‘She’s the President. She Won.’
On Wednesday afternoon, a handful of die-hard supporters lined up outside a Times Square theater to hear Kamala Harris speak about her newly released book, 107 Days, which chronicles her historically short run for president. Kathleen Sapio, a 53-year-old with a short blonde bob, had arrived an hour and a half before the doors opened. When I asked why, she got choked up. “I want her to know that there are people out there who love her and respect her,” Sapio said. “It’s just shitfuckery out there.”
After the election, Sapio, who said she works in distribution at a major broadcaster, heard rumblings from colleagues that Elon Musk’s internet provider, Starlink, had manipulated votes. “How could it not have been voter fraud?” she said, telling me the theory is “kind of underground.” (Voting equipment is not connected to the internet, and there’s zero evidence to suggest Starlink rigged the election results.) When I asked if she has heard of the term bluelulu — a riff on delulu that’s used by a group of TikTokers who believe Harris won the 2024 election — Sapio said “no” but that it “100 percent would be me.”
“I am bluelulu,” a 34-year-old standing on line just behind her said proudly. “There were too many anomalies” in the election, Jay Grogan told me, pointing to how quickly the results were called in swing states and referencing the baseless Starlink theory. Sapio nodded as he spoke. “Afterward, I was like, Something is off, and of course it made me feel delusional,” he said. “Then I got online and I was like, Okay I’m not alone.” Grogan, whose biceps bulged out of a tight T-shirt, wanted to ask Harris if she’s involved in a lawsuit disputing the election results in Rockland County. He said having proof that ballots were messed with would “restore a little bit of my faith in humanity. “At least we all showed up and did what we were supposed to do,” he said of the 2024 election, “and the system failed us.”
As the line grew with people wearing “The Future Is Female” and “107 Days of Hope” T-shirts, two teachers, Lori Delrosso and Laura Mastrangelo, told me they drove three hours from Albany to attend both of Harris’s back-to-back talks that evening. “She’s the president,” said Delrosso, a 58-year-old with short gray hair. “She won.” Delrosso added that she believes Musk’s technology interfered with the election, and Mastrangelo chimed in that it felt fishy to her that Harris “didn’t get more votes from women and minorities.” “What happened in Pennsylvania?” the 62-year-old said. “I don’t get that part.”
Inside the theater, decidedly less conspiracy-minded supporters mingled. I spoke with Black women who saw themselves represented in Harris and white women in blazers who predicted they’d tear up listening to the former vice-president as they ordered Sauvignon Blanc from the bar. Most said they liked Harris’s centrist politics, admired her poise, and wanted to hear the inside story of what happened on the campaign trail directly from her. James Sergio Crocker, a self-described influencer who clutched a copy of Harris’s book, rolled his eyes at the mention of bluelulu. “This is why we get clowned on,” the 18-year-old told me. “The right has a sort of a caricature of white liberal women. Oftentimes, we unfortunately do live up to it. We have to be careful about propagating election-denial memes and claims, because then we’re just as bad as the right.” But the election skeptics in the room didn’t all fit a neat archetype. When I asked Ann, a 64-year-old Black law professor, whether she believes Harris lost the election, she said, “I don’t think we’ll ever know. But I do think that even if they didn’t steal it, there was so much significant voter suppression going on that it wasn’t a fair election in general.”
While waiting for Harris to take the stage, I sat in the balcony with two Fordham students, Stephanie and Ana. “It feels like that energy of going to a concert,” Stephanie said. “But it’s not escapism,” Ana added. When Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, took his seat in the third row, Stephanie squealed. “He’s like a celebrity,” she said. Crocker filmed a video in front of us, giddily telling his followers that he just took a selfie with Ella Emhoff, Harris’s stepdaughter, and got photobombed by Doug. When Harris finally came out onstage wearing a camel-colored pantsuit, Stephanie jumped to her feet and teared up.
“Good evening, New York!” Harris said to the applause and cheers of the sold-out crowd. “You are the people! This is where the power lies!” The audience nodded along and yelled “We love you!” as she answered softball questions from Gen-Z TikTok pundit Aaron Parnas about getting the fateful call to take over the Democratic ticket from Joe Biden and life on the campaign trail. But the vibe in the theater curdled from excitement to frustration when a masked-up pro-Palestinian protester shouted, “Your legacy is genocide! The blood of Palestinian people is on your hands!” They were promptly escorted out, but seconds later another protester stood and shouted, “This is your fault!” Audience members yelled back “Go home!” and “We paid good money for this!” (Over the course of the hourlong Q&A, four protesters were kicked out.) Harris told the room “to bring the temperature down” and tried to defend her record on Israel’s war in Gaza, which the Biden administration supported and helped fund. The former vice-president noted that she spoke out about starvation in the territory while she was in office but that now “there’s nothing I can do.”
After the event came to a close, Harris supporters seemed annoyed by the earlier disruption. “Why are you yelling at her?” Ana said. “The guy in office right now is the one responsible for the green light of the genocide.” The environment outside the theater, where a small group of protesters blew whistles, banged drums, and held up signs that read “717 Days of Genocide” and “Kamala Gave $30 Billion to Israel,” was even more tense. One man wearing a Yankees hat yelled “You are complicit in a genocide!” to people standing on a long line to get into Harris’s second talk of the night. Most ignored him, but Delrosso, who was queuing up once again, yelled back, “Talk to your president!” She was flustered.
“I thought the first show would have been more energizing,” she said. “It was a bit more sad because she’s not our president. But these idiots are out here even though they should be in front of Trump Tower.” Mastrangelo agreed but was trying to stay positive ahead of her repeat viewing. “It’s going to be good,” she said as the protesters’ drums drowned out her voice. “It’s going to be great.”