Kamala Harris, the junior Democratic senator from California, has told a sold-out theater in Los Angeles how she would govern – hypothetically – as president of the United States, portraying herself as an early advocate of criminal justice reform who stood up to big banks during the foreclosure crisis.

She would bring the country together, she said, by fighting back against the “powerful voices that are trying to sow hate and division”.

“In this moment, I think it is very important that we hold on to the truth that for the vast majority of us we have so much more in common than what separates us,” she said, speaking at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theater on Sunday during the second stop on a national tour for her new book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. “And I believe that to bring us together we have to know who we are.”

Harris, California’s attorney general from 2011 until she joined the US Senate in 2017, did not announce a run for the presidency, but she all but gave a presidential address, weaving her own her own personal biography – her mother, her husband and her children – into a liberal political platform.

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Harris drew national attention last year when she used her career as a prosecutor to sternly question the likes of former attorney general Jeff Sessions and future supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh; both episodes were received to rapturous applause at Sunday’s gathering.

However, her background could also be seen as a burden in the Democratic primary. Though she has championed criminal justice reforms, Harris also helped oversee one of the world’s largest prison systems and defended capital punishment from court challenges – although California has not executed anyone since 2006.

In 2015 she sought to stop taxpayers paying for two inmates’ gender reassignment surgeries, arguing in a legal brief that ongoing hormone treatment rendered the operations medically unnecessary.

Supporters of the senator have noted that in both cases Harris was acting as a lawyer for the state of California, not representing herself and her own views.

But Harris portrayed her record as one of consistent advocacy for progressive change before it became the consensus. She pointed to a re-entry program for young convicted drug dealers that she launched while the district attorney of San Francisco, pointing out that “if they are kids, and they are in college, we call them ‘college kids,’” but “if they’re in the system, they’re ‘adults,’ period.”

Harris portrayed her policies, now, as having national, bipartisan appeal. One of her first acts on the national stage was to introduce legislation with a Kentucky Republican, Senator Rand Paul, that would encourage states to do away with money bail. She expected a backlash, but he said, “Kamala, Appalachia loves this.” And that, she said, was “because the vast majority of us have more in common than what separates us”.

Harris hardly discussed the other elephant in the room, President Donald Trump, except to condemn his policy of having migrant babies “snatched from their parents’ arms,” and his proposed wall along the border, over which he has shuttered the government. “We have somebody who’s … holding America hostage over his vanity project,” Harris said, “and it’s a farce.”

But grim realities must be balanced with optimism for the future, she maintained. “Some of the shingles have fallen off, but the house is still standing,” she said. “The house is still standing, and we have to fight for that.”

A December 2018 poll from CNN showed Harris garnering 4% of the Democratic primary vote. She fared much better in a poll of politically active women of color, among them public officials and leading activists, where she was the top pick for the nomination.