Unlock the US Election Countdown e-newsletter without spending a dime
The tales that matter on cash and politics within the race for the White Home
Kamala Harris vowed to do all the things in her energy to defeat Donald Trump in a stirring speech to marketing campaign staffers during which she pledged to supply People a “brighter future” in contrast with the “chaos, worry and hate” proposed by her Republican rival.
The US vice-president was talking in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday, the primary full day since President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and endorsed her for the Democratic presidential nomination, shaking up the 2024 race for the White Home.
Harris’s feedback got here after she secured the backing of dozens of lawmakers and probably the most senior Democrats in Washington, together with former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, making her the overwhelming frontrunner to win the get together’s presidential nomination.
The vice-president’s momentum was buoyed by a surge in fundraising: in the course of the first 24 hours of her marketing campaign, she collected a document $81mn in contributions — greater than Biden raised within the first two months of his personal bid.
“Within the days and weeks forward I, along with you, will do all the things in my energy to unite our Democratic get together, to unite our nation, and to win this election,” Harris mentioned.
Harris shortly took the battle to Trump, saying that as a prosecutor in California earlier than she was elected to the Senate after which the vice-presidency, she had come throughout “perpetrators of all types”, together with “predators” who had abused girls, in addition to “fraudsters” and “cheaters”. “Hear me once I say, I do know Donald Trump’s kind,” she mentioned.
However Harris added that the main target of her marketing campaign for the Oval Workplace can be broader. “Donald Trump desires to take our nation again to a time earlier than a lot of our fellow People had full freedoms and rights. However we imagine in a brighter future that makes room for all People,” she mentioned, asking: “What sort of nation will we wish to reside in? A rustic of freedom, compassion and rule of legislation? Or a rustic of chaos, worry and hate?”
Harris’s remarks had been preceded by a reside telephone intervention by Biden, who’s sick with Covid-19 at his vacation dwelling on the Delaware coast. “The identify has modified on the prime of the ticket. However the mission hasn’t modified,” the president informed the marketing campaign employees. To Harris, he mentioned: “I’m watching you, child. I like ya.”
Many Democratic donors had been thrilled by Biden’s choice to step apart, describing his age as a significant legal responsibility that might have introduced down many different Democrats in Congress in addition to dooming the White Home race. Most had been inspired by the prospect of Harris taking the stage on the Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago subsequent month.
The Harris marketing campaign mentioned that greater than 888,000 folks had donated within the day since she was endorsed by Biden, of whom 60 per cent had not given cash on this election cycle.
The astonishing one-day haul was greater than Biden attracted in his first 66 days on the marketing campaign path final yr, greater than he pulled in from a Hollywood fundraiser hosted by George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and greater than three presidents — Biden, Invoice Clinton and Barack Obama — raised collectively at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York.
It additionally exceeded Harris’s fundraising in the course of the entirety of her ill-fated 2020 presidential marketing campaign, and topped the mammoth haul Trump’s marketing campaign reported the day after he turned the primary ex-president to change into a convicted felon.
Throughout her speech in Wilmington, Harris mentioned she had requested Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s marketing campaign chair, to take cost of her presidential bid. She added that Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s marketing campaign supervisor, would additionally keep on.
Harris can be hoping that her entry into the race will give a jolt to the get together’s prospects of taking again the White Home by energising girls, and younger, Black and Hispanic voters, in addition to drawing help from unbiased and swing voters turned off by Trump.
Nevertheless it may nonetheless be troublesome for Harris to make positive aspects in opposition to the Republican nominee, who has constructed a strong edge in polling since Biden’s disastrous efficiency of their televised debate final month and after surviving an assassination try.
Trump marketing campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita on Monday launched a memo saying Biden’s choice had modified nothing.
“The liberal elite and deep state — sensing the American public’s disgust with their lawfare, and now in a determined Hail Mary — have swapped out an incumbent President for the incumbent vice-president in a ploy to attempt to shake up the race,” they wrote.
They added: “The issue for the left and media elite? Kamala Harris is as unhealthy, if not worse, than Joe Biden.”
US Election Countdown
Signal as much as our US Election Countdown e-newsletter, your important information to the twists and turns of the 2024 presidential election