Democrats were partying like it was 2008.
The Philadelphia basketball arena hosting Kamala Harris' first public appearance with her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was rocking on Tuesday night hours before they arrived.
Just a few weeks ago, Democrats watched President Joe Biden's campaign events with their hands over their eyes, as his stumbles and low energy events conjured memories of his disastrous debate performance.
But it's a new race. And as the crowd partied Tuesday, it felt almost like the youthful Sen. Barack Obama might be about to stride onto the stage as if time had shifted back 16 years. The impression was only reinforced when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, narrowly passed over for the vice-presidential nod himself, uncorked a stemwinder that looked an awful lot like an impression of the 44th president honed by watching YouTube videos.
Democrats haven't seen this kind of exuberance and energy in years. Many of Obama's reelection rallies in 2012 were a pained effort to recreate the glory of four years earlier by a president worn down by the cares of office. For all her talents, 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton was never a crowd pleaser. And most of the 2020 campaign was conducted by Biden from his home over Zoom amid the pandemic.
It's usually a bad idea to judge a campaign by crowd sizes. But Republican nominee Donald Trump is obsessed with such metrics, and he can't have enjoyed television coverage of a packed 10,000 seat arena hyped up for Harris.
Trump clearly enjoyed running against Biden — partly because he was winning and his argument that the 81-year-old president was unfit for a second term was largely shared by a majority of American voters. Now that Biden is out of the race, and the Democrats have a new ticket that can draw a big crowd and revive the enthusiasm that the current president failed to stir, the ex-president and his party have a big problem.
The confusion is evident in his approach. So far, he's complained Harris is not really Black, has mangled her name as "Kamabla" in juvenile tweets and blamed her for a plunge in global stock prices. In another absurd claim Wednesday, he insisted that Harris and Walz would immediately impose communism if they are elected in November. Bizarrely, at an event in Georgia over the weekend, the ex-president spent as much time attacking the Republican governor who refused to help him steal victory in the key swing state in 2020 as his Democratic foes. This is all happening amid narrowing polls that show the 2024 presidential contest is again a dead heat after Trump opened up a lead following Biden's debate debacle.
There's a real and unusual sense that America is now heading into a 90-day sprint with everything fresh and up for grabs in a tight election that is more reminiscent of snap European polls than the yearslong slog of American elections.
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