They feel Kamala-mentum on the battlefields.
Barely two weeks after the vice president became his party’s presumptive nominee, Democrats across the country are feeling a surge of optimism that is translating into real, tangible gains — and it presents a real, tangible problem for Republicans.
On Tuesday night, Harris was in Atlanta, Georgia, drawing a Trump-sized crowd of 10,000 at Georgia State University. When she dared her opponent to “say it to my face” and engage in a debate (or debates) with her in person, a passionate audience roared in response.
That energy is palpable across the country. The Harris campaign has released several statements boasting that it has raised over $200 million in less than two weeks and has increased volunteers for the campaign. But it’s not just the vice president who is seeing a return of enthusiastic supporters — it’s the party as a whole, and that spells trouble for all Republicans, not just Donald Trump.
Harris held her first event as a candidate in Milwaukee, just days after Republicans held their convention in the city. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is running in a must-win campaign, said the energy was electrifying.
“I understand that seven to eight thousand people RSVP’d to attend and they had to go from the smaller arena to a large high school gym and still had to turn away about 5,000 people,” he said. Independent“But I can tell you that I did some campaign kickoffs at home this weekend. I’ve never seen so many people wanting to go door to door. So it’s really, really, very, very exciting.”
The reversal in the race was desperately needed by Democrats, who have warned in media interviews that their party is headed for a historic defeat if Joe Biden remains the nominee.
Take Florida, where reporters and pundits (and Harris’ own campaign chair) continue to be skeptical of Democrats’ predictions of a competitive race. Harris’ campaign manager, who was then working for Joe Biden, vowed in April that Democrats would make a serious push for the Sunshine State, saying the president’s campaign viewed it as contestable even if not clearly winnable. DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said the same thing this month after Biden stepped aside.
Despite Florida’s red-hot statewide government, Democrats have seen a surge of volunteers here like nowhere else after Harris replaced Biden at the top of the (presumed) ticket. It’s a rapidly shifting dynamic that has Democrats eyeing key downfield races, even if electoral votes are ultimately out of reach. Florida — like North Carolina, Ohio and other key battlegrounds — is the site of a Senate race this year in which incumbent Republican Rick Scott is running for re-election. The state party is also targeting a number of congressional seats and others in the state legislature in an effort to stall the GOP’s advances over the past few election cycles.
“It’s hard to even describe the excitement, the energy, the momentum and what we’ve accomplished over the last week,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried. Independent As Harris enters the second week of her presidential campaign, she said 12,000 volunteers have signed up to help Democrats across the state, including in deep red areas like The Villages.
“It’s not just Democrats,” he said. “We hear anecdotal stories of former Republicans coming into our offices and having phone conversations with us. We hear from Republicans: ‘Maybe this is the last straw that’s going to break the MAGA base and destroy them in this election cycle and finally bring some semblance of normalcy back to the Republican Party.'”
Fried said the momentum Democrats have gained in the state has had little to do with it in the Republican Party, and he said national Democrats need to take advantage of that advantage now.
“There’s no Republican operation here. They don’t have offices. They’re not going door-to-door from the grassroots,” Fried said. “They’re taking it lightly and they’re really overconfident right now…we’re after the prize. We believe Florida is on the battleground map and should be.”
He’s not the only Democratic frontrunner to experience such a change of fortune in a contested state in a matter of weeks.
Michigan Senator Gary Peters, who chairs the Democrats’ campaign arm in the upper house (DSCC), said: Independent This week, he said the same dynamics were playing out in his state, where Joe Biden once trailed Trump and polls showed Harris ahead.
“The amount of enthusiasm on the ground for his campaign was something I’ve never seen before… it just changed,” Peters said. “This past week has been amazing. Just in Michigan, the number of people volunteering for our statewide campaigns, our get-out-the-vote efforts, our outreach efforts — the number of volunteers doubled in one week.”
In Nevada, Democrats signed up 1,200 new volunteers. In Georgia, there were another 1,000. In one congressional district in Michigan alone, 650 people signed up. The Harris campaign’s director of contested states said more than 360,000 people have signed up nationwide in the past week and a half.
The momentum has clearly shifted in Harris’ favor, and now the question is: Can Trump’s home game keep up?
His campaign has largely remained silent on its ground operations and volunteer efforts, preferring instead to dominate with fundraising numbers. On Thursday, the campaign said it had $327 million in cash on hand at the end of July.
Trump’s campaign said it only began surveying voters in late May, after the verdict in the New York sex-sex case was announced.
During the 2020 campaign, the Trump campaign claimed to have recruited more than 2.5 million volunteers to support “get out the vote” efforts. Despite breaking the volunteer record set by Barack Obama, the former president lost several key swing states he won in 2016, such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, to Joe Biden.