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 vicepresidential 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.
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