The Black Sheep bar in downtown Providence was brimming with 40 or so young voters on Tuesday night, many of them wearing blue “I voted” stickers on their lapels and shirt collars. They were there to watch the presidential debate, pitting Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald Trump, at the The Young Democrats of Rhode Island’s watch party.
In the minutes leading up to the debate, some people said they were feeling on-edge, not just for the debate but also for the local elections taking place on Tuesday. Several members of the Rhode Island branch of the Working Families Party sat in dark corners, laptop screens illuminating their faces as they intently monitored and discussed local primary outcomes.
But as the debate kicked off, the buzz of conversations came to a halt.
“I was a little nervous when Biden dropped out, but my fears are gone,” Henry Siravo, an 18-year-old member of the Young Democrats of Rhode Island, said during a break in the action. “I’m excited. ‘We’re not going back.’”
Many of the young Democrats said they remembered President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance with Trump just a few weeks ago and shared Siravo’s feelings of anxiety ahead of the debate. But half-way in, Siravo said Vice President Harris was on top.
“She’s been dominating the whole debate,” Siravo said. “I mean throughout the whole thing [so far] she’s been very smart, very strategic. You can tell that she’s a career prosecutor.”
The Young Democrats of Rhode Island hosted a debate watch party in Providence on Sept. 10, 2024. Credit: Paul C. Kelly Campos / The Public’s Radio
Democratic State Sen. Tiara Mack of Providence was also at the watch party. She said she was disappointed to hear Harris reaffirm her pledge to continue to arm Israel, but felt that her responses on related issues were at least “human-centered.”
“I think some of her responses, including those related to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, don’t go far enough,” Mack said. “But I know that she will go much further than Donald Trump. And as a Democrat who is very much concerned about the ongoing humanitarian [crisis] and genocide that is happening in Gaza I am much more concerned about having a leader who is at least thinking about the Palestinian lives.”
Harrison Tuttle, a leader of the Black Lives Matter Rhode Island PAC, took issue with Harris’ statements about immigration. In particular, when she expressed support for building and funding a border wall to block “the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.”
“If you look at her proposal to fund the border, which if we were to bring up in 2016 would have been a complete no-go for Democratic voters,” Tuttle said. “Our country has swung to the right so far that we have Democratic candidates that are now implementing what we would consider to be Republican policies both domestically and abroad. It’s really concerning.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-11 09:53:00
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