Back to the Ellipse on a busy Tuesday night in America. Back to the open green just south of the White House and the memory of the shocking chaos and insurrection of almost four years ago as Kamala Harris sought to reclaim the terrain where Donald Trump had delivered his notorious rallying cry on the icy afternoon of January 6th, 2021.
As symbolic locations go, she could not have made a more pointed choice to offer what was billed as her closing message of this extraordinary election campaign. Something about the evening felt significant: the wheel had come full circle on a democratic tradition that seemed stretched to breaking point.
The Harris campaign brought the country back to a patch of green in Washington which is remembered as the source of the day when the foundations of the republic itself seemed to waver. They gave out confectionery and water and played everything from Abba to Salt ‘n’ Pepa and filled the Ellipse with the sound of people laughing and enjoying themselves.
If Kamala Harris is elected president next Tuesday, this night will become an indelible part of her history whenever it’s all written into the scrolls.
The campaign got lucky in that it was a heaven-sent evening in Washington, mild and crisply dry and the sky turning pink by 7pm as a staggeringly large crowd tried to navigate the closed-off avenues around the Ellipse in the hope of seeing the speech for themselves.
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The waiting line was stunning: many thousands had to listen and watch from outside the security fencing as some 75,000 people were on and around the National Mall. This was a World Series night in America, with the Yankees trying to avoid a sweep by the Dodgers in game four. But the show of support for Harris was intense and heartfelt and the crowd was rapturous in its reception when she appeared just after half past seven. And from the outset, she acknowledged the significance of the location as she sought to argue the case against Trump while calling for national harmony on a speech that all the broadcast channels carried live.
“Look, we know who Donald Trump is,” she said.
“He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election. An election that he knew he lost. Americans died as a result of that attack. One hundred and forty law enforcement officers were injured because of that attack. And while Donald Trump sat in the White House watching as the violence unfolded on television he was told by his staff that the mob wanted to kill his own vice-president. And Donald Trump responded with two words: ‘So what?’
“America, that’s who Donald Trump is. And that’s who’s asking you to give him four years in the Oval Office. Not to focus on your problems, but to focus on his.”
It was a bold, aggressive line of attack after what had been a seismic 48 hours in the campaign. Trump’s realisation of a long-cherished dream of a triumphant homecoming in Madison Square Garden on Sunday had by Monday blown into a raging controversy over an ugly joke made by a comedian that described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage”. The old cliche that US elections invariably contain an “October surprise” seemed redundant in a season where the summer months had already provided unimaginable shocks and surprises. But now an obscure comedian had managed to insult the home territory of some 500,000 voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania and the Republicans spent most of Monday and Tuesday explaining and distancing. But the potential damage will only show up in the election ballots.
Harris, wisely, did not labour that point here, mixing her condemnatory profile of Trump with a plea for amnesty among all political hues and persuasion.
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“Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him. People he calls – quote – ‘the enemy from within’. America, this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your lives better. This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power. Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That is who is, but America, I am here tonight to say: that is not who we are...
“America, for too long we have been consumed with too much division, chaos and mutual distrust. And it can be easy then to forget a simple truth. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America... In less than 90 days either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office. On day one if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected I will walk in with a to-do list... And I will work with everyone – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – to help Americans who are working hard and still struggle to get ahead.”
As a promise of future bipartisan cohesion, it was a world removed from some of the dismal, boorish rhetoric bellowed out by guest speakers like Tucker Carlson and Dana White in Madison Square Garden on Sunday, along with other grifters and hangers-on whose presence or words do nothing to further Trump’s cause. The mood at the Ellipse on Tuesday evening could not have been more mellow or friendly and the on-ground-optimism has not deserted the Harris campaign despite the sense, in recent weeks, that momentum has stalled.
And as she eased into her standard promises-to-keep-and-miles-to-go stump campaign speech, outlining her plans for tax reliefs, for home building, for Medicare, many thousands of those standing in the field might well have allowed their minds to wonder what it must be like to be Kamala Harris in these days. It was dark by eight o’clock and the event organisers had provided luminous wristbands to go with mini-US flags so that the entire scene looked magical and childlike as she spoke.
Harris can never hope to join the ranks of Reagan or Clinton or Obama or Kennedy in oratorial power or charisma. But then, she has had just 90 days to run and no practice runs and she has also been held to a different standard, to unprecedented judgments. No other Democratic candidate has experienced such a lurching transformation, from the much-maligned vice-president in Joe Biden’s ailing campaign to, in the space of an unforgettable few weeks, the symbol of a profound revivalist joy for the Democrats. And now, as the first woman since Hillary Clinton to seek election to the White House. And to stand, too, as a black woman pleading her case in the most fractious election in living memory, Harris is judged against that criteria and also by the fact that she is running against a candidate who has obliterated all of the old etiquette previously required of White House aspirants.
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So, who could watch and listen to Harris without wondering at the incredible burden and pressure this woman is operating through these days and weeks? And to wonder, too, what will happen if she falls those precious few votes short?
As Harris spoke, we could hear sirens blazing around the centre of Washington. Outside the perimeter, a big and noisy pro-Palestine protest was under way, a vocal reminder that the slaughter of innocents in Gaza may yet cost the Democratic campaign dearly. She kept her speech to just half an hour, the perfect length. And in closing she moved far away from the workaday, common worries of grocery bills and mortgages to offer a starry perspective of the Republic on a balmy night. The sound of her voice would have carried across to the Lincoln Memorial, to the lawn of the White House. So she swung for the fences.
“Nearly 250 years ago America was born when we wrested free from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing proved to the world that a government of, by and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us – the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmlands and factory floors, they did not struggle and sacrifice and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms. They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant. These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities. So America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love.”
The F-word has almost become the sole property of the Republican campaign since that shocking July evening in Butler when a deranged 20-year-old almost shot and killed Trump. Coming from Harris’s mouth, the word sounded less antagonistic: more of a plea to overcome the division that has riven this country.
It was all over by half past eight. And by then the news was circulating that President Joe Biden, asked to respond to the comedian’s slur on Puerto Rico, had said this: “The Puerto Ricans that I know are good decent honourable people. The only garbage I see out there is his supporters. His demonisation is unconscionable and un-American.”
A White House statement was later issued to claim Biden was referring to “supporter’s” in the singular. But the audio of his remarks sounded as though he referred to all Trump supporters as garbage and it is being depicted as such by the Republican campaign team. On it goes.
The timing was, to say the least, unfortunate for the Democrats. But it was an unconquerably powerful night for Kamala Harris in Washington: one of those speeches that will deepen and become enshrined if history tilts her way.
Up in the Bronx, the Yankees, and Dodgers, one of the great aristocratic and bitter rivalries in American sport, were still slugging it out until 11.30 at night. The Yankees avoided the sweep and that seemed like a blessing for all of America. The baseball season continues for another night, at least. Never has the distraction and rhythm of the national pastime been so welcome throughout the addled Republic.
