The vice president rose to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set in motion his withdrawal from the race. This was just one of a series of convulsions that hit this year’s campaign.

Trump narrowly escaped an alleged assassin’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman pointed a rifle while Trump was playing golf at one of his Florida courses.

Harris, 60, downplayed the historic nature of his candidacy, which materialized only after the 81-year-old president ended his re-election bid after his June debate against Trump, aged 78, heightened questions about Biden’s age.

Instead, Harris presented himself as a generational changer, emphasized his support for abortion rights after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending the constitutional right to abortion services, and regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on US Capitol. Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even accepted the criticism that Trump is accurately described as “fascist”. .”

As of Monday, Harris stopped mentioning Trump. She promises to resolve issues and seek consensus while striking an almost exclusively upbeat tone that recalls the early days of her campaign, when she embraced the “politics of joy” and the campaign theme of “Freedom.”

“From the very beginning, our campaign hasn’t been about being against something, it’s been about being for something,” Harris said Sunday night at Michigan State University.

Trump, renewing his “Make America Great Again” and “America First” slogans, has made his tough approach to immigration and sharp criticism of Harris and Biden the anchors of his case for a second administration. He blasted Democrats for an inflationary economy and pledged to usher in an economic “golden age,” end international conflict, and seal the US’s southern border.