US Vice-President Kamala Harris on Monday kicked off her presidential campaign, saying of her Republican rival that "I know Donald Trump's type" from dealing with cheats, fraudsters and abusers of women in her previous career as a public prosecutor.
Harris also framed the contest as one between two visions. One vision, hers, "focussed on the future" and the second, Trump's, "focussed on the past".
Harris spoke forcefully and energetically during her first visit to her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, with President Joe Biden joining in on the phone from one of his homes where he is recovering from a Covid-19 infection.
Harris has adopted Biden's campaign and staff and his administration's achievements, hoping to use the next 100 or so days to the close of polling to conduct a historic race. Biden appealed to the staff to "embrace" Harris and work as they would for him.
Harris's speech was received with whoops of encouragement and enthusiasm with a top official acknowledging at the top the campaign had raised $81 million in just 24 hours since her elevation to the top of the ticket.
Democrats are looking energised and are rallying behind the Vice-President in growing numbers shrugging off self-doubts that had seized them since Biden's shocking bad performance in the first presidential debate.
The campaign said it has enrolled more than 20,000 new volunteers. "In those roles," Harris said, recounting for the audience her career as a public prosecutor from a district court in Alameda to being the Attorney General of California, "I took on predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheats who broke the rules for their gain. So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type."
The audience cheered her on with loud whoops after every few words. "As a young prosecutor when I was in the Alameda County District Attorney's office in California, I specialised in cases involving sexual abuse," Harris said.
"Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for committing sexual abuse." She was referring to a defamation case won by a columnist E. Jean Carroll, who had alleged she was raped by Trump decades ago in an upmarket New York mall.
"As attorney general, California (I) took on one of our country's largest for-profit colleges and put it out of business," she said. "Donald Trump ran a for-profit college Trump University that was forced to pay $25 million to the students it scammed."
"As a district attorney to go after polluters. I created one of the first environmental justice units in our nation," Harris said. "Donald Trump stood in Mar-a-Lago (his current home in Florida) and told Big Oil lobbyists, he would do their bidding for a $1 billion campaign contribution."
"During during the foreclosure crisis," she said referring to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, "I took on the big Wall Street banks and won $20 billion for California families. Holding those banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of 34 counts of fraud."
Harris went on to further define the contest with Trump as a battle of two contrasting visions for America. "Make no mistake, all of that being said this campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. Our campaign has always been two different versions of what we see as the future of our country, two different visions for the future of our country. One focused on the future, the other focused on the past."
Trump, she said, wants to take our country backwards "to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights".
"We believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. We believe in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every person can buy a home, start a family and build wealth and where every person has access to pay family leaving affordable childcare. That's the future. Together we fight to build a nation where every person has affordable healthcare, where every worker is paid fairly, and where every senior can retire with dignity. All of this is to say building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency."
"When our middle class is strong, America is strong," Harris said, echoing a long-running theme favoured by Biden. "Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedom," she said, laying out her election prime.
"Generations of Americans before us have led the fight for freedom from our founders, to our farmers to the abolitionists and the suffragettes to the Freedom Riders and farm workers. And now I say, team. The baton is in our hands. We who believe in the sacred freedom to vote. We who are committed to fight to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the freedom to vote."
"We will believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence and that's why we will work to pass universal background checks, red flag laws and an assault weapons ban. We will fight for reproductive freedom knowing if Trump gets the chance he will sign a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state but we are not going to let that happen."
(With inputs from IANS)
