By Alexander Lomax
Photo Credit: Caitlin Sievers, Arizona Mirror
I don’t have to tell you that Arizona has become a hotspot of national politics; our state had the closest margin of victory for Biden of any other state, and while the most recent polls of Trump versus Biden showed a strong lead for Trump, perhaps to a degree where it would no longer be the center of the political universe…then things changed.
I also shouldn’t need to tell you that Biden bowing out of the race and elevating Vice President Kamala Harris to the candidacy has been an energizing development for much of America. While the Republican knives came out immediately, the fact of the matter is that the majority of the nation wasn’t interested in neither Trump nor Biden. Something had to change, and it did.
After the assassination attempt on Trump, all the momentum was going his way, and frankly, for the Democrats to have a chance, they needed to shift that momentum in the other direction…and they did. Not only is the Democratic electorate significantly more energized at the prospect of a new Presidential candidate, but Harris also chose a folksy, interminably likable Vice Presidential choice in Tim Walz, a choice that has so far been infinitely better received than Trump’s selection of JD Vance.
But perhaps the best metric of momentum and excitement is live events, which Arizona recently got to see with the arrival of Harris and Walz for a recent rally. Pictures and videos showed an entirely full arena and the sort of buoyancy that would have been impossible had it been Joe Biden there. As the saying goes, it would seem as though Democrats are fired up and ready to go.
And this clearly has the Trump camp concerned. Long a bragging point himself, now he is lashing out about her campaign rally sizes, a hint that it’s gotten under his skin. What’s more, there seems to be a concerted effort to downplay this enthusiasm on social media, where influencer accounts such as this seem to be peddling the absurd in an attempt to lay the groundwork for future election denialism:
While any person with an IQ over 80 would know that this is ridiculous, it’s what’s between the lines that’s more interesting: that they’re already setting up for the potential of a loss and cries of stolen elections. After all, how could she win an election when no one would even want to show up for her rallies?!? It must have been stolen!
Just like that, Democrats went from certain failure and one that likely would have dripped further down ballot, to extracting all of the momentum and energy from this Presidential race with probable down-ballot impact. It’s funny what having a candidate with the capacity to actually take on Trump can do.