Is Kamala the Democrats’ secret weapon of 2024?

At a Black outreach event packed with Democratic heavyweights on Wednesday, it was Kamala Harris who proved the unexpected star of the show.

The vice president has been pilloried in the past for her awkward and stilted delivery at events. But at Girard College in Philadelphia as the warm-up act for Biden, she seemed far more at ease, cracking jokes and responding to applause.

She also received some of the biggest reactions during a slick performance where she rattled off a list of the Biden administration’s accomplishments that specifically benefit the Black community — from a $35 cap on the cost of insulin and student debt forgiveness to record investments in historically-Black colleges.

She underlined how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade disproportionately affected Black women. “And today, one in three women and more than half of Black women of reproductive age live in a state with an abortion ban — a Trump abortion ban,” she noted.

She also delivered a few pugnacious lines that landed well with the majority Black crowd. When she decried Trump’s Supreme Court picks, she described it as “the court of Thurgood,” referencing the first Black justice, Thurgood Marshall, which elicited a strong, positive response.

The star turn didn’t go unnoticed among those gathered in the boarding school’s gymnasium.

Aminah Shabazz, from Philadelphia, commented on Biden’s lack of “swag”, but noted how Harris had also visited Philadelphia only last week, making trip to Jim’s in West Philadelphia — a local favorite for cheesesteaks opposed to the more commercially popular Pat’s or Geno’s.

“I’m curious why it wasn’t tapped into earlier. Just something as simple as Kamala going to Jim’s Steaks was huge,” she told The