President Joe Biden was barely out of the 2024 race when the first ad for Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic front-runner dropped.

This opening argument for Harris's presidential campaign was interesting for three reasons. It was heavy on criticism of former President Donald Trump. There were no mentions of her vice presidency or the Biden administration. Instead, the ad focused on Harris the prosecutor.

"She prosecuted sex predators," the narrator of the 53-second spot said. "He is one." This was accompanied by a snippet of the Access Hollywood tape with the infamous "grab them by the p***y" quote.

"She shut down for-profit colleges that swindled Americans," the ad continued. "He was a for-profit college." This was paired with footage of the former president promoting the now-defunct Trump University, which paid out a $25 million settlement to ex-students who said they were deceived by the school.

"He's owned by the big banks," the ad went on to say. "She's the attorney general who beat the biggest banks in America and forced them to pay homeowners $18 billion."

The ad said Harris is "in every possible way" the "anti-Trump."

While continuing with Biden's Trump-centric campaign and ignoring the actual Biden-Harris record are debatable strategic choices, the most striking thing is the return to the theme of Harris as a prosecutor. The Rev. Al Sharpton amplified this message on Monday's Morning Joe.

Harris made her bones politically as a prosecutor. She worked in two district attorneys' offices, prosecuting child sex abuse cases, served as San Francisco's district attorney for six years, and was elected California's attorney general. While she was in the Senate, she was known for tough cross-examinations of Trump administration officials during hearings.

But when Harris sought the Democratic presidential nomination, her prosecutorial record became a liability. In one viral debate moment, then-Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard attacked her as the symbol of a racist and broken criminal justice system.

"Now Sen. Harris says she is proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she will be a prosecutor president," Gabbard said. "But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana." As the crowd applauded, Gabbard accused Harris of blocking evidence "that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so."

Progressives, and some libertarians, dubbed Harris "Kamala the Cop." They did not mean it as a compliment.

Speaking to party supporters, she framed the election contest as a choice between herself - a former prosecutor - and convicted felon, Donald Trump.

"Before I was elected vice president, before I was elected United States Senator, I was elected attorney general of the state of California, and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then. And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type."

Harris went on to do just that, pointing to her history of taking on a for-profit college that scammed students while she was California's AG, which she compared to Trump running such a college; she also discussed her history prosecuting fraud and sexual abuse cases, compared to Trump's recent conviction for 34 counts of fraud in his hush-money trial, and his being found liable for sexual abuse last year in the civil suit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Harris also noted her support for unions, affordable healthcare and childcare, paid family leave, and Social Security: "Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency," she said.

Harris also promised, if elected, to expand voting rights; take on gun violence through red flag laws, universal background checks, and a renewed assault weapons ban; and protect abortion rights by passing a federal law to codify Roe.

"We'll stop Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans," Harris said, to cheers.

More than 1.1 million donors have contributed - with 62 per cent of them first-time givers this cycle, Harris' campaign said.

In this highly contentious political landscape, Kamala Harris is positioning herself as the ultimate opponent to Donald Trump, leveraging her background as a prosecutor to present a stark contrast with her rival. With Trump's legal issues and Harris's systematic dismantling of fraudulent entities during her time as attorney general, the political battleground is set for a fierce confrontation between these two figures with starkly different legacies.