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CHICAGO -- Kamala Harris on Thursday shared with America what she often heard from her late mother as the now-vice president was growing up: "Never do anything half-assed."

Sadly, that advice did not manifest itself at the Democratic National Convention.

Voters who are undecided didn't get a rousing speech that would explain how Harris would make America better and stronger. She rattled off a list of ideas, but she didn't sell those policies.

I saw a squandered opportunity. When candidates run for office, they are supposed to sell their policies. That way, if they are elected, they can claim a voter mandate for change.

But the real argument Harris offered America was expressed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer when she warned Americans about "that man from Mar-a-Lago."

How would the world see a Harris victory? Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta offered, "When she takes her oath of office, as she will this January, our allies will cheer, our enemies will fear, and we will have a Commander in Chief that we can trust."

Harris mocked Donald Trump's weird obsessions with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, which are admittedly cringe-worthy.

But she ignores the real foreign policy nightmare with real-world consequences. President Joe Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Harris did not mention, was a show of American weakness that was followed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and then Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead and did not spare children.

It was nice to hear Harris pledge to "always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself" because Israelis "must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7" -- but her push for a ceasefire undermined that claim.

Wednesday night's theme was "A Fight for Our Freedoms," but speakers offered muddled definitions of what freedom is.

Barack Obama proclaimed, "We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry." OK. But then he added, "And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours." Huh?

"Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job. ... Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies," AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a DNC meeting, according to ABC News.

This bugs me. The left has this way of expanding the definition of words until they no longer mean anything.

Harris said that Trump and his allies would "enact a nationwide abortion ban." By what authority?

Trump told Fox News that his biggest reaction was, "Why didn't she do the things she's complaining about? All of the things that she talked about -- we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do everything -- but she didn't do any of it."

In short, the moment that Kamala Harris had to convince voters was a bust. She didn't tell the American people how she would make America better. Her argument was that she is a better person than Trump.

Kamala also offered another piece of advice her mother gave her. "Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are."

And she did.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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