107 Days

by Kamala Harris

Pivoting, I said that our campaign was about more than the stark contrast between my record and Trump’s. The campaign, I stressed, was about two very different versions of our country going forward, one focused on the future, one mired in the past. Trump wanted to take us back to failed trickle-down economics that had never done a thing to lift the middle class and instead brought only more inequity. He romanticized a time when freedom and rights were limited and denied to so many Americans. I was born into a fight for freedom and stood in that tradition. Freedom to vote, to control one’s own body, to breathe clean air and drink clean water, to be free from the fear of weapons of war on our city streets and in our children’s classrooms. Freedom from anxiety about health care costs, childcare costs, a retirement spent in poverty. Freedom to afford a home, build wealth, provide our kids a good education. The freedom not just to get by but to get ahead. And the freedom to simply be. Finally, I wrapped up with the kind of call-and-response familiar to me from the church of my childhood: “Do we believe in the promise of America?” The crowd affirmed it. “And are we willing to fight for it?” “Yes!” they cried. “And when we fight…” “We win!”