ATLANTA (AP) — Two rallies. Two Americas.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stood in the same arena four days apart, looking out over the sold-out audience like concert stars or prizefighters.
The competing events took place three months before Election Day in the state where the 2020 White House race was closest. In terms of policy, tone, the type of voters in attendance and even the music playlists, the rallies offered not just opposing visions of the country, but entirely different versions of it.
This energetic raises the question of how a divided citizenry would welcome a Trump comeback or a Harris rise.
At least two people who came to the Georgia State Convocation Center on different days agreed on this.
“It’s OK to have different ideologies,” said Angela Engram, a 59-year-old Democrat who traveled from Stockbridge, Georgia, to hear Harris speak on Tuesday. “But now it’s all about parties, personalities and power, and people aren’t even trying to understand each other.”
Tracy Maddux, a 67-year-old retired grocery store worker from Sparta, Georgia, who was at Trump’s rally on Saturday, shared Engram’s lament about politics in 2024.
But Maddux blamed Engram’s party, saying Democrats no longer care about ordinary people. Engram blamed Trump and his supporters, particularly those who accept his lies that his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged.
Both groups formed a coalition
With Biden dropping out of the race in July and Democrats elevating Harris to the rank of candidate of both major parties, they now have the power to fill the stadiums.
Harris – the first woman, the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president – drew a racially and generationally diverse crowd that was majority black but majority female. Democrats danced to R&B, hip-hop and pop music. They rocked out to guest star Megan Thee Stallion and stomped to Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” which became Harris’s entrance song and campaign anthem.
Trump drew a predominantly white crowd, with a notable presence of black voters. The playlist reflected his eclectic musical tastes – including the Village People and ABBA – but also included plenty of country music. The crowd erupted in cheers at the first notes of his signature walk-up song: “God Bless the USA” by Trump supporter Lee Greenwood.
It was two different groups in just one of the swing states of a divided nation that will decide the presidency. In 2020, Biden ran a tough campaign in metropolitan areas like Atlanta with black voters, younger voters, other non-white voters and white voters with college degrees. Trump dominated rural areas, tiny towns and smaller cities. In Georgia, the result was a Biden victory with 11,779 out of 5 million votes cast.
Both campaign teams expect the Harris-Trump duel to go in the same direction, with the base of both parties playing a decisive role in the outcome in Georgia and nationally.
The rally for Harris last week frustrated Republicans so much that they downplayed their role in it.
“They had a big crowd. They had entertainment here. They did a little twerking,” said Burt Jones, Georgia’s lieutenant governor, who served as one of Trump’s “fake electors” after the 2020 election.
Jones claimed that Harris’ audience thinned out after Megan Thee Stallion’s performance. That wasn’t the case during the 25 minutes that Harris spoke. In fact, Trump lost significant numbers of his supporters during his 91-minute speech.
Two rallies showed two very different American visions
The Democrats celebrated Harris as a historical figure who could utilize her past for the benefit of all Americans.
“She brings all of these strands together,” Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first black U.S. senator, said Tuesday. “She sees us because she is, quite literally, all of us.”
Harris herself spoke more about politics than about her biography, including her biggest issues: inflation and immigration.
On inflation, she implicitly blamed corporate greed and promised to crack down on “price gouging” and “hidden fees.” Democrats described the biggest spending measures of Biden’s term as landmark investments in tidy energy, domestic manufacturing – such as Georgia’s burgeoning electric battery factories – and infrastructure improvements that had eluded previous presidents, including Trump.
On Saturday, Republicans blamed these measures for the higher prices and portrayed Harris as a radical who threatened national values.
Trump made dystopian predictions for a Harris administration. “A crash like 1929… we’re going to end up in World War III… the suburbs are going to be overrun by violent crime and brutal foreign gangs,” Trump warned. “If Kamala wins, there will be crime, chaos and death all over our country.”
He specifically blamed Harris for the killing of Georgian Laken Riley, whose death authorities blamed on a Venezuelan who allegedly entered the U.S. illegally. Harris did not mention Riley, but criticized Trump for scaring Senate Republicans into abandoning a bipartisan immigration and border security deal.
Terry Wilson, a 46-year-old trucker from Chattanooga, Tennessee, stood in coveted seats on the floor and cheered Trump’s broadsides against Harris. In an interview, Wilson added his own Trump-like hyperbole: “I mean, she’s a Marxist.”
Michaelah Montgomery, a black conservative activist, joined Trump in his recent mockery of Harris’ racial and ethnic identity. “She’s only black when it comes to getting elected,” Montgomery argued. The predominantly white crowd laughed and cheered.
For running mate JD Vance, Trump was the living martyr who “took a bullet for the country.” Speakers recalled a bloodied Trump standing up at a rally in Pennsylvania three weeks earlier after an assassin’s bullet struck his ear. The image was emblazoned on T-shirts worn by the entire audience in Atlanta.
At the Harris rally, Trump was presented as the convicted ex-president who ran a profit-seeking online college, was convicted of sexual abuse in civil court, denied the 2020 election results and watched as his supporters ransacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent Biden’s confirmation as his successor.
“I’ve dealt with people like him my entire career,” said Harris, a former prosecutor in California.
There was no mention of Trump’s near-death or Biden’s subsequent call to tone down his political rhetoric on Tuesday, but chants of “Lock him up! Lock him up!” rang out – chants that began while Biden was still in the race but reached deafening pitches in Atlanta.
The chant is a response to Republicans who eight years ago chanted “Lock her up!” about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent. She has never been charged with a crime.
Consensus is an increasingly elusive idea
Presidential campaigns are always marked by disagreements and divisions. Only once in the last half century – Republican Ronald Reagan in 1984 – has the winner received more than 55 percent of the vote. More often, the winner has not even received a majority of the vote, as was the case with Trump in 2016 and Republican George W. Bush in 2000.
Engram, the Harris supporter from Stockbridge, still found reason for optimism.
“There really is so much that we all have in common if people would just calm down and think about it,” she said, although she expressed doubts about whether Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement would ever contribute to a national consensus. A healthier discourse under a Harris administration, she said, would “depend on the good Republicans who are not all MAGA.”
Trump’s allies gave no indication that they could aim for consensus. Pastor Jentezen Franklin of Gainesville, Georgia, used his prayers on Saturday to describe the election as a “spiritual battle.”
Republican U.S. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia warned of a left-wing “regime” behind Harris: “They hate you. But Donald Trump loves you.”
Trump spoke at length about his lies that he lost in 2020 due to voter fraud. He attacked not only Democrats but also Governor Brian Kemp, the most powerful Republican in Georgia, and others who, Trump said, had let the party down by not helping him overturn Biden’s victory.
Democrats peppered their remarks on Tuesday’s election with references to the delayed civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, who long represented the Atlanta metropolitan area in Congress. Warnock derided Trump as “a Florida man” who, in an infamous phone call, pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to make him the winner of the 2020 election.
Despite all the other rhetoric, both candidates indicated their unity.
“We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God,” the former president said.
The Vice President’s version: “We love our country, and I believe the highest form of patriotism is to fight for the ideals of our country. … And when we fight, we win.”
But only one of them will do it.
