Kamala Harris's DNC speech claimed a new moment for progressive Democrats

The first note that Kamala Harris sounded in her first speech as the Democrats’ official vice-presidential nominee was not about Donald Trump, or Joe Biden, or the crossroads to which the country has arrived.

Instead Harris began her acceptance speech at the party’s national convention Wednesday by looking backwards, to the black women activists who fought historically for the right to vote and then for “a seat at the table”.

“We’re not often taught their stories,” Harris said. “But as Americans, we all stand on their shoulders.”

It was a powerful and graceful tribute to open a speech most often used for quickie biographical sketches to introduce candidates to the big convention audiences watching at home.

It also performed the magnificent trick, in turning the lens away from Harris, of underscoring for Democrats just how different the new vice-presidential nominee is from the party leaders of yore – and how well she might lead the party of tomorrow.

If Biden is elected president – which remains a significant if – the victory will be built on many shoulders. The question is who will be standing on them. The obvious answer, for a few years at least, would be Biden, the prospective Oval Office occupant.

But for some Democrats watching Harris’s acceptance speech at the national convention on Wednesday night, in which she spoke personally about racial justice, immigration and gender equality – exactly the key planks of the party platform – the identity of the new leader of the Democratic party was equally obvious, and it was not Biden.

“That I am here tonight is a testament to the dedication of generations before me,” said Harris, the first woman of color on a major-party presidential ticket. “Women and men who believed so fiercely in the promise of equality, liberty and justice for all.”

Just as Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and south Asian immigrants, embodies a future the Democratic party has aligned with – non-white, non-male, pluralistic, non-dynastic – her speech reached corners of the party identity that no one else in speeches to the convention, not even Barack Obama, could touch.

Harris’s acceptance speech had the familiar cadence of a political speech, but it was full of lines that were totally new in the mouth of an elected official on the presidential stage. Harris used the phrase “structural racism” to describe why black, Latino and indigenous people are “suffering and dying disproportionately” from Covid-19. She called out “the injustice in reproductive and maternal healthcare”.

Praising her mother, the potential future vice-president said: “She raised us to be proud, strong black women. And she raised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage.”

The focus on Harris as the potential standard bearer for Democrats owes in part to Biden’s age. At 77, he would be the oldest person ever to be sworn in for a first term as president, and speculation has abounded that he would serve a single term if elected.

Setting aside the significant question of whether the vice-presidency automatically elevates a politician as the party’s leader – Biden himself might differ – Harris faces obstacles to capturing the heart of a party invigorated by calls for generational change.

She failed to attract significant Democratic support as a presidential candidate in her own right earlier this year. Her perceived coziness with law enforcement and perceived failure to challenge wrongful convictions as attorney general of California have drawn criticism from progressives, who harbor some skepticism about her incarnation on the campaign trail as a warrior for equal justice.

“Women of color, particularly progressives, might feel torn,” Guardian columnist Derecka Purnell wrote earlier this month. “Progressives will have to defend the California senator’s personal identity, while maneuvering against her political identity.”

At 55, Harris is two decades younger than Biden, and in something of a historic sweet spot age-wise for presidential candidates – but the intensity of the party’s progressive wing could focus an increasing amount of Democratic energy behind a younger leader, closer to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s generation than Harris’s.

Whether Harris’s biggest moment is yet to come, she is in the middle of a moment now. In his speech on Wednesday night, Obama described her as a “friend” and “an ideal partner” for Biden “who’s more than prepared for the job”.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Harris said. She was talking about the promise of equal justice under the law, but she could have been talking about the future of Democratic party politics.