With Georgia back in play, Dems hope convention builds momentum for Harris-Walz ticket

Harris took a spot at the top of the ticket last month after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed her to run in his place. Delegates swiftly joined her camp, and no challengers for the nomination emerged ahead of a virtual DNC vote early this month.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has called the candidate swap a coup and an attack on democracy, but Democratic voters do not seem to feel the same way. Polls suggest Harris’ movement to the top of the ticket has increased Democrats’ chances in key swing states, including Georgia.

To Parker Short, it’s hard to overstate the level of enthusiasm among Democrats going into the convention.

Short is the famously enthusiastic president of the Young Democrats of Georgia who became a viral sensation last month when a video circulated of him singing and dancing at Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Atlanta shortly after she became the new likely nominee.

And he’s just as fired up today as the 22-year-old Georgia delegate prepares to make Harris and Tim Walz the party’s official nominees.

“It’s no secret that when Harris became the nominee, everything changed. The vibe changed, the momentum changed, the energy changed,” Short said. “It was like we had a shot of espresso and a nice nap and we were really ready to get out there.”

Short said left-leaning voters were hungry for a candidate who could take the fight to Trump and feel like they have found that in Harris. The energy surrounding the campaign, he said, reminds him of the nationally watched U.S. Senate runoffs in early 2021 that elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and handed Democrats control of the chamber.

But Josh McKoon, who chairs the Georgia Republican Party, argues that the surge of enthusiasm among Democrats is just a “sugar high.”

“It’s like someone drinking a sugary cola. You get a sugar high, and then you have the crash,” McKoon said last week on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Politically Georgia” radio show on WABE. “And the crash is going to come. It may come Sept. 10. It may come before then. But sooner or later, (Harris is) going to come into contact with unscripted discussion, whether that’s with President Trump or reporters, and that’s when the wheels are really going to start coming off.”

Under pressure, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump agreed to debate Harris on Sept. 10. Harris and her allies had heavily criticized Trump for backing out of a debate that was planned when Biden was still the expected Democratic nominee.

Democrats may have their work cut out for them, particularly in competitive states like Georgia, but Short argued the energy behind Harris and Walz is hardly fleeting.

“This is not a sugar high. We are running a marathon, and they’re just a little scared that we’re faster. They’re looking behind us like ‘no way we can keep up this pace.’ Sorry, our candidate is not 80 years old anymore,” Short said.

Zachary Peskowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, said he thinks of Harris’ momentum upon entering the race as a “turbocharged convention bump” that will be a memory soon.

After all, it is not the only unexpected plot twist that has been met with a lopsided groundswell of support in this year’s presidential race. It was just a month ago when an attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally left many feeling the race was all but over.

It may not be until after Labor Day before the race begins to stabilize, Peskowitz said.

The Harris effect is likely to have a long-term impact on the race in Georgia, though. Her campaign quickly set its sights on a state Biden narrowly won in 2020, holding one of her first rallies in Atlanta and including Savannah in a planned battleground swing across the country before Hurricane Debby interfered.

But whether Georgia has much of a starring role during the convention remains to be seen. The Republican National Convention was light on Georgia speakers, but that was also back when polls showed Trump with an edge here. Some prognosticators now consider Georgia to be a toss-up, though Peskowitz said he thinks Trump would still be the slight favorite if voting happened today.

“Even if the state isn’t explicitly mentioned, I think a lot of the messaging will be with the intention of doing well in Georgia and increasing the probability that the Democrats hold on to it in November,” he said.

Harris has work to do to win over voters who disapprove of Biden’s performance when it comes to the economy, Peskowitz said.

“That’s very important particularly when talking about the Atlanta suburbs and moderate voters who aren’t strongly attached to either party. Their assessments of the Biden economic performance is not so positive, and so I think that’s going to be an issue for Harris,” he said.

Ahead of the convention, Harris rolled out her first detailed economic policy proposal Friday, laying out how she’d like to ease rent increases, boost first-time home buyers, end grocery price gouging and bolster the child tax credit.

While the speeches, the glitz and the glamor may be fun, the real work will not be televised, said Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie.

“In particular, what comes out of the convention or what’s going to be most important for Kamala Harris in Georgia is the buildup of her campaign team and her staff, and that’s happening behind the scenes,” she said.

“Her shot at winning this race depends on her putting together a flawless get-out-the-vote operation,” she added. “Conventions don’t vote, rallies don’t vote, press releases don’t vote, but voters do, and you’ve got to touch voters where they are. And she should primarily be focused on getting out voters who are already inclined to support the Democratic Party.