how to write for a strong woman leader.”
One tricky choice for Harris will be how much to go after the eminently mockable Donald Trump. Most attacks on the Republican nominee will likely come from the convention’s opening acts, including vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, creator of the Democrats’ “big weirdo” strategy. Yet Harris can’t entirely skip drawing a sharp contrast. “You don’t ever want to look like you’re afraid of taking on your opponent,” says Cody Keenan, Obama’s director of speech writing from 2013 to 2017. “And with somebody like Trump, who is abnormal, basically an overgrown bully, taking him on directly is the most important thing you can do.”
Another challenge is covering a lot of ground without putting everyone to sleep. It’s no accident that the most memorable Democratic convention speeches tend to be delivered by someone other than the presidential candidate. Ted Kennedy’s “the dream shall never die” in 1980, Mario Cuomo’s “a tale of two cities” in 1984, Jim Hightower’s “born on third base” in 1988, and Obama’s career-making 2004 stem-winder were all part of the undercard, because the lesser figures can stick to a narrower narrative.