FIRED UP - READY TO GO!!
Wow. If you didn’t see that amazing rally in Philadelphia, get yourself to a re-run. That was the most high-energy Democratic political rally I have ever seen. I thought last week in Atlanta blew the roof off - this one blew the roof off and sent it into orbit!
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the Dream Team. They both have a real ability to connect with an audience. Most important, you can tell they’re having fun doing it.
I loved the fact they and the audience took back things Trump and the MAGAts thought were theirs. When the audience spontaneously started chanting USA! USA! I loved it. I even liked it when they took up “Lock him up!”
Kamala Harris has reclaimed the word”patriotism,” and both she and Walz embody what is really meant by that word - spelled with a lower-case “p.” Republicans are going to have a very hard time getting anyone to take seriously their claim that Democrats are unpatriotic and don’t love this country. That’s something that has pissed me off going back to my days in the antiwar movement. If I didn’t love my country, I wouldn’t have spent seven years trying to get it back on track, I wouldn’t have spent my political life dedicated to making our ideals reality.
Lucian Truscott just wrote about this rally, “Energy in politics can’t be bought, and it can’t be manufactured. It has to just be there. Tonight, in an arena filled to its 12,000 capacity in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz reminded Democrats who they are. Empathy is energy. Humor is energy. Dedication to freedom and justice is energy. Being willing to fight for what you believe is energy.”
I really haven’t see this level of truly heartfelt enthusiasm before. Not even in the Obama campaign, though that was the closest. I can compare to Robert Kennedy’s last campaign appearance in San Francisco in 1968, the rally in Union Square where he said “Some see things the way they are and say why? I see things that never were and say why not?” That hopeful enthusiasm that ran through the crowd has stayed with me for the past 56 years.
I made the mistake in 2008 of thinking we had finally won the election of 1968. But I really believe that if we win this time, that spirit will be what wins, and what becomes our future.
I’m glad I have lived long enough to see this.
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My husband and I watched this unbelievable rally with joy and sincere enthusiasm. It reminded me of the Beatles in the early days. I've never seen anything like this. My God, the energy was palpable through the television screen. Walz knocked it out of the park, and it was obvious he and Kamala were having a blast. This isn't politics. This is a reawakening of pure unadulterated joy for America.
I may be around your age, TC, but before I read this and after watching every second of the roll out of the team I was remembering politics of my youth being fun.
I didn’t understand that much at the time but all us kids loved chanting “I like Ike” and kids can tell a good guy when they see one. I was a full fledged political junkie during the Kennedy years not just because I was an 18 year old Irish Catholic in Philadelphia ( We hold the best rallies.) but because it was fun to be politically active. Tonight I felt that rush again and the momentum to continue to send texts and write postcards and letters and get out the vote and the voters. Never let me forgot the joy of Josh Shapiro’s impassioned speech and the winning and fun spirit of our Democratic team. And please let Jimmy Carter live long enough to caste his vote for Kamala and Tim. It would be the icing on the cake of a special political season.