Having a Chance Has Changed the Democrats

This article was updated at 9:17 a.m. ET on August 7, 2024

In the long, sweaty line for Vice President Kamala Harris’s Philadelphia rally yesterday, people said they were happy she’d chosen Tim Walsh as her running mate. They were glad about Tim Wentz, and truly thrilled with the man whose actual name is Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor whom most people were just now getting to know.

“She chose the least threatening person,” Prentice Bush, a 49-year-old caterer, said, making his way to the doors of the Liacouras Center, downtown. “He’s a soft glove, and he’s a good guy. I don’t mind Katz at all.”

The point was that after a whirlwind two weeks in which President Joe Biden dropped out and Harris stepped in, rallied an uncertain party, raised gobs of money, and threw a confident Trump campaign into disarray, the new Democratic nominee had once again done what the political moment required: She had chosen an affable, midwestern white man who might reassure voters inclined to stereotypes. The Democratic ticket was complete. The campaign was on. Fresh Harris-Walz signs were being handed out. And just beyond the doors of the arena, the familiar chords of Chic’s “Good Times” were playing. With 90 days until the election, the overall mood was trending toward astonished giddiness.

After months in which efforts to drum up urgency have often been at odds with a persistent gloom among reliable Democratic voters, yesterday’s rally suggested that the grassroots and the party leadership understood each other at last. People said they were loving Harris. They said they were loving Walz, whose name they were Googling, learning that he was a former teacher, football coach, and congressman and a veteran who had called Trump “weird.” In his third hour of waiting in line, a man named George Karayannis said he’d gone from “manic depressive” to “jubilant.”  

[Read: Biden has a bigger problem than the debate]

“This is monumental,” Bush said as he reached the arena. “I’ll be honest, I was prepping for a Trump victory. I did not think Biden was going to win. Now we have a fighting chance.”

Inside, the crowd was full of the Democratic Party faithful, people who’d loved Biden until the bitter end, then seamlessly transferred that love to Harris: small-dollar donors, poll workers, campaign volunteers, and people such as Beth Sweet, who’d worked for local Democratic candidates in suburban Chester County, and said that the past two weeks had left her “shocked in the best way possible.” She said she’d gone from bleak worry to cautious hope to saying what had felt unimaginable a month before: “I will be making plans to celebrate,” she said.

Mandisa Thomas, a research coordinator whose mother had volunteered for Barack Obama, said the momentum was starting to feel “almost like Obama again.”

Nelson Haakenson, a house painter, said he’d gone from “very pessimistic” to “I think we’ve got a good shot” to how he felt now, heading inside a 10,000-seat arena where seats were filling up with people—a multiracial cross section of the party base dancing to “I’m Coming Out.” “There’s so much energy,” he said, “and we’re just getting going.”

“Just look around—we’re not going back,” said Carolyn Hopper, a retired art teacher, deploying what is becoming Harris’s signature line. “We can assemble. We can vote. We can fight. We don’t have to end up in a goddamn boxcar,” she said, referring to Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

A man walked by holding a homemade sign that read Kamala Is Future in glitter letters. People wore faded Biden-Harris T-shirts from 2020. They wore newer ones that read Keep Kamala and Carry On, and Blasians for Kamala, and Childless Cat Ladies for Kamala.

Heading inside the arena, Marta Teferi, a 27-year-old graduate student in psychology, said, “I’ve never felt this excited before.”

Her friend Elizabeth Martinez, a 27-year-old law student, said of Harris, “Whatever being in power is, I’m living vicariously through her—she’s one of us.”

Melanie Kisthardt, an English professor, thought back to two weeks ago, and then to now: “Oh My God—now I feel,” she said, then started to cry. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“It was getting too tight,” said Sheila Easley, who had taken the day off from her job to attend her first political rally. “It was starting to feel like 2016 again. Now it’s like a light just lit up in me. Like Armageddon is not going to happen. We still have a chance.”

[Read: Progressives are excited about Tim Walz. Should they be?]

She headed inside the arena, where the seats in every section except one appeared to be filled. Soon, the security guards began ushering in more people from outside, where the line was still growing, stretching past blocks of red rowhouses in a city where crowds in 2020 had poured into the streets after it became clear that Pennsylvania had delivered for Biden. Now people rushed inside to see Harris, faces red and shirts sweaty.

“Do you have more signs?” a woman asked a volunteer.

“I’m so grateful,” an out-of-breath man said.

“Here we go, here we go,” another man said, running up the stairs to the empty section, now filling up as the lights dimmed and warm-up speakers began.

The mayor of Philadelphia spoke of the “power of the people,” and people cheered. Senator Bob Casey ran onstage, and the crowd roared. And when Governor Josh Shapiro—heavily favored until yesterday to be Harris’s pick—said, “This election is all about you,” the roar was even louder.

“Fuck yeaahhh!” yelled a young man from an aisle in the nosebleed section.

This was Jesse Hughes, a 31-year-old personal trainer who said that two weeks ago, he was having “mild anxiety attacks” about the prospect of a Trump victory.

“Now I feel a lot more optimistic—” he began, then stopped himself because the lights were dimming, and the stage was lighting up, and Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” began pounding as Harris and Walz walked onstage.

“Now,” Harris said minutes into her speech, in the tone of a candidate who understood how quickly a political moment could change, “we have work to do.” With 90 days to go and the crowd cheering, she was still trailing Trump in most swing-state polls.