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The first thing you noticed was the line.
For security reasons, you can’t just order a ride-share to drop you off at the door to an event venue where the Vice President of the United States — or any candidate with Secret Service protection — is speaking.
Police generally set up a perimeter a few blocks out and keep anyone but authorized persons and vehicles from getting close to the event site. Tuesday’s campaign rally with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was no different.
But upon alighting from my vehicle, I couldn’t help but notice a blocks-long, snaking queue that would have made any of my British colleagues feel right at home.
Hundreds — possibly a thousand — people were lined up, moving slowly towards tents with metal detectors in the muggy Philadelphia heat. Meanwhile, misting fans and dutiful campaign staffers passing out water kept the queued-up fans from getting heatstroke as a consequence of their enthusiasm for the newly-minted Democratic ticket.
It was far more people than I’d seen in line for any event put on by a Democratic presidential candidate since the pandemic put an end to normal campaigning in March 2020. Bigger than the “drive-in” rallies hosted by President Joe Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign, and far bigger than any event he or his party had put on during the 15 months between when he announced his bid for re-election and when he shocked the world by standing aside in favor of Vice President Harris.
By the time your correspondent reached the press section of the Temple University-owned arena, the top deck of seating behind where Harris and Walz were set to speak was almost full. There were still several hours to go until the evening’s program was due to start.
It wasn’t long before the arena was literally packed to the rafters with an energy that hasn’t been present at any Democratic event in nearly a decade. It was a multiracial, multigenerational crowd that mirrored the scenes I witnessed during Donald Trump’s first campaign for the presidency, when he was a political newcomer taking on the establishment in the form of Hillary Clinton.
And the energy displayed by that crowd was something I hadn’t seen since 2012, when then-president Barack Obama and then-vice president Biden took on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for a chance at a second term.
Dancing, cheering, chanting and engaging in call-and-response with the program of speakers — including Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison, Pennsylvania Senators John Fetterman and Bob Casey, and Keystone State Governor Josh Shapiro — ensued. Shapiro rallied the crowd with an Obama-esque stemwinder that ended with him introducing Harris, who strode onto the stage with her running-mate as the decibel-meter on my smartwatch hit 100.
But it was Walz who got the loudest applause of the evening with a seemingly off-the-cuff quip about debating his Republican opposite number, Ohio Senator JD Vance — if only Vance would “get off the couch” for it.
To those in the know, it was a slightly off-color reference to a viral internet hoax about Vance engaging in coitus with his living room furniture. A dumb joke, but one the 12,000 people appeared to be in on. They roared to the tune of 107 decibels.
As the rally ended and both journalists and stage crew began to pack up their gear, one line from Walz stuck out at me. Not the couch gag, but something he said to Harris just after she introduced him. He thanked her for putting “joy” back into politics.
I’ve been to my share of Trump rallies. The former president’s rhetoric has always been dark, conspiratorial, and a bit on the ugly side. But the people who follow him from rally to rally are more like rock-and-roll fans who follow their favorite band than the dangerous cultists portrayed by some of my compatriots in the media.
When Trump was the new kid on the block facing off against Clinton, there was always a happy carnival atmosphere to his events. Now, there’s an undercurrent of menace, a latent anger there, perhaps attributable to his insistence on repeating his false claim that the 2020 race was stolen from him, or telling his followers that “they” — Democrats — are “coming after” them and their families.
But Harris and Walz — and their rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic Party — appear to have unleased something in Democrats. The same happiness that I saw at those 2015 and 2016 Trump rallies.
Back then, he was the underdog. Now, she is. And what I saw on Tuesday is any harbinger of anything, we could see another underdog victory on election night this November.
