Kamala Harris Makes Her Closing Argument at the Ellipse
Approaching the Ellipse, a fifty-two-acre green space about a fifteen-minute walk from the White House, from the southeast, you might pass by a bronze sculpture that mysteriously appeared on the Mall last week. It’s a replica of Nancy Pelosi’s desk and it’s topped by a giant, swirled pile of poop. A plaque beneath it reads “This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”
In what’s by now become a familiar paradox, the art work, by some anonymous anti-Trump protest artist, is both a joke and entirely serious. It draws a contrast between the solemn beauty of the monuments and the ideals they stand for, on the one hand, and the disgrace of the January 6th riot, on the other. Almost four years ago, Donald Trump addressed a crowd of his supporters at the Ellipse. What happened next—the mob swarming a government building, at least four deaths during the insurrection and the immediate aftermath, a failed impeachment—is history. Kamala Harris’s camp chose the Ellipse as the site of her “closing argument,” the place where she’d make a final case for her Presidency. The rally, like the campaign itself, was an act of reclamation.
About fifty thousand people were expected to show up on Tuesday evening. The number ended up closer to seventy-five thousand, according to her campaign. One Democratic Party member told me that the sea of Harris supporters stretched all the way back to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, on Constitution Avenue. As with most galactically sized events, the getting-there was its own experience, and the tenor of overheard conversation changed as one’s distance to the venue shortened. Around Tenth and Eleventh Streets, pedestrians were discussing TV shows they wanted to watch, but as we passed 1420 New York Avenue, the mood changed. A man wearing a red lanyard and a speckled hat asked the doorman, who was tall and nattily dressed, “Who you gonna vote for?” “Trump,” the doorman replied. “Goddam right,” his interlocutor replied. “Kamala and the Democrats hate men.”
By the time I reached the White House lawn, attendees were ambling in every direction, and a low, accented voice was chanting over a reggae beat, “If you’re going to the rally, the shortcut is through the park.” I stopped to chat with James McDowell, who designs and sells politically themed clothing. One of his T-shirts featured a cartoon Harris in pearls, beaming and holding a pair of hot-pink Converse. McDowell was rooting for the Vice-President, he said, because “Trump is an idiot. He wants to bring the whole country down. I’d rather vote for someone who lifts us up.”
Up and down were the two directions of the night, along with backward and forward; later on, cries of “We won’t go back!” ricocheted around the park. Inside the Ellipse, an hour before the first speaker took the stage, Pretty Tammi the DJ was working the crowd. “Make some noise for Puerto Rico,” she called, cranking up “Let’s Get Loud,” by Jennifer Lopez. “We love you!” A few minutes later, hot jazz spilled from the speakers. “Anyone from Chicagooooooo?” Judging from the cheers, a lot of people were from Chicago. “If you are part of the Divine Nine,” Tammi shouted, referring to the council of the largest Black fraternities and sororities, “I want to see your hands up in the air right now.” A sea of miniature American flags waved. Rallygoers were taking every variety of selfie: mother-daughter, friend group, couple, large family. The signs read “Trump Makes Me Sick” and “USA” and “La Presidenta.” The buttons read “Mamas for Kamala” and “Hotties for Harris” and “We are NOT going back.” Bleachers ringed the theatre. Behind each bank of seats rose a blue billboard with the word “Freedom” on it; the effect was to evoke the Democrats’ aspirational “blue wall.”
Harris’s task for the night was tricky. The past several years have weakened the shock value of words like “fascist,” “rapist,” and “racist,” and yet she still needed to communicate the election’s stakes. She needed to conjure the monstrous potential of a Trump Presidency, and she needed to repudiate Trump in a speech that refreshed the country’s commitment to American values. But high rhetoric doesn’t often seem to dent Trump. He diminishes everything he touches. His essence simultaneously demands a scaled-up language and renders that language ridiculous. There is no myth or epic for the Trump situation; no surviving sequel to the Iliad in which Greek warriors openly cling to the wooden horse, brandishing their weapons and declaring death to the Trojans, and yet half of the Trojans want to drag the statue into the city anyway.
Throughout her campaign, Harris has found better luck with an approach rooted in pragmatism and joy. She is good at undermining Trump, verbally sweeping him to the side so that the adults can get down to business. This strategy makes her seem more down-to-earth, more in touch with voters worried about paying for groceries, child care, and housing. But the home stretch of the election requires a subtler balance between urgency and optimism. Harris has to sound the alarm about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies—she can’t not—while also offering concrete proposals for improving people’s lives.
The roster of speakers on Tuesday indicated that Camp Harris was aware of the challenge. They were what politicians call everyday or even “real” Americans, none of them famous, and each represented an issue that the Vice-President had promised to work on, or a constituency that she had promised to serve. Their testimonies underlined Harris’s support for abortion, affordable health care, small-business owners, military veterans. There wasn’t much high-flown rhetoric about the American character, although cumulatively the speeches expressed a deeper message, which was further reinforced by the brisk air and the color on the trees—it was time to turn the page.
A little before 7:30 P.M., Harris strode onstage, in a navy suit over a blouse that matched her signature pearl earrings. The opening of her address nodded to the historic nature of the imminent contest, and painted a picture of Trump as “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance, and out for unchecked power.” (At around this point, protesters shouting “War criminal!” and “Free Palestine!” briefly cut through the front of the standing area.) As the speech went on, though, Harris rotated position, without wholly abandoning her attack. She continued to punctuate her points with quick criticisms of her opponent. But the former President was no longer the focus. “It’s time,” she said, “to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms.” Next came a considered tour of her “to-do list,” threaded through with intimate personal details. There was her mother at the “yellow Formica table” covered in bills. There was the familiar stroller at the civil-rights rally. There was her career spent winning “tough fights” against “bad actors and powerful interests,” because “something about people being treated unfairly, or overlooked . . . just gets to me.” Prominent in Harris’s rhetoric were the words “dignity,” “honor,” and “pride.” Care work, she said, “is about dignity.” Owning a home “is not only a measure of financial security. It’s about the pride of your hard work.” Harris’s plans to cut taxes for “working people and the middle class,” she explained, reflect her belief “in honoring the dignity of work.”
