WASHINGTON (AP) — For many Democrats, Kamala Harris embodied everything Joe Biden was not when confronting Donald Trump on the debate stage: energetic, nimble and relentless in attacking her opponent.
In contrast to Biden’s failed debate performance in June, Democrats who gathered in bars, TV parties and other events on Tuesday night had every reason to cheer about Biden’s efforts to unsettle the Republican.
In a race for the White House that polls show to be exceptionally close and in which both sides are looking to gain an advantage, it was the Democrats who came out on top after the nationally televised debate.
“She impeached Donald Trump tonight,” said Alina Taylor, 51, a high school special education teacher who gathered with hundreds of people on a football field at the historically black Salem Baptist Church of Abington in suburban Philadelphia, where people watched on a 30-foot screen.
She said of Trump: “I was appalled” by his performance. “People laughed at him because his statements didn’t make sense.”
In Seattle, people gathered at Massive, a gay and lesbian nightclub, where dozens watched the debate on a projector set up in front of the club’s huge disco ball. The crowd laughed and cheered when Trump called Harris a Marxist. There was even more cheering when the debate moderator denounced Trump’s false claim that killing babies after birth is legal in some states.
“He’s going to get finished,” one said.
But in Brentwood, Tennessee, Sarah Frances Morris heard nothing at her election party that would shake her support for Trump.
“I think he beat her to the border,” she said. “I think he also beat her to the punch in actually having plans and letting the American people know about them. And I think Kamala Harris likes to mention that she has plans for things, but she never goes into detail about what those plans are.”
Morris acknowledged that she was about to make history “because we have our first black presidential candidate.” But, she added, “I don’t think she delivered the performance that got her where she needed to go.”
Harris supporter Dushant Puri, 19, a student at UC Berkeley, 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 trying to assert herself.”
At the same election party, 21-year-old fellow student Angel Aldaco said that, unlike Biden, Harris “came with a plan and was more precise.”
Aldaco was struck by one of the evening’s strangest moments, when Trump “went on a pet-eating rampage,” promoting a baseless conspiracy theory that immigrants were stealing and eating other people’s dogs and cats. Harris couldn’t believe it. “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 who were despondent or even panicked after Biden’s awkward debate performance, it was enough to see a Democratic candidate seriously get under Trump’s skin.
“He’s pretty inept when he’s excited,” said Ikenna Amilo, an accountant at a Democratic campaign party in a tiny concert hall in downtown Portland, Maine.
“When you attack him, he’s very reactive and doesn’t show the temperament you want in a president. So I think Kamala has shown that she’s doing a good job.”
Annetta Clark, 50, a Harris supporter from Vallejo, Calif., who was attending a party hosted by the Oakland Bay Area chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, said the second presidential debate was a huge relief compared to the one in June.
“To be honest, I couldn’t stand the first part,” Clark said. “I tried to watch it, but it was a bit too much. I enjoyed this one.” On Trump’s performance: “It was almost like I was talking to him as a child.” Harris? “Fantastic performance.”
Natasha Salas, a 63-year-old Democrat from Highland, Indiana, watched the debate from an Alpha Kappa Alpha fraternity party at a bistro in Markham, Illinois, and welcomed Harris’ call to chilly the political temperature – even as the vice president sharply denounced Trump at every turn.
“We all want the same thing, Democrats and Republicans,” Salas said. “We are more alike than we are different. I want the country to move forward and be less divided.”
Interest in the debate crossed national borders. In a refugee center in Tijuana, Mexico, where dozens of people watched a translated version of the debate on television, Rakan al Muhana, a 40-year-old asylum seeker from Gaza, became animated as the candidates spoke about Israel and Palestine.
“We are fleeing the war,” he said. “We are fleeing the Israeli bombs. He (Trump) does not see us as human beings. My daughter, who is four months old – to him she is a terrorist.”
Al Muhana is on a four-month journey from Gaza to this border town with his wife and four children. They left when both his mother and father were killed in a bombing raid.
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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, California, and Gregory Bull in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed to this report.
