On Thursday night, it was up to Kamala Harris to make the closing argument for why Democrats deserved another four years in the White House. In her headlining speech of the Democratic National Convention, which had been as festive, and at times as frivolous, as a giant block party, Ms. Harris spoke of standing up to global tyranny, and of lessons she learned from her single mother. She blasted the former President Donald J. Trump as an “unserious man” and spoke of the “awesome responsibility” that comes with the privilege of being an American.
It all left Democrats on the convention floor feeling euphoric and focused, confident that her speech would spur the Democratic base to turn out in November.
But outside the arena, and outside the bubble of ride-or-die Democratic voters, some voters, particularly Republicans, said they did not even bother to watch the speech. And among some still on the fence — those who could make a difference in a tight contest — Ms. Harris’s words did not make immediate converts. They said they needed more specifics.
Bob and Sharon Reed watched Ms. Harris’s speech on their farm in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Both of them voted for Mr. Trump in past elections and both of them liked some of his policies, if not his personality. They came away from Ms. Harris’s speech feeling a little conflicted.
The problem? They liked it.
“I really wasn’t happy with the Biden administration,” said Ms. Reed, who like her husband is 77 and a retired schoolteacher. “But listening to her tonight, maybe it’s not as hard to vote for her. And, you know, I’m a little scared of what Trump will do when he gets back in power.”
Ms. Reed appreciated how Ms. Harris drew several specific contrasts between what she would do as president versus what Mr. Trump would do.
Mr. Reed, who had been leaning toward Mr. Trump, found Ms. Harris’s optimism and can-do attitude appealing. “This sounded presidential,” he said.
It had all left them as undecided as ever, and hoping the debates might help them make up their minds.
“I want some concrete answers and some substance in those debates,” Ms. Reed said. “I don’t know if I’m going to get either.”
But others weighed Ms. Harris’s words against the record of the Biden administration. Craig Scott, a Republican, watched the speech on Thursday while settled in a chair on his backyard patio in High Point, N.C., with a slice of pizza in hand.
Mr. Scott, who has written essays about how his incarceration experience as a Black man led him to support Mr. Trump, had been turned off by other parts of the convention, particularly the Democrats’ rhetoric on race and their portrayal of the election as a battle of good versus evil, all of which he found to be patronizing.
“Their whole messaging is always, ‘You need to vote for us because we’re the good white folks, and they’re the bad white folks,’” Mr. Scott said. “That has been their pitch for decades.”
He verbally appended Ms. Harris’s speech with a lively running commentary. When she mentioned how abortion rights had been shattered because of Mr. Trump, he shot back: “Well, Trump mentioned he supports exceptions.”
When she promised that she would ensure, as president, that the country would always have “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” he laughed.
“That’s going to be a hard one for her to sell,” he said, recalling America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
The weeklong convention in Chicago enlisted the likes of Stevie Wonder and the rapper Lil Jon to provide the music; superstars like Oprah Winfrey and Eva Longoria to provide the glamour, and living titans of the Democratic past — including the Clintons and the Obamas — to remind the party faithful of not-so-distant glory days.
But the glitz and the rhetoric left some voters less than impressed.
Tim Heinle, a cabinetmaker in Milwaukee who has voted for Democrats and Republicans, thought the celebrity appearances and adulatory speeches were “not necessarily interesting,” and a poor substitute for meaty policy discussions. Oscar Mercadillo, an undecided voter from Kenosha, Wis., shook his head at Bill Clinton’s argument that Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, would be “the president of joy,” calling it “just corny.”
Others seemed to have made their minds up before the first balloons had been inflated, let alone dropped.
Hours before Ms. Harris’s history-making speech on Thursday, Chelsea Howell Garcia, 33, said she would not bother watching it. Ms. Garcia, who lives in McAllen, Texas, and owns a trucking and logistics company, said she had been voting Republican in presidential elections since she was old enough to vote.
She followed the Democratic convention primarily via Instagram and Facebook, and said she saw and heard nothing on social media that would change her feeling that the Biden administration, including Ms. Harris, had done little to improve economic conditions for people like her.
“Millennials my age cannot even afford a home right now,” she said. “Younger people, like my niece who just graduated from college, can’t even use their degrees to work. They can’t find a job.”
Ms. Harris’s first bid for president in the 2020 Democratic primary had been a disastrous one, and the unorthodox way she had seized the nomination this time around meant that she had a lot on the line, and a lot to prove, on Thursday night. And while the verdict on her speech was not unanimous, she found pockets of appreciation — but perhaps not agreement — in corners of the country that could seem radically different.
In Phoenix, Ryan Rivera, 20, had felt mostly disgust and dread at the prospect of a Biden/Trump rematch. But as Mx. Rivera, a trans man, sat in their bedroom and watched Ms. Harris speak, they said they felt glimmers of the thrill and hope they had seen from audiences who cheered early speeches from Barack Obama.
“This is the first acceptance that’s really made me emotional,” said Mx. Rivera, who works in a Target. “It’s changed a lot. I’m a lot more confident in voting for her.”
Mx. Rivera knew little about Ms. Harris when she replaced Mr. Biden in July, but said her convention speech showed resolve, strength and a power to inspire. Her stories about growing up in a middle-class Oakland family brought to mind Mx. Rivera’s own mother, who worked in education and had to get a second job during the summers to make ends meet.
Some 1,800 miles east, in suburban Cobb County, Ga., Jason Shepherd, the former chairman of the county Republican Party, also went quiet and closely followed Ms. Harris’s description of her childhood. Mr. Shepherd, too, had been raised by a single mother. As he watched the speech in his living room, which was adorned with a bust of Ronald Reagan, he noted that like Ms. Harris, he had also worked at a McDonald’s as a young person. And he, too, had gone on to become a successful lawyer.
He admitted that parts of Ms. Harris’s speech had moved him. At one point, he said, “I like her better” than Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Shepherd, 48, who is also an associate professor of political science at Kennesaw State University, noted that he had been a conservative for decades. He flinched when Ms. Harris attacked Mr. Trump, contending that an acceptance speech was a time for a candidate to act presidential and seek unity. And like Mr. Scott, he said he could not overcome Ms. Harris’s record, which, he said, proved that she was too liberal to ever earn his vote.
Though he did not care for Mr. Trump’s personality, he said, he would vote for him again in November, just as he had in 2016 and 2020.
“We need someone like her to be president,” he said of Ms. Harris. “But it needs to be someone conservative.”
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