PHILADELPHIA – Everything was exactly the same as always but also completely different inside the state Democratic Party’s HQ, where every week, elected leaders, ward leaders, volunteers, majordomos and free food aficionados gather to eat pizza and freely share their ideas on how to win the most votes possible in the city of brotherly love.
These are the Democrats who actually do the house-to-house, cajole-by-cajole work of pulling out voters in a swing state like Pennsylvania.
“I’m here from the Biden campaign,” one operative, a regular, said before their face blanked out in that way it does when a person realizes they just confidently proclaimed it the wrong day of the week in conversation with a stranger. “Harris campaign, fuck.”
Everyone in earshot laughed. Really laughed. Laughs that were maybe not there the last time they grabbed slices to gab about the state of things — seven days before this one. Signs of just how odd things are for Democrats at this moment were everywhere. In the entryway, a dozen or so neatly stacked Biden-Harris yard signs, ready to be distributed.
Many were ecstatic about Vice President Kamala Harris — her fundraising, her energy, and a real feeling that she had former President Donald Trump on the run.
“Finally, the Democrats have done the right thing. The. Right. Thing,” one relieved attendee said, requesting anonymity.
Everyone in the room wanted to be very careful about President Joe Biden for two reasons: First, they all like the guy, and second, because at the head of the table, holding court, was the Philadelphia Dems’ longtime chair, former Congressman Bob Brady. Seventy-nine, in a Boilermakers Local 13 polo shirt. He’s a personal friend of the Bidens since the days the two men were proudly, loudly Irish (Brady is also part Italian, Biden is also part a lot of places) and serving on different sides of the Capitol dome.
Brady says he talks to the president just about every week about a lot of things, including Corvettes.
“It’s very sad, you know? I shouldn’t say sad; I guess it’s bittersweet,” Brady said in his office lined with photos of his political career, including a giant one with Biden and another from the House floor with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a reported architect of Biden’s withdrawal. “God bless him; he’s going to be revered forever for doing what he’s doing, giving up the presidency.”
Recently, the two men talked about that decision, Brady said. He didn’t reveal how the conversation went, only that he offered to commiserate if Biden needed it. Brady has plenty of takes — the criticism of the debate was unfair, he said. Biden would have won in November, he insists.
Brady is proud that his Democratic Party stuck by the president. None of the Philadelphia Democrats publicly called for Biden to step aside, he said. They believe in loyalty. Two Wednesdays ago, you would have found him grumbling about self-serving politicians trying to save their own skins by sacrificing Biden’s and vowing to never forget the people who he thinks turned on his pal, including a specific list of colleagues from his days in the House.
This Wednesday, he was still doing that but added he was trying to follow Biden’s lead.
“He told me to get past it. And I said, ‘If you’re past it, I’m past it,’” he said. “So I’m in for Kamala, one hundred and ten percent.”
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Harris is atop the ticket, but Democratic grassroots organizers in Pennsylvania are trying to figure out what else has to change.
The end of the Biden campaign and the beginning of the Harris one is murky so far from a strategic perspective. Although there are reports Harris is bringing in new operatives to help run the general election bid, the Philadelphia Democrats say they’re still talking to the same people they have all year. Party leadership is not looking for sweeping changes in strategy, despite months of fighting uphill against polling that showed a lot of voters were not crediting Biden for his accomplishments or improving their negative view of him. What they want is more. More rallies, more appearances, more effort spent on drawing contrasts.
Democrats always win Philadelphia, but the goal of the party here is to run up the vote total high enough to give Democrats a fighting chance against Republicans in other redder parts of the state.
“If we put out the vote that we normally put out on a presidential election, we’ll carry the rest of the state,” said Jim Harrity, an at-large member of the city council and volunteer political director of the Philadelphia Democrats, who got his start as a driver for Brady. Harrity said the party has been running robocalls and phone banks and text campaigns for months, far earlier than usual, to try to get as many voters out as possible.
But the run-up-the-totals scheme was rough sledding for the ward chairs of the Philly Dems before Biden dropped out.
“I’ve seen this in our area for some time, the voter apathy,” said Heather Miller, who works the doors in the 35th Ward and has been stumping for Democrats for 30 years in Philadelphia. Things got especially low after the assassination attempt against Trump and the iconic photo of his raised fist, she said. Her daughter asked her “how to prepare for a Republican world,” she recalled.
“The message was not permeating the younger voter,” said Leslie Burrell, a neighborhood chair in the city’s Ward 12 of the Biden-Harris campaign. The Harris-To Be Announced campaign is different. “Kamala is not old. Biden’s old.”
Still, Burell said it would take “laser-targeting” to make up the ground lost in the months Biden had not been exciting some voters with his message or turning them off altogether with his age. She lives in one of the city’s many areas with a large Black population, and she said young Black people she connects with need to hear more from the Democrats, she said. “You’ve gotta touch the younger audience,” she advised.
Veteran Black Democrats around the table said they had been worried by the same rise in support for Trump among younger people, especially younger Black men, that had been seen in some polling nationally. But not every Black politician at the pizza party was as eager to embrace that narrative. Andre Carroll is a young supporter of the progressive Working Families Party and is set to become a member of the state House in September after a special election in which he is running unopposed.
“The thing is, I am a Black, queer, male, progressive in this country,” he said. “And depending on what identity of mine you’re talking about, the conversation changes.”
Harris was already being painted as a radical lefty by Republicans, who launched an ad in Pennsylvania casting her as an extremist. Progressives and mainstream Democrats have not always gotten along in Philly — Brady’s machine has put pressure on Democrats not to support Working Families candidates. The arrival of Harris has changed that dynamic.
“We’re not boastful enough,” Carroll said, urging Democrats to tout the long list of progressive accomplishments under Biden. Age had dominated the conversation. “It was the loudest talking point in the room, and that was definitely unfortunate,” he said. “It’s off the table because guess what? Now we have a young, vibrant — we have a woman, right?”
Oh, and one other thing.
“Let her choose [Josh] Shapiro for vice president and see how enthusiastic it becomes,” said Harrity, referring to Pennsylvania’s first-term governor, who the Philadelphia Democrats voted unanimously to endorse as Harris’ VP pick.
Harrity says that while it will get much easier to excite Black Democrats and women, Harris’ ascension will likely make it harder to run up those vote totals with the kinds of white guys Scranton Joe is capable of connecting with.
“It does change the dynamic a little bit,” said Harrity. But that’s an easy problem to solve, said Harrity and others in the room.
“Shapiro will bring energy, and he appeals to Republicans,” he added.
Brady, overseeing the turnout operation that he hoped would keep Biden in the White House but is now convinced will do the same for Harris, said a campaign reset is not necessary. Shapiro is, he agreed.
Brady has had his beefs with the presidential campaign — according to him, he demanded Democratic coordinated campaign aides dispatched from Biden HQ be comfortable with Philadelphia, not outsiders “asking where to get the best cheesesteak.” Anyone working for the Democrats in Philly should already know, he said.
That issue was settled months ago. Now, Brady says, the rest is already in place among the people in the room smiling to each other, no longer using free pizza to eat their feelings but taking big bites of something that tasted like victory. He drew on his Italian American side to sum up Harris vs. Trump.
“She’s gonna give him major, major, major agita,” he said.
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS.