WASHINGTON — For many Democrats, Kamala Harris was everything Joe Biden was not in the face-off against Donald Trump on the debate stage: powerful, quick on her feet, tireless in pursuing her opponent.
In a pivot point of Biden’s Debate Collapse In June, Democrats who gathered Tuesday night in bars, watch parties and other venues found ample reason to cheer her campaign to shake up Republicans.
In a race for the White House Polls show the outcome is extremely close, with both sides looking to gain an edge. Democrats were the most exuberant after the nationally televised debate.
“She persecuted Donald Trump tonight,” said Alina Taylor, 51, a high school special education teacher who joined hundreds of people on a football field at the historically black Salem Baptist Church in Abington, a suburb of Philadelphia, where people watched on a 30-foot screen.
As for Trump, she said, “I was shocked” by his performance. “People laughed at him because he didn’t seem very logical.”
In Seattle, crowds gathered at Massive, a queer nightclub, where dozens watched the debate on a projector set up in front of the club’s giant disco ball. The crowd laughed and cheered when Trump called Harris a Marxist. There were even more cheers when the moderator denounced Trump’s false claim that some states legalize killing babies after birth.
“He’s getting fucked,” someone said.
But in Brentwood, Tennessee, Sarah Frances Morris heard nothing at her viewing party that shook her support for Trump.
“I think he beat her at the border,” she said. “I think he also beat her in terms of having plans and letting the American people know what those plans are. And I think Kamala Harris likes to say she has plans for things, but she never really gets into them.”
Morris admitted she saw history being made, “because we have our first black woman running for president.” But, she added, “I don’t think she delivered what she needed to do to get to where she needed to be.”
Harris supporter Dushant Puri, 19, a UC Berkeley student, said the vice president took command before the first words were spoken — when she crossed the stage to shake Trump’s hand. “I thought that was pretty significant,” Puri said. “It was their first interaction, and I thought Harris was asserting herself.”
At the same viewing party, fellow student Angel Aldaco, 21, said that unlike Biden, Harris “came with a plan and was more concise.”
Aldaco was struck by one of the night’s strangest moments, when Trump “went on a rant about eating pets.” That was when Trump endorsed a baseless conspiracy theory that immigrants were stealing people’s dogs and cats and eating them. Harris was incredulous. “That was good,” the student said.
It’s questionable how much viewers learned about what Harris would do as president, or whether she could win over independents or wavering Republicans. But for some Democrats, despondent or even panicked after Biden’s clumsy debate performance, it was enough to see a Democratic nominee seriously gunning for Trump.
“He’s pretty incompetent when he’s angry,” said Ikenna Amilo, an accountant at a Democratic watch party in a small concert hall in downtown Portland, Maine.
“When you touch him, he’s very reactive and he doesn’t exhibit the temperament you want to see in a president. So I think Kamala has shown that she can do a good job.”
Annetta Clark, 50, a Harris supporter from Vallejo, California, watched a house party hosted by the Oakland Bay Area chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. For her, the second presidential debate was a huge relief from the one in June.
“I couldn’t stand the first one, to be honest,” Clark said. “I tried to watch it and it was a little too much. This one I did like.” On Trump’s performance: “It was almost like I was talking to a child.” Harris? “Great job.”
Democrat Natasha Salas, 63, of Highland, Indiana, watched the debate from an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority viewing party at a bistro in Markham, Illinois, and welcomed Harris’ call to temper the political temperature, even as the vice president blasted Trump in every way possible.
“We all want the same thing, Democrats and Republicans,” Salas said. “We’re more alike than we are different. I want the country to move forward and have less division.”
Interest in the debate transcended national borders. From a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, where dozens of people watched a translated version of the debates on television, Rakan al Muhana, 40, an asylum seeker from Gaza, became animated as the candidates discussed Israel and Palestine.
“We’re running away from the war,” he said. “We’re running away from the Israeli bombs. He (Trump) doesn’t see us as human beings. My daughter, who is four months old — to him, she’s a terrorist.”
Al Muhana is on a four-month journey from Gaza to this border town with his wife and four children, after both his mother and father were killed in a bomb attack.
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Associated Press journalists Michael Rubinkam in Philadelphia; George Walker in Nashville; Robert Bukaty in Portland, Maine; Lindsey Wasson in Seattle; Godofredo Vasquez in Berkeley, Calif.; and Gregory Bull in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed to this report.