CHICAGO – Before dropping his bid for reelection, President Joe Biden framed voters’ choice in November in dark and ominous terms, painting Republican nominee Donald Trump as a menace to American democracy and questioning whether the country could survive if he won.
The Democratic Party’s new nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, isn’t exactly shrinking from that message, warning in her Thursday night acceptance speech of “extremely serious” consequences of Trump returning to the White House.
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But Harris is putting her own spin on what has been a central messaging strategy for Democrats. Rather than focusing on the existential threat a second Trump term could pose to the country's foundational institutions and traditions, she is expanding Democrats' definition of what's at stake in this election: It's about preserving personal freedoms.
The fresh frame was on full display this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where attendees wrote their own definitions of freedom on handmade posters and Beyoncé’s anthem “Freedom” boomed through the loudspeakers. The convention dedicated a day’s theme to “fighting for our freedoms,” with special guest Oprah Winfrey suggesting those working to preserve reproductive rights are “the new freedom fighters.”
Harris drove the point home over and over as she summarized her promises to American voters.
“The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities and places of worship,” Harris said Thursday. “The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”
Experts say the Democrats’ more positive, personal appeal signals that the party is trying to boost morale and reclaim terms such as freedom and liberty — ideas that Republicans have spent years branding as their own.
“I think everybody on the Democratic progressive side is hungry and was just ready for that positive vision," said Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of national voting rights organization Fair Fight Action.
A word like freedom is “abstract enough” that people can project their own aspirations for the best version of American society on it, said Matthew Delmont, professor of history at Dartmouth College. He said it’s a smart strategy for Democrats to use phrases that Republicans have long deployed, though it doesn’t stop Republicans from defining the term in their own way.
Democrats at the convention said they understood why Biden had focused on the threat-to-democracy narrative. After all, it was his presidency that was jeopardized by Trump's lies about the 2020 election that led to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the transfer of power.
“But Kamala is all about the future and she can do that,” said Holly Sargent, a 68-year-old delegate from York, Maine. “She can accept that he was a warrior who got us to where we are, and now we need to focus on the future.”
Biden, who dropped out of the race last month after urgent pleas from within his party, seemed to accept his duty as a messenger of the campaign’s new theme. In his Monday convention speech, he said this election’s results will determine “whether democracy and freedom will prevail.”
Even as newly energized Democrats lean into personal freedom as a pillar of their campaign, the Trump camp isn’t willing to cede the messaging ground on that word, liberty or any other patriotic themes.
“It’s always good to see Americans express a love of our nation,” Trump senior adviser Brian Hughes said. “But a party that has opened our borders to drugs and crime, diminished our standing as a force for global peace and made it difficult for fellow Americans to afford the basics of life seems the exact opposite of patriotic.”
Shortly after Harris' acceptance speech, Trump sought to poke holes in the idea that she could provide positive changes for the country. He argued if she wanted change, she could have achieved it already in her current role as vice president.
"Why didn’t she do the things that she is complaining about?” he told Fox News shortly after her acceptance speech. “She could have done it three-and-a-half years ago. She could do it tonight by leaving the auditorium and going to Washington, D.C., and closing the border.”
Harris has particularly leaned into abortion access and reproductive issues as a main talking point since launching her campaign last month. Democrats see focusing on the freedom for people to make their own health care decisions as a winning play up and down the ballot, as they target Trump for boasting about nominating three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion two years ago.
The “freedom” narrative also has allowed Democrats to create a more expansive campaign message that includes an issue they often have struggled to address nationally — gun control.
In a solemn moment at the convention Thursday, five people whose lives had been touched by gun violence — including a teacher and a parent who spoke about the Sandy Hook and Uvalde school massacres — stood onstage together and shared their stories. Behind them, the words “FREEDOM FROM GUN VIOLENCE” stood out on the convention center's main screen.
“In pushing for freedom from gun violence, Vice President Harris is illustrating how dramatically the calculus has changed on this issue. What was once a political third rail is now being framed as an inalienable right,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a national advocacy group that works to fight gun violence.
To be sure, the Democrats’ national gathering did not represent a full pivot from their warning that American democracy is on the line in November. Several speakers, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, pointed to the need to guard American and distinctly democratic institutions. They also issued stark reminders of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in which Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, attacked police officers and sought to halt the certification of the 2020 election.
The bustling convention hall shared a rare quiet moment as video showing footage of the attack played onscreen.
Still, mentions of freedom outstripped those of threats to democracy, and “Freedom” signs often filled the area where the thousand of delegates were gathered. Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, never used the word “democracy” in his speech to the delegates on Wednesday while using “freedom” eight times.
As the race enters its final months, Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said Republicans are likely to focus on “darkness and danger, and we're going to be invaded on the border, and you can't afford groceries.”
Harris, meanwhile, wants voters to see the stakes of the election in terms of "the future and freedoms and not going backwards,” he said, adding that it taps into American ideals of optimism that often carry the day in elections.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO and a delegate at the Democratic convention, said Harris has been successful at outlining the stakes for voters in November while also maintaining that sense of hope and optimism.
“This isn’t some esoteric democracy kind of thing,” Shuler said. “It’s bringing it down to the ground, showing people how it relates to them and them seeing themselves in it.”
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Swenson reported from New York and Fields from Washington. Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.
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