Kamala Harris’ campaign ended just as it began

Kamala Harris has spent nearly four years as president, but she is still trying to convince the public that she can be commander in chief.

That’s why, exactly a week before election night, she felt obligated make a closing speech voters who have the visual backing of the White House behind them.

Perhaps she feared that Americans were still afraid of shattering the country’s last and greatest glass ceiling. Or simply that a little over three months as a presidential candidate was not enough to convince voters that she belonged in the Resolute department.

Whatever the reason, the result was that Ms. Harris’s closing argument to voters lacked subtlety, but also substance.

Illuminating the columns of the building’s south portico behind her, she boiled the situation down to the voters: it was either her or Donald Trump. There was no other option.

“On day one, if elected, Donald Trump will walk into this office with a list of enemies,” she said. “I’ll come with a to-do list.”

The approximately 30-minute speech did not aim to rise to great oratorical heights. There were no dramatic rhetorical statements describing grandiose political ambitions. It was simply a warning that the alternative was worse.

“I’ll be honest with you: I’m not perfect,” she told those who had not yet voted. But the other option, she said, is “someone unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed by resentment and seeking unchecked power.”

On television screens broadcasting her remarks across the National Mall in Washington and across the country, Ms. Harris looked impressive. The carefully choreographed American flag scene and beautiful lighting of the White House grounds created a dramatic effect.

But for the tens of thousands of people who came to see the US vice president live, there was little in her speech that could excite them.

And they didn’t seem to expect it. With the race for the White House deadlocked, the crowd’s presence on the grassy ellipse appeared to be motivated more by fears of a second Trump term than enthusiasm for Ms Harris’s vision for the future.

This was the theme of the evening. Ms. Harris wasn’t trying to sell herself to voters, but she did remind them what Trump’s return to the building behind her would entail.

Standing on the same spot where the Republican urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” on Jan. 6, 2021, Ms. Harris reminded Americans how the former president “sent an armed mob… to overthrow the will of the people.” People”.

Few Washingtonians have forgotten the violence of that day or the scars it left on the nation’s psyche.

“America, we know what Donald Trump means. More chaos. More disagreement,” Ms. Harris said. “I propose another way. And I ask for your vote.”

Ms Harris’s campaign might do well to ask why, a week before Election Day, she is still effectively tied with a historically unpopular opponent.

But instead, in her “closing argument,” the Democrat relied on White House theatrics and a heavy dose of doom to woo the remaining undecided voters.

In seven days we will know if that were enough.

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