8:39 p.m.: Sen. Kamala Harris, a 2020 presidential candidate, delivered remarks on Facebook Live at 7:45 p.m. ET prior to President Trump’s State of the Union address.
Harris told viewers to take Mr. Trump’s speech with a grain of salt. She said that when Mr. Trump talks about a growing economy and crisis on the border, that listeners should not forget about the realities of minorities, immigrants and middle class. She urged leaders to recommit themselves to the truth and fighting for an “optimistic America.”
Harris ended her video by telling viewers to tune into Stacey Abrams and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s speeches after Mr. Trump’s address.
Harris brought a government worker who was furloughed during the recent shutdown as her guest to the State of the Union, telling CBS News’ Nancy Cordes the shutdown was “not without harm.” Harris and her guest Trisha Pesiri-Dybvik spoke to Cordes before the senator’s pre-speech rebuttal to President Trump’s address….
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The Democratic response: Race and voting rights.
Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia legislature, narrowly lost her bid to be the first African-American woman governor in the South, but it was the way she lost — amid charges of voter suppression and vote rigging — that really rankled.
In choosing Ms. Abrams to give the Democratic response, her party’s leaders were tapping a crusader for voting rights, and that is what she delivered.
“While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote,” Ms. Abrams said. “This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country. We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a ‘power grab.’ Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.”
She also tackled race, even as a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam of Virginia, fights for his political survival after photos of a man in black face and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe emerged in his medical school yearbook.
“We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present,” she said, “which is why we must hold everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds — and call racism what it is: Wrong.”…..
Abrams image…Reuters
Harris image…abcnews4.com
Stacey Abrams speech…..Here…