The best that can be said of Kamala Har­ris’ speech at the DNC on Wednes­day night is that it was the sec­ond best of the evening. But putting it that way does­n’t quite cap­ture the real­i­ty of what hap­pened. Barack Oba­ma deliv­ered an incred­i­ble speech — a rhetor­i­cal­ly accom­plished, com­plex­ly argued case for defeat­ing Don­ald Trump, and he deliv­ered it impec­ca­bly, star­ing straight into the cam­era, drilling right to the souls of the Amer­i­can people.In that respect, Har­ris was in an impos­si­ble posi­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly Obama’s remarks were sup­posed to fol­low the speech of the vice-pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, but the for­mer pres­i­dent report­ed­ly sug­gest­ed flip­ping the order once Har­ris’ name was announced. That inad­ver­tent­ly set Har­ris up for fail­ure. But if she had gone first, her pedes­tri­an, dis­joint­ed speech, deliv­ered in a tone of pho­ny over­act­ing, would have been large­ly for­got­ten by the morn­ing. Oba­ma real­ly was that good, and Har­ris real­ly was that bad.Rather than mak­ing an argu­ment, Har­ris set out to do what she was expect­ed to — intro­duce her­self to the coun­try. But she did it in a cloy­ing, cliché-rid­den way. And she wove the sto­ry of her fam­i­ly and career into the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of the coun­try by way of the iden­ti­ty-pol­i­tics cat­e­gories so beloved of left-wing activists and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s con­sul­tant class. She start­ed by talk­ing about women. Then tran­si­tioned to Black women. Then added in her Indi­an her­itage, and Lati­nos. Lat­er she name-checked Indige­nous peo­ple, denounced struc­tur­al racism, and then, in a tone of high earnest­ness, made the most cringe-induc­ing dec­la­ra­tion of the entire con­ven­tion so far: “There is no vac­cine for racism.“Unlike Oba­ma, who used the cam­era so expert­ly, Har­ris deliv­ered her remarks on a large stage ringed with Amer­i­can flags before an audi­to­ri­um emp­ty of all but a hand­ful of jour­nal­ists, pho­tog­ra­phers, and pro­duc­ers. The vibe start­ed at awk­ward and sank low­er from there.The car­di­nal rule for run­ning-mates is to do no harm to the tick­et. I doubt this sin­gle speech hurt the Democ­rats’ prospects in Novem­ber. But there is no way it helped.More sto­ries from theweek.com 5 bit­ing­ly fun­ny car­toons about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion Kansas City Chiefs to ban fans from wear­ing head­dress­es to home games A con­fused Kirsten Dun­st asks Kanye West why he put her on his cam­paign poster