POLITICS: HARRIS TAKES STAR TURN AT DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION

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Kamala Harris will deliver the most crucial speech of her political career on Thursday, when she accepts the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago following a remarkable turnaround in the 2024 presidential election.

The 59-year-old US vice president will focus on positive “vibes” after igniting her party in a single dizzying month after President Joe Biden pulled out of the race.

Now, Harris will relate her personal experience to the American people, using her televised speech to the Democratic National Convention to contrast her optimism with Republican Donald Trump’s darker tone.

“When Kamala gets on stage we’re not going to stop. It’s going to blow the roof off,” said Amanda Taylor, a 47-year-old delegate from Missouri.

Democrats’ hopes are high, and Harris is pulling ahead in the polls, but they realise the battle is far from over.

Senior voices ranging from Barack and Michelle Obama to Bill Clinton have advised Harris this week that she faces a difficult fight to defeat the 78-year-old Trump.

Harris’ stunning ascension to the top of the ticket has also made her an unknown quantity to many US voters.

As the first woman, Black, and South Asian vice president in US history, she is now vying to become the country’s first female president, but her role has mainly kept her in the background during the last four years.

Harris will attempt to address this in her speech. She will discuss how she was raised by a working mother and understands the hardships that inflation-hit families face, according to a campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

She would then contrast her hopeful vision for America’s future with what her team describes as Trump’s dark, conservative proposals for a second term in the White House, according to the official.

During the Democratic convention, speaker after speaker has emphasised the concept of freedom as the party criticises Republican intentions to ban abortion and restrict democratic institutions.

On Wednesday, Harris’s energetic running mate Tim Walz formally accepted the party’s nomination saying that “Kamala Harris is going to stand up and fight for your freedom to live the life that you want to lead.”

But Harris has been short on policy announcements since taking over as Democratic standard-bearer, particularly when it comes to the economy, a key issue in the election.

Harris had to take advantage of her first major speech in a presidential setting as “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression,” political analyst Larry Sabato told AFP.

“Voters already have the Kamala vibes. Now they need the Kamala agenda,” said Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia. A lack of economic policy “can defeat her faster than the border,” he added.

But when it comes to vibes, the Democrats were in full on celebration mode.

Under Harris, the Democrats are unrecognisable from the party that was steeped in despair after 81-year-old Biden’s a catastrophic debate performance against Trump.

Former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle raised the roof in Chicago on Tuesday, with the ex-first lady declaring that under Harris “hope is making a comeback.”

On Wednesday former president Bill Clinton, television personality Oprah Winfrey and musicians Stevie Wonder and John Legend were the warm-up acts for Walz.

Biden’s farewell address on Monday, when Harris made a surprise appearance on stage to give him a hug, already seems like a distant memory.

If the transition has been head-spinning for Biden and the Democrats, it has completely unsettled Trump.

In a rollercoaster summer he has survived an assassination attempt, and then seen what he thought was certain victory turned on its head by a new and far younger appearance.

Trump will be in Arizona on the Mexican border on Thursday to push Harris’s weak spot on the issue of illegal immigration.