ATLANTA – Vice President Kamala Harris told a cheering, boisterous, packed Atlanta arena on Tuesday that the next 98 days would be a fight, but they'd win come November, as she taunted Donald Trump for wavering on whether he'd show up for their upcoming debate.
“The momentum in this race is shifting," the likely nominee said. "And there are signs Donald Trump is feeling it."
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Little more than a week ago, Georgia appeared to be slipping out of the Democrats' reach: President Joe Biden's campaign pledged to concentrate more on holding the Midwestern "blue wall" states and indicated they might be willing to forsake “Sun Belt” battlegrounds. But now that Biden has bowed out of the race and Harris is the likely nominee, Democrats are expressing new hopes of an expanded electoral map.
In the state that delivered Biden his narrowest victory margin in 2020, Harris pulled off what has been a signature Trump event: A big, loud rally full of supporters cheering her name, as she mocked her rival and his running mate JD Vance as “just plain weird,” and derided their policies as backward, outdated and dangerous.
Trump earlier said he'd debate Harris, but is now questioning the value of a meetup and saying he “probably” will debate her, but he “can also make a case for not doing it.”
Harris seized on it. “So he won't debate me, but he and his running mate have a lot to say about me,” she said. “And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird.”
"Well Donald," she said, addressing him head-on. “I do hope you'll reconsider. Meet me on the debate stage ... because as the saying goes, if you've got something to say, say it to my face.” Trump has suggested the Sept. 10 debate on ABC News should be moved to a different network, calling ABC “fake news.”
Harris hasn’t yet formally seized the Democrat nomination, though she is the only person who met the qualifications to vie for it, the Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday, and will all-but-certainly clinch it come Monday when the party concludes a virtual roll call vote. Her pick of a running mate is also expected by early next week, when Harris plans to begin a seven-stop tour of battleground states to hold rallies alongside her vice presidential nominee.
On Tuesday, the roughly 8,000-capacity basketball arena at Georgia State University was filled to its rafters with voters waving signs, dancing to the Harris campaign soundtrack and a performance by Megan Thee Stallion. Such an atmosphere would not have been possible just 10 days ago, with the party reeling over whether the 81-year-old Biden would remain in the race after a dismal performance magnified concerns about his age and abilities and ultimately ended his campaign.
“This is like Barack Obama 2008 on steroids for me,” said Mildred Hobson Doss, a 59-year-old who came downtown from suburban Lilburn. “I would have voted for President Biden again. But we are ready.”
Harris' campaign argues her appeal to young people, working-age women and non-white voters has scrambled the dynamics in Georgia and other states that are demographically similar, from North Carolina to Nevada and Arizona.
In a strategy memo released after the president left the race, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who held the same role for Biden, reaffirmed the importance of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a trio of industrial states that have formed the traditional Democratic blue wall.
But she also argued that the vice president’s place atop the ticket “opens up additional persuadable voters” and described them as “disproportionately Black, Latino and under 30” in places like Georgia.
“The energy is infectious,” said Georgia Democratic Chairwoman Nikema Williams, a congresswoman from Atlanta. “My phone has been blowing up. People want to be part of this movement.”
Harris began Tuesday with her days as a prosecutor — setting up the contrast between the law and Trump's many legal problems and misdeeds. But she also aggressively defended the Biden administration's record and said she would work to pass voting rights legislation and restore abortion rights stripped by the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“America has tried these failed policies before. And we are not going back. We're not going back,” Harris said, shaking her head no as the crowd cheered “we're not going back.”
Republicans, who still control Georgia’s state government, counter that Biden’s lagging popularity and concern over higher consumer prices and immigration will transfer to Harris in the historically conservative state.
But they concede that the landscape suddenly looks much closer to 2020 – when Biden won by about 0.25 percentage points — than when Trump was riding high after the Republican National Convention and surviving an assassination attempt.
“Trump was going to win Georgia. It was over,” said Republican consultant Brian Robinson. “The Democrats have a chance here for a reset.”
And Trump is not taking chances. Earlier Tuesday, the former president announced that he would come to Atlanta on Saturday for a rally in the same Georgia State arena.
Robinson said Harris still has plenty of liabilities, including the progressive positions she took in her failed 2020 primary campaign and her various rhetorical stumbles. But he said Harris so far in this campaign has been “in command,” and if that continues, “we have a new ballgame and she will be competitive in Georgia.”
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed Harris as “just as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden” and said the vice president would have to explain her support of Biden administration policies that “hurt working families in Georgia over the past four years.”
The campaign and Georgia Democratic officials have 24 offices across the state, including two added last weekend in metro Atlanta. Trump and the Republican National Committee opened their first Georgia offices only recently.
In a call with supporters after her speech, Harris thanked them for their work and noted early voting starts in some states in just 38 days.
“This is a sprint," she said. "And we know what we need to do to cross the finish line.”
The fast-growing, diversifying Atlanta suburbs and exurbs offer the most opportunity for swings, especially from GOP-leaning moderates disenchanted with Trump.
For Harris, that means depending on voters as varied as Michael Sleister, a white suburbanite, and Allen Smith, a Black man who lives not far from downtown Atlanta.
Sleister, who considers himself an independent, has lived in Forsyth County for 35 years. “I've voted Republican many times in my life,” he said, but not since the GOP took a rightward turn during President Barack Obama's administration.
"Now I see the Republican Party as representing a direct threat to my grandchildren," he said, adding that he sees Trump “as just a horrible person.”
Smith is a 41-year-old Atlanta native who has become a first-time campaign volunteer since Harris became the likely nominee.
“I was driving when I heard the news about President Biden endorsing her, and I started pounding my fist — I decided right then I would do whatever I could to help her get elected,” Smith said.
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Long reported from Washington. Follow the AP's coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.