When Vice-President Kamala Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, stepped onstage together for the first time on Tuesday, Philadelphia’s Liacouras Center glittered red, white and blue as Beyoncé’s Freedom blared and the crowd pulsed.
Walz, who was plucked from relative obscurity just hours, when he accepted Harris’s offer to join the Democratic presidential ticket, placed his hand over his heart, almost bewildered by the reception. He waved. He bowed. He pointed to the crowd, and back to Harris. He grinned and laughed and bowed again.
When it was his turn to speak, Walz turned to Harris: “Thank you, Madam Vice-President, for the trust you put in me but, maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.”
It was a remarkable moment in a remarkable election cycle that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago, when the Democratic party appeared all but resigned to the prospect of a second, and even more devastating defeat to Donald Trump in November.
But then Joe Biden abandoned his bid for re-election, and Democrats, with unusual speed and certainty, embraced his vice-president as their standard-bearer. Harris’s ascendance – and her choice of Walz as a partner, which drew plaudits from Democrats across the ideological spectrum – have transformed the party.
“All of a sudden, an election that felt like it was slipping away from us, we are now in command,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and the relentlessly optimistic author of the substack, Hopium Chronicles. “In every way imaginable I would much rather be us than them.”
The Philadelphia debut was the first stop of a multi-day, battleground state tour through the Rust belt – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – and the Sun belt – Arizona and Nevada – designed to introduce “Coach Walz” and energize Americans for the three-month sprint to election day. (Stops in North Carolina and Georgia were postponed as tropical storm Debby churned through the mid-Atlantic.)
Along the way, Harris and Walz cast themselves as “joyful warriors”. Unlike Biden’s campaign, which had framed the contest as an existential choice between a president who would defend American democracy and a former president who would destroy it, Harris has sought to present the race as a choice between her vision for a “brighter future” and Trump’s “backward agenda”. At rallies, her crowds chant: “We’re not going back!”
“Do we want to live in a country of freedom, of compassion, of rule of law?” Harris said in the rural Wisconsin city of Eau Claire on Wednesday. “Or a country of chaos, fear and hate?”
Later that day, the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, introduced Harris to a crowd of thousands at an airport hangar outside Detroit, declaring: “We need a strong woman in the White House. It’s about damn time.” If elected, Harris would be the first female president.
At a union hall the next day, Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers, said Americans faced a “‘which side are you on’ moment” – and he was siding with the “badass woman who stood with us on the picket line”.
At a rally near Phoenix, Harris drew her largest crowd yet, more than 15,000, according to an estimate by the campaign. Speaking ahead of Harris, John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, he asked his fellow Republicans and independents to “please join me in putting country over party and stopping Donald Trump”.
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Recent polls reflect a stunning turnaround for the Democratic ticket, now locked in a highly competitive battle for the White House. Harris’s weeks-old campaign has regained lost ground with younger and more diverse voters who were turned off by the 81-year-old president. She has also significantly narrowed – and in several new surveys overtaken – Trump’s lead in the battleground states Democrats need to win.
This week, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election, adjusted its outlook in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada – three states that seemed to be slipping out of reach forDemocrats – from “leans Republican” to “toss-up”.
Harris maintains that they are the “underdogs”. And in an email to supporters this week, the representative Pramila Jayapal, acknowledged the excitement but cautioned against taking anything for granted.
“That’s the most dangerous thing we could possibly do right now,” the Washington Democrat wrote.
Harris raised $36m in the first 24 hours after naming Walz as her running mate, adding to her record-shattering haul in the past three weeks, since Biden stepped aside. On Wednesday the Harris campaign said supporters had purchased $1m-worth of camouflage hats with Harris/Walz in orange print, an apparent nod to the Midwest Princess hat sold by the pop star Chappell Roan.
The boom in fundraising has been matched by a surge in volunteer sign-ups, while down-ballot Democrats, organizers and activists report similarly dramatic increases in donations and support.
On social media, young people shared their excitement for the new Democratic ticket with coconut tree memes and big dad energy jokes.
“We’re obsessed with coconut,” a young volunteer told Harris, during a visit to a campaign office in north Phoenix on Friday.
“Some people say it’s just vibes, but you know what vibes are important because vibes open up the door for the wider conversation,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the Atlanta-based Black Voters Matter Fund, which has noticed a groundswell of support for the Democratic ticket since Harris became the nominee.
“While we need to warn about the challenges and the dangers that Trump poses,” he said, “we also agree that it’s OK to laugh, right? It’s OK to bring some joy and some culture into into this voter mobilization.”
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As Harris and Walz crisscross the country, they are also racing against Republicans’ efforts to brand her running mate as a “far-left radical”. In their telling, Walz’s folksy persona conceals a liberal governing record that Democrats view as a blueprint for the country.
Yet in Walz, the Nebraska-born former social studies teacher and high school football coach, many Democrats believe they finally have a credible ambassador to rural America, where white voters who once helped elect Barack Obama have since abandoned the party in favor of Trump.
“Rural voters have entered the chat,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic party, who supported Walz’s selection. “This new ticket really does expand the map for Democrats beyond the swing states and the east and west coast.”
Nebraska is not usually considered a swing state in the traditional sense and it is not a part of the Democrats’ battleground state tour. But in a quirk of the electoral process, a single electoral college vote from the state’s second congressional district could be decisive in a close race. Kleeb expects a visit after the Democrats’ convention later this month.
But Kleeb said Walz does not fit neatly in a political box, rather he embodies the midwestern ethos of neighborliness and, to borrow the governor’s phrase, minding your damn business.
“In Minnesota, we respect our neighbor’s personal choices,” Walz said in Wisconsin. “Don’t like a book? Don’t read it!”
Republicans are deeply skeptical that Walz’s folksy demeanor will translate into support from rural voters who have shown fierce loyalty to the former president.
“There’s no way in the world, despite [Walz’s] supposed affinity with blue-collar white voters, that he’s going to get any of those people,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant and pollster. “They’re Trumpies.”
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While Democrats have enthusiastically embraced Walz, Republicans too have celebrated, convinced Harris made a grave tactical mistake in passing over Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of swing state Pennsylvania.
“She had a blindingly obvious right choice if she wanted to beat Donald Trump and she went the opposite direction,” Ayres said. “She could have thrown a bone to the Trump-skeptical Nikki Haley Republican voters, and she refused to do that.”
Amanda Stewart Sprowls, a lifelong Republican from Tempe, Arizona, who backed Nikki Haley in the primary and will not vote for Trump in November, had hoped Harris would choose Shapiro. With Walz on the ticket, she’s not sure what she will do in November.
“Your more informed voters in suburbia are just a little shocked and disappointed,” she said.
Stewart Sprowls is not sure she can support someone who has championed the very progressive policies she believes are driving people toward Trump’s movement. But she intends to continue engaging with the Harris campaign, pushing for something “tangible” – like a commitment to name a Republican or independent to her cabinet – that might persuade her to vote for a Democrat for the first time in her life.
“I think both camps need us,” she said. “And I think they both need to move to the center, for sure. But I think she has the greater potential to do it.”
Along the tour, there were also reminders of the long-simmering tensions within the party. In Michigan, a focus of Democratic divisions over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Harris met briefly with the leaders of the “uncommitted campaign” – an anti-war movement that could prove influential in a state like Michigan – who said in a statement that they “found hope” in the vice president’s willingness to begin a dialogue with them.
Later, during the Detroit rally, Harris was interrupted by protesters chanting: “We won’t vote for genocide.” She replied: “I am here because I believe in democracy, and everybody’s voice matters.”
When the shouting didn’t stop, Harris was curt: “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
In Phoenix, Harris tried a different tack: “I have been clear. Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal, and get the hostages home.”
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From his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump on Thursday attempted to seize the national attention that has eluded him since the vice-president’s elevation, a phenomenon the former president’s top pollster called the “Harris Honeymoon” and predicted would be short-lived.
In a rambling, hour-long press conference, Trump lashed out at his new rival, calling Harris “barely competent” amid a litany of outlandish claims and outright falsehoods. The former president also brushed off questions about his relatively light footprint on the campaign trail as “stupid”.
There was one potentially significant development, however: Trump committed to participating in a presidential debate with Harris on 10 September.
In a brief exchange with reporters later that day, Harris reaffirmed her participation in the ABC debate and said she would be “happy” to discuss additional ones raised by Trump.
On Friday night, Trump held a rally in Montana, a state he won handily four years ago that is home to a critical Senate contest. Still testing nicknames for Harris, Trump vowed: “We’re going to evict crazy Kamala.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, was dispatched to follow the Harris-Walz tour, hosting a series of rival events near their stops. On Wednesday, the candidates nearly crossed paths when the senator’s plane landed on the same tarmac in Wisconsin as Air Force Two. Vance, flanked by an entourage of staffers and aides, approached Harris’s plane, moments after she climbed into her motorcade.
“I just wanted to check out my future plane,” he told a group of assembled reporters. He also taunted Harris for not yet holding a news conference or sitting for an unscripted interview, as questions swirl about her vision for the economy, the US-Mexico border and her foreign policy. (Harris said she has instructed her team to schedule an interview before the end of the month.)
In Detroit, Vance was dismissive of the suggestion that the sense of excitement surrounding Harris’s campaign would translate electorally.
“I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes, they can enjoy things sometimes,” he said, “and they can turn on the news and recognize that what’s going on in this country is a disgrace.”
In the final stretch before election day, Democrats hope their message of uplift will serve as an antidote to the darker themes animating Trump’s campaign. The former president, who opened his first term in office with a sinister depiction of the country as “American carnage”, has threatened to use a second term to seek “retribution” on his political enemies.
“All the things that make me mad about those other guys and all the things they do wrong, the one thing I will not forgive them for is they tried to steal the joy from this country,” Walz said at the airport rally in metro Detroit. “But you know what? You know what? Our next president brings the joy. She emanates the joy!”
