Atlanta – Two Just a few weeks ago, staffers at major Democratic campaigns and party committees were frustrated and depressed, their dream jobs turning into joyless death marches. Donations were drying up, while candidates and elected officials spoke openly and with overwhelming certainty that the party was destined to lose the election in November.
In a world two weeks ago, the Democratic euphoria that unfolded in Atlanta on Tuesday would have been unimaginable: A Division I basketball arena was so packed with ecstatic fans that the fire marshal refused to let anyone else in. There was simply no room left. Ticket holders, credentialed press and elected officials who had failed to enter the Georgia Convention Center lined up on barriers along Capitol Avenue, in 91-degree heat, to watch a series of celebrities on the giant screen.
It’s been just 10 days since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign, and the shift in atmosphere has been stunning. Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Atlanta — her first real campaign event since taking control of the Democratic ticket — had the energy of a homecoming rally. Stacey Abrams, Sen. Jon Ossoff, and Sen. Raphael Warnock spoke. Megan Thee Stallion took the stage, a “Hotties for Harris” banner waving in the stands behind her. “I know my ladies in the crowd love their bodies,” she said. “And if you want to continue to love your bodies, you know who to vote for.” Quavo of Migos introduced the man who introduced the vice president.
Peggy Golden traveled from her home in Savannah to be here: “This is history,” she says. Golden turns 79 in December; she was born before the civil rights movement began. “I grew up on a farm,” she says. Her parents were cooks and foremen. “I never saw it coming in my lifetime—and, hey, here it is,” she says of seeing a woman—a black woman—become president. “I feel it in my bones that it’s going to happen.”
But despite all the excitement—and there seemed to be an endless supply of it in Atlanta—some attendees were still reeling from the political trauma of the past few weeks. “I loved Biden and was sad when he dropped out,” says Linda Cosby Pinnock. She cautions that Harris still has work to do to convince members of her community that she deserves their support. “Some people say they don’t know who she is, they’re not sure what she stands for,” she says.
“I would vote for anyone except Donald Trump and Project 2025,” says Sydney Rhodes, a 28-year-old influencer. But she adds, “I think a lot of people are unsure because of the quick switch, and I hear a lot of people talking about her past as a prosecutor.”
Harris, for her part, is not shy about mentioning her history as a prosecutor, attorney general, or district attorney. On stage in Atlanta, she began with what has become her signature line: “In those roles, I have confronted all kinds of criminals: predators who abused women, con artists who defrauded consumers, and con artists who broke the rules for their own personal gain—so hear me when I say, I know the kind of Donald Trump he is.”
In Atlanta, Harris showed a new willingness to put an issue Republicans believe is her biggest weakness at the center of the campaign: immigration.
“I was the attorney general of a border state,” Harris said on stage Tuesday. “In that job, I walked underground tunnels between the United States and Mexico on that border with law enforcement officers. I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels, human traffickers who had entered our country illegally. I went after them case after case, and I won. Donald Trump, on the other hand, talks a lot about securing our borders, but he doesn’t practice what he says. Or as my friend Koivu says, he doesn’t practice what he says.”
Biden won Georgia — with Harris’ help — in 2020, but it will be more difficult four years later: rolling stone Trump allies have reportedly turned the state into a “laboratory” for strategies to challenge the 2024 election, a source close to the former president said. Georgia Republicans have also enacted sweeping voter suppression legislation, given activists the power to file mass challenges to residents’ voter registrations, and packed state and county election boards with Trump loyalists who believe his lies about the 2020 election and have shown an increasing willingness to refuse to certify the election results.
By launching their campaign in Atlanta, the Harris campaign sent a clear signal: They intend to compete everywhere, including in states that, two weeks ago, seemed to be slipping from their grasp.
According to the campaign, more than 7,500 people have signed up to volunteer in Georgia in the past week alone. On a call with reporters before the launch, Harris’ Georgia state director said they’ve hired more than 170 Democratic staffers in 24 offices across the state — the largest in-state operation for a Democratic presidential campaign, she said. When she landed in Atlanta Tuesday afternoon, it was Vice President Harris’s sixth trip to Georgia this year, and her 15th since taking office in 2020.
“I’m very clear: The road to the White House runs through this state,” Harris said Tuesday. “It helped us win in 2020 — and we’ll do it again in 2024.”
