Tom Minear: Why Kamala Harris is starting to sound like Joe Biden

The Vice President is now making her closing argument to voters, and by calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy, Tom Minear argues she is copying the President before he dropped out.

Kamala Harris is so determined to make next week’s presidential election a referendum on Donald Trump that she is starting to sound like Joe Biden.

Fortunately for her, she is not mixing up names and losing her train of thought – although she does keep plating up word salads when faced with questions for which she should have crisp answers.

The more striking similarity between the Vice President and the President is in tenor rather than tone. Her closing argument to the American people replicates Mr Biden’s pitch for a second term: that Mr Trump is a threat to democracy who is unfit to be president.

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at the Wings Event Center on October 26 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Picture: Brandon Bell/Getty Images/AFP

Ms Harris will make that case this week in a speech dripping with symbolism at the Ellipse, the park near the White House where the former president told his supporters to “fight like hell” on January 6, 2021, fuelling the violent invasion of the US Capitol.

What happened that day is a powerful reason to reject Mr Trump. Democracy is in peril if a leader undermines the integrity of elections and denies the peaceful transfer of power.

But the conventional wisdom when Mr Biden dropped out was that his framing of the race would no longer be enough, not when voters were instead preoccupied by the cost of living and illegal immigration.

“This campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump,” Ms Harris told campaign staff in her first remarks after taking over the Democratic ticket. “Preach,” someone shouted back.

US President Joe Biden holds US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris hand after delivering the keynote address on the first day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago on August 19. Picture: Robyn Beck / AFP

In the weeks after that, she talked about hope and joy, about her plans for an opportunity economy, about new ideas and fresh leadership and turning the page. Now, in a race that is essentially tied, Ms Harris appears to have decided Mr Biden had the plan to win after all.

It must be said that this worked in congressional elections two years ago. Ignoring sceptical pundits, the President targeted the democratic threat posed by Mr Trump’s allies, and the Democrats surprisingly averted a Republican red wave. Abortion was the other decisive issue, and Ms Harris is also seizing on that now more effectively than Mr Biden ever did.

The Vice President has spent most of her working life in courtrooms, so she knows how to make a closing argument. In this case of the prosecutor versus the felon, however, just as many jurors like him as they do her. At least she doesn’t need a unanimous verdict.

Originally published as Tom Minear: Why Kamala Harris is starting to sound like Joe Biden