Democrats finally have a chance to get excited

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

Yesterday, in the long, sweaty line waiting for Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Philadelphia, people were happy that she had chosen Tim Walsh as her running mate. They were thrilled about Tim Wentz’s nomination, and they were really thrilled about the man whose real name is Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor most people were just getting to know.

“She picked the least threatening person,” said Prentice Bush, a 49-year-old caterer, as he walked toward the doors of the Liacouras Center downtown. “He’s a gentle, kind man. Katz doesn’t bother me at all.”

The fact is that after two stormy weeks in which President Joe Biden withdrew and Harris stepped in, rallied an uncertain party, raised huge sums of money and threw a confident Trump campaign into disarray, the new Democratic nominee had once again done what the political moment demanded: She had chosen an affable white man from the Midwest who could reassure stereotype-prone voters. The Democratic ticket was complete. The campaign was on. Harris Waltz Signs were being handed out. And just outside the arena doors, the familiar strains of Chic’s “Good Times” rang out. With 90 days to go until the election, the general mood was one of dizziness and amazement.

After months in which efforts to create urgency often clashed with the lingering gloom of reliable Democratic voters, yesterday’s rally showed that the party’s base and leadership finally understand each other. People said they liked Harris. They said they liked Walz, whose name they Googled, learning that he was a former teacher, football coach and congressman who had called Trump “weird.” In his third hour of waiting in line, a man named George Karayannis said he had gone from “manic depressive” to “jubilant.”

Read: Biden has a bigger problem than the debate

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

Inside, the crowd was full of Democratic Party loyalists, people who had loved Biden to the core and then seamlessly transferred that love to Harris: small donors, poll workers, campaign volunteers and people like Beth Sweet, who had worked for local Democratic candidates in suburban Chester County and said the past two weeks had left her “shocked in the best way possible.” She said she had gone from somber concern to cautious hope to saying what had seemed unimaginable a month earlier: “I’m going to make plans to party,” she said.

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

Nelson Haakenson, a house painter, said he went from “very pessimistic” to “I think we have a good chance” of ending up in the 10,000-seat arena, where the seats were filling up with people — a multiracial cross-section of the party’s base dancing to “I’m Coming Out.” “There’s so much energy,” he said, “and we’re just starting to move forward.”

“Look around: We’re not going back,” said Carolyn Hopper, a retired art teacher, echoing what has become Harris’ motto. “We can come together. We can vote. We can fight. We don’t have to end up on a damn freight car,” she said, referring to Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

A man walked by holding a homemade sign that said: Kamala is the future in glittering letters. People wore faded clothes Biden-Harris 2020 T-shirts. They wore new ones that had the words Keep Kamala and keep goingAnd Blasians for KamalaAnd Childless Cats for Kamala.

As she entered the arena, Marta Teferi, a 27-year-old psychology graduate student, said: “I’ve never felt this excited before.”

Her friend Elizabeth Martinez, a 27-year-old law student, said of Harris: “Whatever it means to be in power, I live vicariously through her — she’s one of us.”

English teacher Melanie Kisthardt thought back to two weeks ago and then to today: “Oh my God, now I feel something,” she said, before she began to cry. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“It was too close,” said Sheila Easley, who took time off work to attend her first political rally. “I felt like it was 2016 all over again. Now it’s like a light went on inside me. Like Armageddon isn’t going to happen. We still have a chance.”

Read: Progressives Are Excited About Tim Walz. Should They Be?

She headed inside the arena, where seats in every section but one appeared occupied. Soon, security guards began ushering more people in from outside, where the line continued to grow, stretching beyond the red-lined blocks in a city where 2020 crowds had poured into the streets after it became clear that Pennsylvania had delivered for Biden. Now people rushed inside to see Harris, red-faced and sweaty-shirted.

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

“I’m so grateful,” said one breathless man.

“Here we go, here we go,” another man said as he ran up the stairs toward the empty section, which was now filling up as the lights dimmed and the warm-up speakers began.

Philadelphia’s mayor spoke of “people power,” and people cheered. Sen. Bob Casey took the stage, and the crowd roared. And when Gov. Josh Shapiro, the clear favorite until yesterday to be Harris’s pick, said, “This election is all about you,” the cheers were even louder.

“Fuck yeah!” shouted a young man in an aisle of the nosebleed section.

That’s Jesse Hughes, a 31-year-old personal trainer who said that two weeks ago he had “mild anxiety attacks” about a Trump victory.

“Now I feel a lot more optimistic,” he began, then stopped because the lights went down, the stage lit up and Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” began to play as Harris and Walz took the stage.

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