Kamala Harris prepares for the biggest night of her life – but will she be able to top memorable speeches by Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey

Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech Thursday night will be the biggest moment of her political career.

Her speech will cap a week of high-profile speeches, particularly from black women. Michelle Obama spoke on Tuesday and Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday. Both gave commemorative speeches that are still being talked about.

Will Harris be able to surpass them?

Harris is feeling the pressure. She has held rehearsals complete with autocue in three different time zones, the New York Times reported.

Her aides made it clear to congressional staff that they did not want to have any issues with the timing, which prevented the evening’s main speaker from appearing on prime time, Politico reported.

President Joe Biden began nearly an hour after prime time ended on the East Coast. Tim Walz began 20 minutes after prime time.

And mistakes are not tolerated.

“They shouldn’t even think about cutting her damn video like they did President Biden’s,” one of her aides told the newspaper.

Harris was forced to quickly switch from running mate to frontrunner on July 21 after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.

Biden endorsed her and within a week she had collected all the delegate votes and secured her nomination.

She took over most of Biden’s campaign team and organization, while also adding some of her own people and some former Barack Obama officials.

When she speaks Thursday night, it will be her 10th anniversary with her husband Doug Emhoff. And it will be 75 days until the November election.

For many Americans, this will be the first time they have seen Harris give a lengthy speech. She is not known for her lofty rhetoric, but she gained national attention when she used her skills as a prosecutor to question Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. Many snippets of her questions went viral on social media.

While she has a well-honed campaign speech for her Democratic supporters — with well-received statements such as that she knows men like Donald Trump — she has yet to deliver a general address to the nation.

Her speech focuses on three key objectives as she makes her pitch to become the next President of the United States.

She will share her personal story, compare her vision of the future with Trump’s and talk about her optimism for the future, the campaign said.

In her speech she talks about her childhood, growing up in a middle-class neighborhood and being raised by a working mother.

Her attacks on Trump will focus on the Project 2025 agenda, which Democrats are using as a bogeyman against the former president.

Michelle Obama delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday

Oprah Winfrey surprised delegates with her appearance on Wednesday

Ultimately, Harris will present himself as a president for all Americans.

Harris has focused her campaign message on joy, a theme echoed at the Democratic National Convention, where she delivered encouraging speeches and musical performances.

The joy continues on Thursday, when The Chicks sing the national anthem.

“Sometimes, when you’re a sitting member of office, you don’t always have the opportunity to go out and tell people about aspects of your life as you make decisions day in and day out,” Jen O’Mally Dillon, Harris’ campaign manager, said Wednesday on the CNN-Politico Grill.

“This opportunity that we have now is not just to say who she is and who she fought for, but how those values ​​and her life’s work have gotten her to this point and made her the partner she has been to the president, and the kind of individual leader she will be in the future.”

Harris was not at the convention Wednesday night. Instead, she watched the speeches from her hotel room, practiced her own remarks and rested her voice.