Georgia was the setting for the nadir of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign a month ago in one of the worst debate performances in the history of American politics.
His likely replacement atop the Democratic ticket showed Tuesday that a debate that threatened to define the presidential campaign and render Donald Trump inevitable was only the latest political illustration of HG Wells’ bromide “The past is the beginning of the beginning and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.”
The question after Tuesday night’s rally, the largest so far for Kamala Harris’ “people-powered campaign,” drawing 10,000 people: Is the vice president able to do what a Democrat hasn’t done since 2008 and convince unlikely voters she can lead the nation?
Harris seems to offer more as an instant-soup version of a presidential candidate than she did during the treacherous slog of the 2020 calendar when she had no shot.
Rap star Megan Thee Stallion served as the veep’s warmup act, delivering a catchphrase all her own: “hotties for Harris,” a nod to the increasing gender and demographic gaps in a presidential campaign that went from a choice between two men from a largely bygone era to something more generational.
The contrast between an artist of this moment and Trump fave Lee Greenwood is a sign, if one were needed, of the unstoppable shifting of cultural sands from underneath the three-time Republican nominee’s feet.
Harris, meanwhile, was “very clear” in her argument that the “road to the White House” runs through the Peach State. Her “prosecutor vs. the felon” shtick delivered the now-requisite “Lock him up” chant, the ultimate irony for anyone who remembers the empty promise made by Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Harris campaign, remarkably given that it emerged from the terminus of Biden’s political career, seems to be bigger than the sum of its parts. Who predicted that during those years where Republican operatives and talking heads were delighting in assembling supercuts of some of the VP’s more opaque musings?
And more to the point, who on the right can effectively counter what is becoming a coalitional movement of young people, of women, of pop culture icons — a genuinely populist vibe for Democrats, for the first time since Barack Obama in 2008.
Some of it sounded like false notes. She contended that “building up the middle class” would be a big part of her presidency, though the post-pandemic era over which the Biden administration has presided has seen unique pressures on middle-income people.
But when the crowd chanted “We’re not going back” and Harris taunted Trump about his unwillingness to debate her, saying, “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,” it was clear to the thousands on hand that for the first time in 16 years, Democrats are winning the cultural argument.
Obama, of course, is the best political orator of this century. Kamala Harris may not be that. But it doesn’t seem to matter. She’s staked out 2024’s version of the mainstream, and never has Donald Trump looked so old and out of touch.
And while VP pick JD Vance definitely made sense in the moment, before the oppo files poured out one old quotation after another that make him seem out of the mainstream and “just plain weird,” as Harris put it, there is a reason Trump got no post-convention bump in the days after an assassination attempt.
The zeitgeist has moved on. And that’s bad news for a man whose principal bet has been projecting the idea that his events are the biggest show in politics. His show appears to be on the verge of cancellation, with the so-called “rigged” election of 2020 seeming like so much irrelevant history.
And a return to outdoor rallies, which Trump desperately wants, won’t bring back the mojo.
Sure, Trump has been ahead in most polls of Georgia against Harris. And MAGA Inc. and the campaign will make the case that she’s “dangerously liberal.” Which may or may not be true, but it’s irrelevant to the swing voters in battleground states.
And Harris knows it.
“The momentum in this race is shifting. And there are signs Donald Trump is feeling it,” Harris said.
Unless the former president figures something out soon, that momentum may not shift back.
