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Voter enthusiasm in the Biden era has always seemed to favor Republicans. Trump’s seemingly never-ending campaign and rallies throughout often felt like a traveling roadshow or never-ending rock ‘n’ roll tour, complete with a cast of die-hards who follow him from town to town and camp out to be in the front row at each one of his events.
Meanwhile, Biden often struggled to draw much of a crowd anywhere except the union halls and labor conventions he tended to frequent in his official travels.
According to a Biden campaign staffer who asked to remain anonymous so they could avoid being fired for speaking to a reporter without permission, the 46th president avoided traditional campaign rallies because young people who would normally form screaming crowds at a Democratic political event had almost no interest in a rally headlined by an 81-year-old politician.
Before Biden dropped out, expectations for this Democrat convention were “as low as they could have been,“ the staffer told The Independent. But with Harris atop the ticket, it’s a different ball game. “We were expecting a funeral — we got a Taylor Swift show instead,” they said.
Indeed, the comparison to Swift’s blockbuster Era’s tour felt particularly apt when The Independent walked into a post-convention party co-hosted by a group called Voters of Tomorrow.
Dubbed “Hotties for Harris,” it was billed as a “creator party” with an eye towards inspiring the Gen Z influencers who’ve flocked to the convention to create pro-Harris content online.
Partygoers were greeted by thematically-appropriate decorations meant to evoke enthusiasm for the ticket, including a “Hall of Hotties” wall adorned with photos of prominent Democrats and a corresponding “Wall of Weirdos” depicting a broad cross-section of Trumpworld.
The crowd there — which appeared to be several hundred strong — circulated between a main room with a bar, a stage and a dance floor, and other rooms that were decorated with different themes.
One space was set up to appear like a prototypical living room from a bygone era, with wood-paneled walls and a couch along with a statue of Trump’s running-mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, who was identified as “The Most Awkward Man in America.”
Another room was set up as a store, featuring a wide array of bespoke signage meant to convey a frenzied “last call,” going-out-of-business sale atmosphere, with the product in question being young people’s reproductive freedom.
One sign read: “Free Love! All Sales Final,” while another warned that “Freedoms End Soon.” Under the signs were shelves stocked with free-to-take emergency birth control and condoms encased in custom-printed wrapping that read “F**k project 2025.”
And above the din of music pumped out by a succession of performers, one announcer exhorted attendees to either get out and vote or risk a Trumpian rollback of the sexual revolution.
“In this election, we are not going to lose our right ... to f**k whoever the hell we want,” they said, leading to a cheer rising up from the dance floor.
A party organizer told The Independent that the event was put together in roughly one week, and was done in response to the massive outpouring of support for the Harris-Walz ticket among Gen Z voters.
The presence of so many young people at a nominating convention isn’t unusual in Democratic circles, but until Harris ascended to the top of the ticket it wasn’t clear if it would be doable in 2024.
Young voters did come out for Biden in the pandemic-era 2020 race, but the excitement of evicting Trump from the White House turned to disillusionment and displeasure with the oldest man ever to serve as America’s chief executive. Add in worries over Biden’s age and tensions over US support for Israel’s war against Hamas, and it was an open question whether enough young people would come out for Democrats to give them a win in November.
Not anymore.
According to a poll released Tuesday by Voters of Tomorrow, Gen Z voters in battleground states prefer Harris over Trump by a margin of 54 per cent to 22 per cent. More than half of them — 53 per cent — said they have favorable opinions of Harris, with 44 per cent reporting a favorable opinion of Walz. Only 29 per cent said they have a favorable view of Trump, with 60 per cent viewing him unfavorably.
Ohio Senator JD Vance, the millennial tapped as Trump’s running-mate last month, fared just as poorly, with 17 per cent of Zoomers viewing him favorably and 52 per cent having an unfavorable opinion of him.
But perhaps more importantly, the Zoomers polled by Voters of Tomorrow said they are at least somewhat likely to vote by overwhelming margins — 48 per cent say they are “almost certain” to cast a ballot, with another 19 per cent saying they’re “very likely” to do so and 14 per cent reporting themselves as “somewhat likely” voters. That’s a massive shift from polling taken during the prior month which showed that younger voters were simply not enthusiastic about pulling the lever for Biden.
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who in 2020 defeated a primary challenge from then-Representative Joe Kennedy III with a successful youth organizing campaign, told The Independent he has only seen energy and enthusiasm from young people like this during two other presidential campaigns.
“Barack Obama in 2008 and John F Kennedy in 1960 just electrified the country, and we're seeing that again this year,” he said.
Markey said he sensed a massive shift “from the moment that Kamala Harris received word that she was going to be our nominee,” with “young people across our country” having “lifted their gaze to the constellation of possibilities for their lives.”
“They're excited about the prospects, which is why this youth movement is very likely to be the decisive factor in this election,” he said.
Inside the convention hall, the shift Markey spoke of is palpable.
Not only has Harris’s entry into the race atop the ticket galvanized younger voters, but the entire party has come alive in a way not seen since a young first-term senator named Barack Obama filled Denver’s Mile High Stadium on the last day of the 2008 convention.
Cavalier Johnson, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin who is in Chicago as part of the Badger State delegation, told The Independent in a phone interview that the atmosphere at the DNC is a welcome contrast with what took place in his city last month.
“What we’re seeing from Vice President Harris and from Governor Walz is a coalescing of Democrats, and there’s joy in the room, there’s hope in the room, there’s optimism in the room, there’s unity in the room,” he said.
He added that the vibes at a delegation breakfast and other events he’s attended were “dynamic and pretty electric.”
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler was even more impressed by how things feel here in Chicago and what has happened in the weeks since Biden’s exit.
“President Biden took this extraordinary, selfless step of withdrawing as the nominee and passing the torch, and it unleashed this wave of excitement and enthusiasm like nothing I’ve ever seen in politics,” he said.
“There are voters coming out of the woodwork, people who’d told us that they were not going to vote in this election, who are now volunteering to help win the election,” he added. “On campuses, students are about to come back to school and enter a political environment where the positive social pressure to get involved will sweep through high schools and colleges all over Wisconsin and all over the country. In rural Wisconsin, we have volunteers coming out of the woodwork to pick up yard signs that haven’t been printed yet and signing up for shift after shift to knock on doors.”
A veteran of the Biden 2020 team and a former White House communications aide on Harris’s team, Ashley Etienne, also said what she’s witnessed since Biden exited the race is completely unprecedented in her experience.
“When Barack Obama was running, there was an overwhelming enthusiasm for him. But I’ve never seen anything like this. This far outmatches and outpaces and surpasses what Barack Obama was able to achieve,” she said.
“Democrats are just on fire. They’re just excited about possibilities, up and down the ticket,” she added.
When Harris made a surprise opening-night appearance on the United Center stage midway into Monday’s program, the “House That Jordan Built” shook with an energy that Chicago Bulls veteran and Olympic gold medal-winning coach Steve Kerr compared to the days when he and the Bulls ruled supreme over the NBA.
“Lots of good stuff has happened here, especially in the 90s … There was an amazing vibe in the arena back then and I feel that same winning spirit here tonight,” he said.
