Kamala's Rallygoers Are Only Sticking Around for the Opening Acts

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“Massive crowd of 20,000 people to see Obama and Kamala speak in Atlanta.”

At least, that was the headline from GAFollowers, a popular social media outfit here in Atlanta. And I have no doubt that 20,000 people showed up to a Harris-Walz campaign event in the Atlanta suburb of Clarkston, Ga., last Thursday, but GAFollowers is only half right. Those 20,000 people only showed up to see Barack Obama.

I first learned of this when I was driving home from running errands last Friday evening. I had my radio tuned to 97.5, a station that plays mostly R&B with a little hip-hop mixed in, along with about 8,000 pro-Kamala ads per day. One DJ, a beloved local celebrity, was telling the other about the event. He mentioned that after Obama spoke and Kamala took the stage, the crowd began leaving in droves.

“It wasn’t that bad,” the other DJ said, but he went on to explain that people are tired of hearing Kamala say the same thing over and over again. He also suggested that she just didn’t have the star power. He said it’s like putting on the rock star first, and then he compared Kamala to… Ice Spice.

When I got home, I decided to take a deeper dive, and sure enough, there were people on X talking about the exodus. The Daily Mail described it as people “exiting the bleachers as she spoke in the way baseball fans head for the exits of a blowout in the late innings to avoid traffic.”

To be fair, actual celebrities and rock stars like Tyler Perry, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen appeared before the vice president spoke, too. But the point is you don’t bring Elvis out on stage and follow him up with Sammy Shore.

On Friday night, the Harris-Walz campaign made the same mistake when it took its show to Houston, where people reportedly waited for 12 hours to get inside the Shell Energy Stadium. No, they weren’t that excited about the Democratic presidential nominee. They were there to see Beyonce perform like she did when she endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Only Beyonce didn’t perform. She stood on stage and spoke for four minutes, teasing the audience with lines like “It’s time for America to sing a new song.” She also teased a mini Destiny’s Child reunion that even got my elder millennial attention by having Kelly Rowland join her on stage.

But the only music was the album version of the Grammy winner’s “Freedom” blasting through the loudspeaker. Naturally, fans were livid. Several took to X and TikTok to post videos of attendees booing and leaving the stadium when Harris took the stage.

During the September 10 presidential debate, Kamala invited the audience to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, suggesting that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” Even if that were true, at least they’re not showing up just to see the opening acts. They came to see Trump, who is always the true rock star at his own events.

The radio DJ was right. And while I’m still not exactly sure who Ice Spice is, I’ve seen Kamala give dozens of rehearsed speeches filled with lies since her ascension, and I’m not really sure I know who she is either.