In battleground Wisconsin at her first campaign rally as the likely Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday sought to frame the rapidly transformed 2024 election as a fight for freedom.
“Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom,” Harris told an energized crowd of more than 3,000 people in Milwaukee. “And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands.”
The election, the vice president – who walked off the stage to “Freedom” by Beyoncé – told Wisconsin voters on Tuesday, was ultimately about a single question.
“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law or a country of chaos, fear and hate?” she said. “And here’s the beauty of this moment – we each have the power to answer that question.”
“The power is with the people,” she emphasized.
Harris noted she was fighting for the freedom to vote and to live safe from the “terror of gun violence” – by passing universal background checks, red flag laws and an assault weapons ban – as well as reproductive freedom.
The vice president on Tuesday also sought to paint her campaign as centered on the future, arguing the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, was focused on the past. She said she “believed in a future” where no child grows up in poverty, workers have the right to join unions, everyone has access to affordable health care and paid family leave and every senior can “retire with dignity.”
“So all of this is to say, building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said.
Harris also leaned into the contrast between her background as a prosecutor and Trump’s legal troubles, including his conviction in May in his New York hush money trial, reiterating a line she debuted on the first full day of her campaign on Monday while addressing staff at their headquarters in Wilmington, Del.
“Before I was elected vice president, before I was elected a United States senator, I was elected attorney general of the state of California and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then,” she told the crowd Tuesday. “And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds – predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said.
The vice president also criticized Trump for Project 2025 – the right-wing policy platform curated by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and crafted by Trump allies and former aides that the Harris camp has vigorously tried to tie to Trump, even as the former president has sought to distance himself from it.
“Like we know we got to take this seriously and can you believe they put that thing in writing?” the vice president asked the crowd Tuesday.
The rally came just two days after President Joe Biden, in a sudden and stunning move, dropped his reelection bid less than four months before November’s contest and instead endorsed his vice president for the role. In the hours since, the Democratic party – which has been embroiled in controversy and division for weeks following Biden’s debate performance last month – has appeared to swiftly coalesce around Harris.
The vice president came into the rally on Tuesday fresh off locking down enough support from Democratic delegates to be the party’s presidential pick – although she is not officially the nominee yet – and earlier in the day, got the backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
The event, which was already set to take place before Biden’s decision to drop on Sunday. had to be moved to a larger location due to the volume of RSVPs, a campaign official said.
Between Sunday afternoon, when Biden made his announcement, and Monday evening, the campaign brought in more than $100 million and saw 58,000 people sign up to volunteer, an official on her team said.
Harris was joined on Tuesday by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and a slew of other local Democratic Wisconsin officials.