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They’re calling it a vibes election.
Vibes are notoriously hard to spot, and they don’t always show up in polls, but as Kamala Harris took to the stage in a cavernous auditorium at Temple University in Philadelphia on Tuesday with her new running mate, they were measurable in the screams and shouts of 12,000 people.
The replacement of Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket by Harris has changed the energy in the room. And Harris’s choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate is a sign that she is banking on that energy taking her to the White House.
It’s a strategy based on the idea that campaigns are not won on fear alone, but on feeling. Where Biden spoke sternly and in hushed tones of Donald Trump and the threat he posed to democracy, Harris and her running mate are here to provoke, mock and laugh at their opponents.
Walz set the tone with his first words on stage as the official vice presidential nominee. “Thank you for bringing back the joy,” he said to Harris.
Walz is not the most practical pick for the electoral map math — that would have been Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of the must-win Pennsylvania. But he brings a Midwest Dad energy to the ticket that stands in stark contrast to the 4Chan ramblings of JD Vance and the disjointed string of thinly-veiled racism that emanates from Donald Trump.
He was able to land dad jokes and piercing attacks on Trump and Vance with ease. One of the biggest cheers of the night — and there were a lot — came when he combined the two.
"Make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump — and that’s not even counting the crimes he committed,” Walz said.
He then turned his attention to his opponent on the vice presidential ticket.
"Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community.
“Come on. That’s not what Middle America is. And I got to tell you. I can’t wait to debate the guy ... That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up," he added, in an apparent reference to a false claim spread online that Vance had intimate relations with a sofa.
Harris has been basking in this vibe shift since accepting the Democratic nomination. Here in Philadelphia, her stump speech elicited crowd participation — they knew the words; they knew how to respond.
“So hear me when I say,” Harris said, with a long pause for the crowd to cheer. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
With the addition of Walz, the Democrats now have two happy warriors on the ticket. It’s a gamble but Republicans are clearly struggling to land an effective response.
As the crowd was waiting for Walz and Harris on stage, Trump seemed to be pining for his former opponent. “What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE” he wrote on Truth Social.
Harris supporters at the event have noticed the difference, too.
“I think it’s a renewed energy. The city feels different,” said Bridget McKeogh, a Philadelphia resident, as she waited for the rain to pass outside the event.
“I love Biden. I think he’s a great president. But things felt kind of old and there wasn’t really an excitement around it. And that’s completely changed. I see young black people registering people to vote, as well as people that look like me,” she added.
Harris will be counting on this new energy to translate into practical advantages — whether that means donations or more volunteer boots on the ground. Some are already seeing it.
“Oh, the vibe shift was immediate,” said Marscha Levell. “Within 2 or 3 hours I got a text message from one of my cousins telling me about the Zoom call for black women for Kamala, and they got 44,000 women, and they raised over $1 million in 24 hours. So that was like a major culture shift.”
There was a message in the jibes, too. Harris and Walz pitched their ticket not just as joyful versus weird, but as a living representation of what it means to be American.
“The promise of America is what makes it possible for two middle-class kids, one a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother, the other a son of the Nebraska planes who grew up working on a farm.. it’s the promise of America, because only in America, only in America, is it possible for them together to make it all the way to the White House,” Harris said.
