I stand before you today to proudly announce I am now officially the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. In less than 48 hours after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Vice President Harris secured enough support to secure the Democratic nomination, propelling her not only to the top of her party but into pop culture. Democrats are moving forward stronger and more united than ever before. Kamala has the backing of every color, every nationality, everybody in the nation. She's also like a really dynamic candidate, especially for younger people like us. We're in Atlanta, Georgia. When President Biden was on the ballot, Democrats had basically conceded to losing this state. Now that it's Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats say all seven swing states are back in play. And with Tim Walz on the ticket, it could shore up even more Midwestern votes. He's the governor of Minnesota. He has a military background.

The Trump campaign has been really surprised by how quickly Harris has consolidated power in the Democratic Party. They have spent the last few weeks really struggling to define her. Kamala Harris is well known, but she is not well defined. People know her name, but they don't really know much about her. She's not somebody I've researched too in depth. She's kind of laid low, but that's kind of what Vice Presidents do. You're going to see just an incredible effort into both Democrats and Republicans defining her in the ways they want those voters to see her. The uncertainty surrounding Harris' policies also appears to be working in her favor. At the end of the day, it feels like a breath of fresh air, which I'm really excited for. Everyone is enthusiastic and excited about the future rather than looking back at the past. In Georgia, Trump and his allied super PAC have booked $14.7 million in advertising through the end of August, according to AdImpact.

But Harris' fundraising machine pulls in $310 million in July, giving her a hefty cash advantage. Her campaign claims grassroots donors accounted for much of the initial surge. Groups like March For Our Lives and unions such as United Auto Workers, along with prominent donors from Hollywood and Wall Street, have endorsed her. We've always known that this was going to be a really close election in this state, right? You're talking about a state that was won by less than 12,000 votes in 2020. For the last few months, we have been building our ground operation. We've been bringing new volunteers into this campaign. Get out the vote efforts have also mobilized. You can share with your peers to going out there and make a big difference. There's a lot more people on the fence or kind of wondering, is this really the right decision? Do you think Harris has any particular appeal to the coalition that is in Georgia - to young voters,

to black voters? Absolutely. The work that she's already done, fighting for Georgia families, the work that she's already done on student loan debt forgiveness, on growing the economy. Based on the initial polling that we've seen out of swing states. Harris so far has not been tagged with inflation the same way Biden was. That gives her a huge opening, I think, to really talk about the economy in a positive way. Some of the things she's going to emphasize are going to be expanding the child tax credit, helping working families, helping caregivers, some of the things that Biden wanted to do initially in his first term that he wasn't able to pass through Congress. The economy has consistently ranked as the most important issue for swing state voters. But for others, immigration and abortion are priorities. The Trump campaign is trying to paint Harris as the, quote unquote, border czar.

President Biden, early in his presidency, put her in charge of relationships with a bunch of the countries south of the border to try to build up their economies and their political system and make them more stable so that migrants were less likely to leave those countries. It is certainly a very tall assignment, and one that she couldn't necessarily succeed in, just because you only have so much control over what other countries do. Harris has talked about how if she was elected, she would sign this border security bill into law. It actually was getting some traction on the Hill. But Donald Trump really made it clear to Republicans that he did not want this to be passed, and he effectively killed it from the outside. He wanted immigration to remain a political vulnerability for Democrats heading into November. On abortion, this was never an entirely comfortable issue for President Biden. He has very deeply held religious beliefs. So when Dobbs was overturned and the federal right to an abortion

was overturned. He definitely came out and condemned it, but not as forcefully as some Democrats had wanted. Now, enter Vice President Harris. You know, she is looking for a new issue outside of immigration, and she really latched on to abortion and reproductive rights. Kamala Harris understands it's our bodies. It's our choice. Childcare, paid family leave - these are critical economic issues that families struggle with. There are states that are going to have initiatives on the ballot that will absolutely focus on access to abortion. Arizona being a really prime example of that. It's a battleground state. It's a state where you have a competitive Senate race. Both parties are really fighting for sort of the middle age suburban women vote. And having Harris be such a strong messenger on abortion really is going to give her a huge leg up over Trump with courting this voting bloc. I don't want someone else telling my daughter what to do with her body.

As a dad, I want to be the only person that tells her what to do, and then she'll ignore me. But as for somebody, a third party putting their beliefs, their attitudes, or my kid - it’s a breach of freedoms and it drags this country back. One of the very first ads that Democrats put out was an ad in which the term freedom is used a lot, and Beyonce's song “Freedom” is playing in the background. The message overall, not just being - this is about abortion rights. The message of the Democrats will be, we're here to protect the many freedoms that a Trump presidency would put at risk. I'm like really opposed to Trump. He's the reason that I think that fascist movements in the United States have been emboldened to do the things that they do. Certain parts of the Democratic base certainly see Trump as a major threat to democracy, and that message really resonates with them.

In 2020, I'm one of the people that Trump tried to steal my ballot. He literally tried to have around 200,000 ballots thrown out. Of all the people to run against Trump now - it's a prosecutor, which is perhaps ironic justice. For Democrats, they want to introduce her as the tough-on-crime prosecutor, rather than allowing Republicans to define her as this sort of left-wing California liberal. I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week. Harris' record as a prosecutor sparked controversy in her first presidential bid. But now that she's up against Trump, a convicted felon, those criticisms have mostly faded. However, her campaign must still avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Her presidential run in 2020, I think, is interesting to talk about just because there offers some similarities to kind of what is happening now. People were extremely excited about her candidacy, but as she

campaigned. Her campaign staff was plagued by a lot of infighting. There were so many stories her first two years as vice president about staff turnover and sort of chaos in her office. I will say the last two years she has a new chief of staff. The people around her have stayed much more constant, and I think she did find her footing as a vice president. Another hurdle, but also a potential asset, is the wide range of issues Democrats find most important. So part of Harris's challenge is uniting all of these different factions of the Democratic Party. I would like to see Harris' policies focus a little bit more on reducing income inequality in this country. With what's happening right now in Palestine - this is something that I can’t vote for. We have to find new sources of clean energy. We have to get away from gasoline. I am a Type 1 diabetic, and I struggled with paying for my insulin for years.

So it's really important to me to see that we have policies in place to protect Americans with chronic illness. She can't tell people that inflation isn't real. She can't say that nothing on the border mattered, but she can re-energize and reframe the terms of the debate in a way that Biden was never going to be able to do. Success for Harris will mean sustaining the momentum that's been fueling her historic run. I get chills when I think about that, just being a part of history. You feel that energy. Understanding that we have someone who represents our communities. Vice President Harris is someone that people, if you asked a month ago, they probably would have said that the country is not ready for a black South Asian daughter of immigrants president. But now people are rethinking that, and they're like, oh my gosh, this could actually happen, and I could be a part of it.

How Kamala Harris Is Recharging the Democratic Party

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