“What do you have to say to the American people?” Megan Thee Stallion asks Vice President Kamala Harris in a TikTok video.
“We are not going back,” Harris says, emphatically.
Then, without missing a beat, Megan sticks out her tongue and makes her signature sound: ahhh.
It’s a short clip — about 10 seconds, from a July campaign rally in Atlanta. But it captures Harris’ strategy for shifting the campaign vibe since Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. The campaign landscape had been defined by many voters in the Democratic base as one of apathy and frustration. There’s been a tone and mood shift since Harris became the nominee, including among the Black voters who have long formed its base.
“I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a rally with that many people. And it’s only been a few weeks,” Rhoda Howard, a Black voter in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told Capital B, referring to Harris’ swing through Atlanta.
“Like Harris has said, we’re the underdog. But this underdog’s train is moving,” Howard added.
Here’s how a Black Minnesota resident described her reaction to the announcement on Tuesday that Harris had picked “Coach Walz” to be her No. 2.
“‘Boom.’ I said, ‘Boom.’ I said, ‘Winning.’ Big Dad Energy!” she told NBC News. “I knew that, if given the opportunity to really sit down with Vice President Harris and talk to her and she got to know him — the man I know — it would leave no doubt” that Walz should join Harris’ warp-speed campaign. Supporters have been digging into Walz’s past and uncovering some of the more idiosyncratic pop cultural facts about the governor, who’s attracted attention for casting conservatives’ ideology as “just weird.”
Last year, Walz designated July 20, 2023, as Beyoncé Day in Minnesota to honor the music legend’s performance in Minneapolis during her Renaissance World Tour. And two months before, he used purple ink to name a stretch of highway after Minneapolis native Prince.
Of course, Harris’ vibe on the trail is only a boon for her supporters. On the right, it’s become a tool to reinforce the Trump campaign’s messaging about her fitness for office.
“I call her ‘laughing Kamala.’ Have you ever watched her laugh?” Trump said at a July rally. “She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. … She is nuts.”
This story has been updated.