Less than 72 Hours after Kamala Harris took the lead in President Joe Biden’s faltering reelection campaign, the Harris for President campaign released its official campaign launch video — a vision, one might say, of what a Democratic presidential campaign could be, unencumbered by what has happened.
The 1-minute, 19-second ad, which is set to Beyoncé's 2016 hit “Freedom,” outlines the candidate's commitment to addressing economic opportunity, gun violence, reproductive rights, child poverty and health care costs.
“In this election, each of us faces a question: What kind of country do we want to live in? There are some who believe we should be a country of chaos and fear and hate. But us? We chose something different. We chose freedom,” Harris says in the ad, which includes footage from her first 2024 campaign rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday, where a crowd of about 3,500 chanted “Ka ma la! Ka ma la!”
In the ad, she continues: “Freedom isn’t just about living, it’s about progress. Freedom to be safe from gun violence. Freedom to make decisions about our own bodies. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care, where no one is above the law. We believe in the promise of America and we’re ready to fight for it. Because when we fight, we win.”
According to a press release from the campaign, the ad is designed to emphasize “the core issue at stake this November: the rights and freedoms of Americans… Vice President Harris is calling on Americans to join her in the fight to protect those freedoms and unite to defeat Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda once again.”
The campaign said the ad would “run across all of the campaign’s social media platforms” — not on TV, radio or other paid media channels. But that’s likely to change in the coming weeks as the campaign seeks to respond to Trump’s ads blanketing the airwaves — and it will continue to do so.
According to the Associated Press, the Trump campaign “outspent Harris’s team 25-to-1 on television and radio ads — more than $68 million for Republicans compared to just $2.6 million for Democrats — in the period that began Monday.” That figure includes purchases and bookings for live broadcasts through the end of August.
