As the vice presidential debate wore on and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz found his feet, hitting Republican Senator JD Vance more and more, a gathering of Democrats just outside of Washington DC shifted from silent to celebratory.
Democrats and Kamala Harris supporters, many of them military veterans, had descended on the home of Micaela Pond in Arlington, Virginia, to watch what is likely to be the final face-to-face clash between the two presidential campaigns before voters head to the polls.
Before the debate got under way, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland made an appearance while people chatted over chilli, guacamole and various desserts.
Attendees picked up bingo cards that included phrases like “mind your own damn business” or “childless cat ladies” in anticipation of which election buzzwords would make an appearance on the night.
But once the debate got going, the crowd fell largely silent – particularly as Walz got off to a rather rocky start and then had to admit he was not, after all, in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” he painfully admitted.
All the while, Vance seemed to stick religiously to his talking points, particularly about illegal immigration.
Some watch party attendees said that Walz was likely caught off guard by his opponent’s lies.
“He probably could not believe the amount of lying JD Vance was doing,” Alexandria Stracco told The Independent.
“This is a man literally selling a revisionist history. And I think that for Tim Walz, when he sees this in person, he’s like, ‘this is real. This man is really stupid.’”
The tense vibe in the room began to shift, however, after the first commercial break when the discussion pivoted to abortion.
When Vance proclaimed “my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they frankly just don’t trust us,” some attendees – particularly women – were quick to say: “He’s lying.”
Later on in the night, when Vance and Walz talked about school shootings and Vance proposed better doors in schools as a solution, the crowd grew more vocal and booed. Conversely, when Walz talked about how “sometimes it just is the guns,” applause broke out.
“It doesn’t take a military veteran to understand that that that’s a serious thing, so the fact that they were listening to each other was positive,” Jacob Harrer, a Marine Corps veteran, told The Independent.
The attendees also weren’t buying Vance’s lines on childcare and paid family leave.
“He sounds like a Democrat,” one woman shouted at the screen.
But the moment that seemed to strike a chord most with those in the room came during the closing segment when Vance began to dip and dodge when asked about the January 6 Capitol riot and whether he believes the 2020 election was stolen.
During that moment, people began to shout: “Oh, shut up.”
When Vance said Trump transferred power to President Joe Biden on January 20 2021 – neglecting to mention his role in the violent insurrection days earlier – one attendee quickly corrected him: “He ran away.”
Vance proceeded to short circuit, talking about censorship from Big Tech and support from controversial figures Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard.
The moment was visceral for many in the room, as many police officers who defend the Capitol live in the Northern Virginia area – something that a gathering of Republicans who supported Harris noted last week.
“It’s just added to an opportunity for him to have had integrity, and he just didn’t take it,” Harrer said of his fellow Marine veteran Vance.
When Walz landed a blow responding to Vance’s comments – “I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump” – the room erupted into applause and cheers.
“It was so straight from his heart,” Vivian Watts, a delegate in the Virginia state legislature, told The Independent.
“There was nothing rehearsed about it.”
It’s unclear what impact the debate will have, if any, with snap polls from both CBS News and CNN showing that the night ended in essentially a draw.
And there’s no denying that the vibe wasn’t always exactly what those at the watch party had hoped for.
But, afterward, people filing out had a sense of purpose for the next month, talking about the work they plan to do, including canvassing and knocking on doors.
Pond – the host of the event – put it best, as she invoked the words of former first lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention: “Do something.”
