Kamala Harris’ speech tied in with a winning theme

Ultimately, what separates the standout politicians from the rest is the ability to connect with the American people. It sounds obvious, but it’s a much bigger challenge than it seems. Kamala Harris proved in her acceptance speech Thursday night that she understood the task.

She is already a unique presidential candidate, a biracial woman with a blended family, and she has faced attacks on her identity from Donald Trump and his allies.

What Harris did in her acceptance speech was tell her story and make it clear that she is completely within the American mainstream. What she told the audience was essentially, I am no different from you; I have the same roots as you; my life is the same as yours.

Her speech was essentially the same as three other past nominees who emphasized the importance of family and overcoming adversity, all of whom went on to win the presidency.

In 1988, George H. W. Bush downplayed his privileged life this way: “The war was over, and we wanted to get out and make it on our own. And those were exciting days. We lived in a little shotgun house, one room for the three of us. We worked in the oil business, and then I started my own house. In time, we had six children. We moved from the shotgun house to a duplex to a house. And we lived the dream — high school football on Friday nights, Little League, neighborhood barbecues.”

Grandson of a Wall Street investment banker? Son of a U.S. senator? No — Bush was just another one of the millions of World War II veterans, heading for a new life, in a new place, with the same common experiences.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s educational background — Georgetown, Oxford, Yale Law School — was described in polls as “elitist.” Clinton addressed that dilemma with a lengthy account of his family — not only of his struggling single mother, but also of his grandfather, who ran a small grocery store.

“My grandfather had only a high school education—an elementary school education—but in that country store he taught me more about equality in the eyes of the Lord than all my professors at Georgetown, more about the intrinsic worth of every individual than all the philosophers at Oxford, more about the need for equal justice under the law than all the lawyers at Yale Law School.”

In one paragraph, he rejected each of the three elite institutions he had attended, praising instead his family’s popular wisdom.

And in 2008, it was family that was the touchstone of Barack Obama’s message. American voters had never before been offered a black man, let alone one with the same middle name as a hostile dictator and roots that stretched from his father’s Kenya to Hawaii to the streets of Chicago.

In his speech, he connected the problems of “ordinary” Americans to those of his own family.

“In the faces of those young veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who enlisted after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton’s army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill. In the face of that young college student who sleeps only three hours before pulling the midnight shift, I think of my mother, who raised my sister and me alone while she worked and got her degree; who once went on food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.”

Each of these speeches achieved a political goal at least as important as any other: it was not about a laundry list of policy measures, but about a more visceral message: This is who I am, this is where I come from, and in the ways that matter: my story is your story.

It’s the same message Kamala Harris delivered on Thursday night.

She brought it up right away when she first told the story of her mother’s journey from India in her speech.

“It was mostly my mother who raised us,” she said. “Before she could finally afford a house, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay. In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the plains. We lived in the flats — a beautiful working-class neighborhood with firefighters and nurses and construction workers, all taking pride in tending their lawns.” (That last statement is about as middle-class as it gets.)

“We know that a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success,” she said. “And building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. This is personal to me. The middle class is where I come from.”

It was, in a sense, an innocuous speech, with claims that any candidate — well, almost any candidate — could make: a pledge to be “the president of all the people,” a claim to follow “the rule of law” and support “the peaceful transfer of power.”

Her prosecution case focused on criminals few would defend: predatory financiers, drug cartels. The villains that progressives like Bernie Sanders are suing — the billionaires, the corporate kingpins — were not in the picture.

Instead, she focused her ire most heavily on Donald Trump in her 35-minute speech — about a third the length of his rambling, discordant address to Congress — in which she described in graphic detail an opponent guilty of civil and criminal wrongdoing and determined to gain power to abuse it.

When she turned to her goals, some of what she offered was just as broad: create an “opportunity economy,” enact a tax cut for the middle class, build more housing. By contrast, in her blunt, forceful account of what the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade led and would lead under Trump, there was no doubt about that.

“Simply put,” she said, “(anti-abortionists) have gone crazy.” It’s Trump and his allies who are no longer in the mainstream, she argued.

It was also a not-so-subtle attack on Trump’s patriotism when she vowed to “always honor and never disparage” the service and sacrifice of the military.

If you were looking for a litany of policies, you’ll have to look elsewhere. But as a speech designed to tap into the broad impulses of the electorate, with repeated declarations of American greatness, and to present the nominee as a no-nonsense, tough-minded leader who shares the same values ​​as most Americans, it achieved its goal.