DNC Anoints Kamala Harris As A Commander In Chief Ready To Lead

CHICAGO ― The biggest X-factor for any presidential candidate is a simple question consultants like to ask: Can you picture this person as president – the kind of person with the dignity and seriousness needed to run the largest military on earth and handle difficult conversations with foreign leaders while sitting at the Resolute Desk?

Call it the 3 a.m. phone call test, as Hillary Clinton put it in a 2008 campaign ad, describing the qualities needed to have confidence in a leader’s ability to handle a crisis under pressure.

On Thursday night, political leaders, military veterans and law enforcement officials came together to portray Vice President Kamala Harris as a proven leader capable of serving as commander in chief on day one.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer laid out something like the 3 a.m. call scenario explicitly in her remarks. The state executive affectionately known as “Big Gretch” conjured a situation where a busy parent gets a news alert about a terrible incident that has occurred in the country. The person would stop everything to check on family members’ safety ― and then their mind might drift to thinking about who is in the White House.

“What if it’s him? What if it’s that man from Mar-a-Lago?” Whitmer asked.

“I know in a crisis we need someone strong enough to come up with a plan, to tell the truth and to bring people together,” she added. “Why don’t we choose the leader who’s tough, tested and a total badass!”

Of course, the evening’s speakers had to balance raising weighty concerns about former President Donald Trump’s fitness for high office with a consistent theme of mocking him as a lightweight and laughingstock.

“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” Harris said. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.”

Here are five other takeaways:

A number of military veterans who spoke characterized Trump as a troop basher, bringing up his private description of fallen service members as “suckers” and “losers” and his mockery of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for getting shot down during the Vietnam War.

“We, veterans, represent the best of our country. We stand united as veterans, Democrats and patriots to fight for everyone who served,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Marine veteran and Democratic Senate nominee, as he was flanked by dozens of elected Democrats who served in the military. “But politicians like Donald Trump, they don’t stand with us. They call patriots like Sen. McCain ‘losers.’ Sen. McCain was a hero. Show some respect.”

Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defense and CIA director, also emphasized Trump’s lack of interest in promoting democracy as part of the United States’ foreign policy.

“We face a critical choice: to vote for someone who stands with our military and stands up for democracy or someone who will disrespect our heroes and undermine our democracy,” Panetta said. “My fellow Americans, there is only one choice. And let me tell you something, when she takes her oath of office, as she will this January, our allies will cheer, our enemies will fear and we will have a commander in chief that we can trust.”

Convention-goers waved American flags that had been distributed, making camera shots of the crowd look like a sea of patriotic fervor.

Harris added a third argument still about Democrats’ superior commitment to the country, faulting Republicans for being down on the United States and continuing her campaign’s embrace of patriotic liberalism.

“Our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America ― talking about how terrible everything is,” Harris said. “Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are; show them who you are!”

Strategists in both political parties have said their primary job in recent months has been to define Harris and have backed up their statements by spending tens of millions of dollars on television advertising to do just that. Though elements of each of the prior three nights of the convention focused on telling the American people about just who Kamala Harris is, the focus was even more pronounced on Thursday, with a particular emphasis on her prosecutorial career.

Two governors with prosecutorial experience ― North Carolina’s Roy Cooper and Massachusetts’ Maura Healy ― testified about working with Harris, as did a woman who worked with her in the San Francisco district attorney’s office at the start of Harris’ career. Multiple speakers, including Cooper and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), testified about Harris’ work on a lawsuit against big banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

“Kamala Harris stepped up,” Warren said. “She enforced the law, fought the giant banks and delivered billions of dollars of help for families. And that’s the difference between a criminal and a prosecutor.”

And Harris’ relatives filled in more of the image for swing voters who know relatively little about the vice president. Ella Emhoff, Harris’ stepdaughter, talked about how Harris entered her life at age 14, which she joked was “famously a very easy time for a teenager.”

“She was patient and caring and always took me seriously,” Emhoff, now 25, said. “She never stopped listening to me, and she’s never going to stop listening to all of us.”

Harris’ speech seemed directly aimed at swing voters and moderate Republicans, seeking to alleviate concerns they might have about her ideology.

“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” Harris said. “A president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical and has common sense. And always fights for the American people.”

Of the four nights of the Democratic National Convention, Thursday seemed most clearly aimed at the nation’s younger voters, with speeches focused on three of the favorite causes of millennials and Generation Z: climate change, gun violence and student loan forgiveness. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, delivered a speech largely centered on climate change.

“Fighting the climate crisis is patriotic,” Frost said. “Unlike Trump, our patriotism is more than some slogan on a hat. It’s about actually giving a damn about the people who live in this country ― because when you love someone, you want them to have clean air.”

The convention also aired a video featuring a family who benefited when President Joe Biden’s administration finally fixed the public service loan-forgiveness program. It also highlighted a student who helped start a debt strike against Corinthian College, a predatory for-profit college. The Biden administration eliminated those students’ debt.

As for gun violence, well …

There are clear attempts going on to moderate Harris’ image, with polling showing voters see her as more liberal than Biden. The campaign and allied outside groups are airing ads boasting she’ll crack down on a U.S.-Mexico border that voters see as porous and are playing up her work as a prosecutor who put criminals behind bars.

But the heavy focus on gun control Thursday, including emotional speeches from multiple relatives of mass shooting victims and a speech from former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was severely wounded in a mass shooting, shows the campaign is not considering backing down on gun violence as part of its move to the center.

“Parents everywhere reach out for their children,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter died in the mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, school in 2022. “I reach out for the daughter I will never hold again.”

This does show a strategic choice by the Harris campaign, likely indicating they are at least marginally more focused on winning the votes of Latino voters, Black voters, women and suburban voters ― whom polls show support stricter gun laws more than other groups ― than on keeping down Trump’s margins of support among men and voters in rural areas.

Although Democratic Party unity was on strong display throughout the convention, the one issue bitterly dividing the Democratic camp ― the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza ― reared its head in fits and starts. Pro-Palestinian activists held demonstrations and news conferences every day with convention delegates from the “uncommitted” movement, which withheld votes from Biden in primaries, leading an increasingly desperate last-minute effort to secure a speaking spot for a single Palestinian-American Democrat.

But although convention organizers on Wednesday featured Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, dual U.S. and Israeli citizens whose son Hersh is held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, they refused to accede to the uncommitted movement’s request for a Palestinian-American speaker. That impasse prompted a sit-in outside the United Center arena on Wednesday night and a lot of media attention that top Democrats would have sooner avoided.

What’s more, convention speakers rarely mentioned the carnage in Gaza ― and U.S. policy in the region ― more than in passing. When they did speak about it, they tended to stay broad, emphasizing the need for a negotiated cease-fire without clarifying if they would like to see a change from Biden’s current policy. Biden has voiced his disagreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in private and in public but has been reluctant to impose material consequences to get Israel to comport itself differently.

In her speech, Harris spoke with eloquent compassion about the death and violence on both sides that many have found lacking from Biden.

“Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” Harris said. “At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost ― desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

Pro-Palestinian activists have understandably warmed to Harris’ rhetoric, which can feel more sensitive than Biden’s on this topic. But she did not indicate on Thursday night whether or how she would depart from Biden on policy in the Middle East, and observers noted she switched from the active to passive voice when describing the destruction Israel has wrought on Gaza.

“President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” she concluded.

Sure enough, the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, a pro-Palestinian group, characterized the speech as inadequate.

“Tonight from the DNC stage Harris called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but she failed to commit to the change in policy that would secure a ceasefire: ending weapons transfers to Israel,” the group said in a statement. “To be clear: there is no way to end this bloodshed while supplying Israel with billions of dollars in weapons as it indiscriminately bombs Palestinian families, schools, hospitals, refugee shelters, and places of worship.”