In her first battleground-state rally as the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a jolt of enthusiasm to a party reeling from weeks of infighting over President Biden’s political future.
Speaking to what her campaign called the largest crowd she or Mr. Biden had addressed since their re-election bid began over a year ago, Ms. Harris offered a far more energetic denunciation of former President Donald J. Trump than her predecessor at the top of the ticket. Her surgical stump speech clearly laid out a range of Democratic policies including support for abortion rights, paid family leave and resisting cuts to social services favored by Republicans.
Interrupted several times by chants of “Ka-ma-la,” Ms. Harris demonstrated how Mr. Biden’s withdrawal and her elevation have nearly overnight transformed what for months had been a desultory, almost perfunctory campaign into a bastion of enthusiasm. She highlighted the $100 million in contributions to her campaign since Sunday and took a victory lap for effectively wrapping up the Democratic presidential nomination within 48 hours.
“We have earned the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination,” Ms. Harris said. “I am so very honored and I pledge to you I will spend the coming weeks continuing to unite our party so that we are ready to win in November.”
The vice president recycled phrases from her 2020 presidential campaign, calling her bid “people-powered” and promising that, as president, she would prioritize the needs of the middle and working class over the desires of corporate interests and the wealthy.
And in a nod to her relative youth — she is 59, decades younger than the 81-year-old Mr. Biden and the 78-year-old Mr. Trump — and her potential to become the first woman elected as president, Ms. Harris placed the 2024 campaign on a continuum with the civil and voting rights struggles of America’s past.
“The shoulders on which we stand, generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom and now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands,” she said. “We who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted.”
Ms. Harris emerged in Wisconsin riding a 48-hour wave of momentum from a Democratic Party that swiftly united around her after more than a year of intramural hand-wringing about whether Mr. Biden was its best shot at defeating Mr. Trump.
Even before Ms. Harris arrived in Milwaukee, it was clear that local Democrats were excited about the change to the top of the ticket. The Harris campaign said every Democratic statewide office holder — even the public schools superintendent — would attend the rally in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, a stark contrast from Mr. Biden’s last Wisconsin visit, when Senator Tammy Baldwin held her own event 190 miles away from the president’s stop in Madison.
As Ms. Harris disembarked Air Force Two at the Milwaukee airport, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez embraced her and insisted on a selfie, as Gov. Tony Evers and Ms. Baldwin hovered in the background.
Ms. Harris walked out to an elated crowd to the tune of Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” which the singer had allowed her to use. The crowd’s excitement was a release of months of pent-up Democratic energy, as one attendee put it.
The vice president drew perhaps her largest cheers during the section of her stump speech that compared her biography to Mr. Trump’s. She told of being a local prosecutor and attorney general in California who investigated “fraudsters” and “cheaters,” among other miscreants.
“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said. “In this campaign, I promise you I will proudly put my record against his every day of the week.”
Public opinion research conducted by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, immediately after Mr. Biden’s announcement that he would end his campaign showed Ms. Harris generating more enthusiasm than he had among young voters — a key group that never warmed to the president’s re-election bid.
Among Democratic-leaning voters in battleground states who are between the ages of 18 and 34, the percentage of voters who said they would definitely vote increased by five percentage points in the 24 hours after Mr. Biden’s withdrawal, according to the data, which was shared with The New York Times. The Priorities USA survey also found Ms. Harris faring four points better among Black voters and three points better among Latinos than Mr. Biden had.
In a state in which the vast majority of communities are either deep red or deep blue, West Allis, an inner-ring, working-class Milwaukee suburb named for a tractor manufacturing plant that once dominated the community , is a rare battleground city. Mr. Biden won 55 percent of the city’s vote in 2020.
In the school gymnasium, the crowd held up signs reading “Kamala” and “USA.” One group held up letters that spelled out “Yes we Kam!” in a play on former President Barack Obama’s winning 2008 campaign slogan.
Among the crowd, the most common reactions to Ms. Harris’s presidential run were “excited” and “relieved.” “We are part of the groundswell,” said Renee Borkowski, a 56-year-old rally-goer from Lake Forest, Ill., adding that this was the first rally she had attended since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign.
Ellen Holly of Elkhorn, Wis., wore a Biden-Harris campaign shirt but took painter’s tape and covered Mr. Biden’s name. She scrawled over it with what has become a rallying cry for the Harris campaign: “Let’s win this.”
“I would vote for a dead animal in the road before I vote for Trump,” said Ms. Holly, 67, a retired teacher who also supported Mr. Biden.
Other attendees highlighted the historic nature of Ms. Harris’s first presidential campaign rally while expressing cautious optimism.
“I’m worried, but I’m more hopeful than I was last week,” Katrice Battle, 37, a Milwaukee photographer, said of Ms. Harris’s candidacy, adding she was invigorated as a Black woman to try to elect the first female president.
But she acknowledged that once the rah-rah feelings of a new campaign fade, Ms. Harris has ground to make up against Mr. Trump. “It was relief, then trepidation,” Ms. Battle said.
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