Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech Tuesday evening in which she largely exorcised the dark forces that have been hovering over the National Mall since January 6, 2021. It was a strong and lively speech, well delivered to a large and appreciative crowd. It did something unexpected: It securely attached the vice president to a chain linking the two previous Democratic presidents, both of whom were elected to repair the enormous damage done by the previous two disastrous Republican presidencies. Harris, of course, is running to prevent another disastrous Republican presidency. This was most clearly seen in an eloquent passage from the Vice President’s address:

Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we snatched freedom from a petty tyrant. For generations, Americans have preserved this freedom and expanded it, proving to the world that a government of, by and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us, the patriots in Normandy and Selma, in Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmland and factory floors, they did not fight, sacrifice and give their lives just to see us defend our basic freedoms sow. They didn’t do this just to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.

There were echoes of Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, when a president, 43 years after the Stonewall episode, the first detonation of the gay rights movement, added Greenwich Village, which was marked by violent resistance to a police raid on a gay bar, to the list of other turning points in American freedom began.

We the people declare today that the most obvious truth of all – that we are all created equal – is the star that still guides us; just as it took our ancestors through Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall; Just as hearing a preacher say that we cannot walk alone has guided all the sung and unsung men and women who have left their footprints along this great mall; to hear a king proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably linked to the freedom of every soul on earth.

One could also hear echoes of President Joe Biden’s famous justification for running for office – to restore the soul of America. But “the will of another petty tyrant”, the El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago with George III. connected, that was all her.

It was quite a night for the Harris campaign. For Republicans, it was an opportunity to misquote President Biden to distract from Harris’ speech and their own hate speech at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. In a video, the president called Sunday’s rhetoric “trash,” and the GOP and its flying monkeys insisted the president had called the former president’s supporters* “trash.” Oooh! A “deplorable” moment! The political popinjay press –Axios and inevitably Tiger Beat on the Potomac—is enjoying the vicious banter of what the President said. On the front page of the TBOTP There were six stories on the site about what Biden said. Here is a representative example: