Kamala Harris’ closing speech at the Ellipse on Tuesday evening was a mirror image of the January 6, 2021 Ellipse rally that incited Donald Trump to a violent insurrection. While Trump’s comments fueled distrust and even hatred of the democratic process, Harris’ speech sought to convince skeptical Americans that democracy is still a system worth protecting.

“Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other,” Harris told a crowd of supporters estimated at more than 75,000 that stretched from the Ellipse to the grounds of the Washington Monument. “I’m here tonight to say, that’s not who we are.”

That can be said as much about the fragile state of American democracy as it can be said about Harris’ attempted race against Trump. Harris vowed to chart “a different path” from Trump’s divisiveness, pledging to “seek common ground and common sense solutions to improve your lives.”

Harris’ comments also offered a not-so-subtle look back at 2020 and 2022, when President Joe Biden decided — against the advice of advisers and experts — to focus his closing arguments on the importance of protecting democracy from authoritarian threats. Biden knew better than the commentators, and his decision to emphasize democracy fended off Trump in 2020 and the mythical Red Wave of 2022. Now Harris hopes some of that magic spills over into her own campaign.

It seems there is reason for this hope. This week’s New York Times/Siena College poll found that nearly eight in 10 Americans feel democracy is under threat. Voters also make no mistake about where that threat comes from. As a growing number of his former Cabinet officials and military leaders have made clear in recent weeks, Trump poses a clear and present danger to our country’s most basic democratic guarantees.

There are plenty of voters who disagree with Harris’ reverence for democracy. One of them, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, was released from federal prison on Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for refusing to cooperate with the official investigation into the January 6 attacks. One of Bannon’s first acts as a free man was to call on Trump to prematurely declare victory next Tuesday in an effort to undermine public confidence in the vote-counting effort.

Others are more direct. The leader of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., made headlines last week when he floated the idea of ​​simply giving North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes to Trump before the results are counted. Harris’ reasoning was that Trump would probably win the state anyway, so why bother with the discomfort of democracy at all? The outrageous proposal drew little protest from Trump’s lapdog group of Republican lawmakers.

But Harris did not limit himself to a high-minded defense of democracy. After months of putting Democrats on the back burner on the economy, Trump took on the Republican Party with a strong explanation of how four years of a “Trump sales tax” would be disastrous for people’s bank accounts.

Harris hammered Trump on trade, pointing out that his tariff policy would amount to “a 20% national sales tax on everything you buy and import. Clothes, food, toys, cell phones, a Trump sales tax that would cost the average family almost $4,000 more a year.”

The high-priority emphasis on the economy in Harris’ comments is an acknowledgment that many swing voters still trust Trump more on economic issues. But Harris also took the opportunity to highlight one of Trump’s economic weaknesses: the continued popularity of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

“You’ll pay even more if Donald Trump finally gets his way and repeals the Affordable Care Act, which will strip tens of millions of Americans of their health insurance and return us to the days when insurance companies had the power to charge people with pre-existing conditions to refuse. circumstances,” Harris said to cheers. “Well, we’re not going back.”

Abortion rights featured heavily in Harris’ speech, as they have throughout the campaign — the first presidential election since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. in 2022. “I believe in the fundamental freedom of Americans to make decisions about their own bodies,” Harris said. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-picked Supreme Court justices have taken from America’s women.”

More than that, Harris argued that American democracy is inextricably linked to its healthy economy and thriving population. She argued that accepting the future Trump proposes requires hollowing out the American economy and trampling on basic human rights. Harris paid tribute to that idea in her closing moments, urging Americans to unite in “our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency, and our belief in a better future.”

In just one week, voters across the country will have the opportunity to decide the future they want for their country and for themselves. Tonight, Harris made that choice clear.