Nothing about this feels like a 10-day-old campaign

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ATLANTA — Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech was direct and sharp. The crowd of over 8,000 people was ready to chant favorite lines. It’s a 10-day-old campaign that doesn’t seem this new, with a level of polish and enthusiasm in line with the momentum that is showing up both at the polls and at rallies like Tuesday night’s event here, at the Georgia State University Convocation Center.

Harris spoke for just over 20 minutes, in an address that notably and directly took on former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. She offered up explicit counterpoints to the latest set of Republican ads criticizing her on immigration and solidified her campaign messaging around two key words: “fight” and “freedom.” The effect on stage was nowhere close to a candidate there by accident or because of the workings of perhaps the strangest and most unexpected presidential election cycle in modern history.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday showed that since becoming the likely Democratic presidential nominee since President Joe Biden announced July 21 that he was stepping aside, Harris has eliminated Trump’s lead across seven battleground states. The two candidates are now in a statistical dead heat. In Georgia, the two candidates are now tied .

Harris’ appearance here in her second week since launching her candidacy, in a rally that included Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo as well as top Georgia Democrats, was a sign of how much the state could be in play with her at the top of the ticket.

Alexandra Young attended the rally in a purple T-shirt outlining a list of freedoms: freedom to choose, freedom from gun violence, freedom to vote, freedom to love who you love. She works for a reproductive rights organization and said she was at the rally because she is “really excited to see someone who feels different.” Young said the mood was markedly different than at the Georgia Democrats’ official watch party for the presidential debate last month, when Biden’s poor performance set in motion the events that would lead him to step aside.

Now, she said, “everyone is much more excited,” which she credited to a shift from a campaign that was about beating Trump to one about something new. Harris’ focus on freedoms was part of that, she said.

“I find it ironic that the Republican Party talks about being the party of freedom, but they’re the ones trying to crack down on people’s right to choose, people’s right over their own bodies, people’s right over whether they want children,” Young said.

Heidi Hellman, an engineer, was also in the crowd, wearing a brat green shirt that said, “Regulate guns not women’s bodies.”

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she is elected. Guns are out of control in this country, and we all want better lives with fewer guns in it and lives where we’re not controlling women,” she said.

Hellman said she admired how vocal Harris was about abortion even before the 2022 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to ban the procedure. “We can’t go backwards. We have to go forward,” she said.

One attendee, in a “Women Get Shit Done” T-shirt, said he had been a hardcore Biden supporter but sees the difference that Harris has made. Amin Ghoneim of Suwanee, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, is a state party delegate and said he’s excited to support Harris. “The difference is that now the rest of the party is energized, not just the big nerds, delegates like me,” he said.

“I think you can see how it is very evident in the crowds, the donations, the energy of the past week just up and down the party — everybody is juiced. Everybody got very excited and ready to do the work to win this election,” he said.

Arianne Adams, a blogger and influencer, was in attendance with her two daughters, ages 12 and 15. “We want to show support for our first female president,” she said about why the group was at the rally. “She represents a lot of the values that are important to me, to my family, to my daughters. We believe in change, and I think that she’s the person who can do it for us.”

But she also wanted her daughters to learn from what this campaign represents: “Number one, I want my daughters to see that anything is possible. And number two, I want them to see that being involved, staying active and knowing what’s going on in your society matters [and] that they are part of being capable of the change as well.”

Before Harris took the stage, the elite of Georgia’s Democratic Party spoke, focusing on the state’s role in the upcoming presidential election.

Stacey Abrams — the two-time gubernatorial nominee and voting rights activist — led the crowd in chanting a line from Harris’ first official campaign rally in Milwaukee last week: “We’re not going back.”

Sen. Raphael Warnock told the crowd a story of the day that Harris presided over the Senate vote to confirm Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Harris told Warnock and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, both Black men and Democrats, that they should write a letter to someone describing that day and their role in it, handing them paper to do so right there and then. Warnock charged the crowd in Atlanta to go home and write their own letter about being at the rally and the role they are now playing in “standing up for democracy.”

When Harris took the stage, she appeared visibly moved by the size and level of raw enthusiasm. The crowd was so enthusiastic that Harris finally had to ask them to stop cheering and chanting so she could speak, finally instructing the crowd, “I’m going to get to some business now,” asking with a laugh for those who could to take a seat.

On stage, Harris was relaxed and strong, issuing her first explicit counterarguments to the Trump narrative about her roles on immigration and the economy. She blamed Trump for encouraging congressional Republicans to block legislation that would have funded more Border Patrol agents, saying he prioritized his political future over a fix and pointing to her experience as California attorney general. “As my friend Quavo would say, ‘He doesn’t walk it like he talks it,’” Harris said. About practical economic mobility issues, she promised to take on price gouging and bring down costs on day one of her administration.

She leaned heavily on the theme of freedom that has become a flagpole for her campaign, down to her use of the Beyoncé song of the same name as her walkout song.

“We are not going back because ours is a fight for the future, and it is a fight for freedom. Across our nation, we are witnessing a full-on assault on our hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights,” Harris said. “I don’t have to tell folks in Atlanta that generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom — and now the baton is in our hands.”

Then, the vice president pivoted her speech to the most recent political news.

“The momentum in this race is shifting, and there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it,” Harris said, pointing to the way that Trump had pulled out of the previously agreed upon September presidential debate. “Here’s the funny thing about that. So, he won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me. And by the way, don’t you find some of their stuff to be just plain weird?”

Harris’ speech was confident and not defensive. She and the crowd relished Trump’s attacks on her as a sign of her competency and ability — and the threat those pose to him. It was as if they all had been doing this for months, not days.

“Well Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes, if you got something to say —”

At this point, unprompted, the arena finished her sentence for her as they chanted, “Say it to my face!”