Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech was a call for a new path forward, to a country where a woman’s job is commander-in-chief. It was also a callback to the past, to her immigrant mother who joined America’s fight for freedom and taught her daughter to never let anyone define her, but to define herself on her own terms.
Over a 40-minute address that unfolded in stories about her career as a tough prosecutor, inspired both by a close friend’s plight and civil rights legends and in stories about her time in the White House, Harris spoke not in soaring oratory, but in a conversational way.
If a perennial question for women is how to run for office without seeming too shrill or too ambitious or too something, (there is always something — see Hillary Clinton’s critics) then Harris has figured this out, simply by being herself, laugh and all. She looked and sounded like an American president, forceful in her defense of democracy and proud of the nation’s ability to inspire the world and renew its promise.
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