The four-night Democratic National Convention concluded Thursday with Kamala Harris's speech accepting her party's nomination for President, and a massive balloon drop, as the polls show the Vice President continuing to beat and increase her lead against her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
After Monday night's four-minute standing ovation of President Joe Biden, with Chicago's United Center arena filled with thousands of cheering supporters shouting "We love Joe," Los Angeles Times' columnist LZ Granderson wrote those "deafening chants" really meant, "We love American values."
American values were the centerpiece of the Democrats' convention.
Vice presidential nominee Governor Tim Walz "sought to turn Republican arguments on their head while making an appeal for common sense rooted in his Midwestern values," the Associated Press wrote after the third night. “'When they were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,' he jabbed."
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"The differences between Harris’ speech in Chicago and the one Trump delivered last month at the Republican convention in Milwaukee could not have been more stark — and set the stage for the sprint to the November 5 election, with head-to-head confrontations in debates yet to come," CNN reported Friday. "Vice President Kamala Harris capped one of the most extraordinary months in modern political history Thursday night with a speech that rallied Democrats around themes of patriotism — and cast Donald Trump as the enemy of classic American principles."
But over at The Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Peggy Noonan, the former President Ronald Reagan speechwriter, had a different take.
"Kamala Harris’s speech was fine, and delivered with assurance. I prefer 'Ask not what your country can do for you' to 'Never do anything half-assed,' but tastes vary," was Noonan's opening salvo, criticizing the Vice President for sharing a direct quote from her late beloved mother, whom she and her sister had paid homage to on stage during the convention.
Harris on her mom: "She taught Maya and me a lesson that Michelle mentioned the other night. She taught us to never complain about injustice, but do something about it. Do something about it. And she also taught us: Never do anything half-assed." pic.twitter.com/yKuides37K
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 23, 2024
To her credit, Noonan's piece is titled, "Kamala Harris Gets Off to a Strong Start," and she offered up this comparison of Democrats vs. Republicans, or at least their parties:
"The Democratic Party has more substantial characters of recent American history to parade around on stage. The Clintons, the Obamas, Jesse Jackson, who, whatever your view of him, was there, on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, when Martin Luther King was shot. This conveyed a party with a storied past, and if you join it you’re joining something real. The Republican Party, in its great toppling, has rejected its past. You lose something when you cast your history aside, and all you’ve got for prime time is Trump sons."
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But Noonan is being resoundingly chastised for this allegation: Democrats "stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own."
The Washington Post's Mariana Alfaro on Tuesday had reported: "The Democratic Party is presenting a message that there is 'nothing more American than freedom,' Democratic National Committee spokesman Abhi Rahman said."
“'There’s no reason for us to be afraid of using those symbols, because those symbols are our symbols and there’s nobody that’s more proud to be American than we are,' Rahman said."
Hakeem Jeffries just delivered one of the best speeches of the DNC. Crowd on its feet, cheering USA. This is what patriotism looks like! pic.twitter.com/YLNdLkPnMQ
— Ben Friedman (@BenFriedman) August 22, 2024
Mother Jones' D.C. bureau chief David Corn responded to Noonan:"Stole? No one has an exclusive claim to patriotism."
Former political science professor and attorney Carol Schultz Vento wrote: "My WW paratrooper dad was a patriot and person of faith and a Democrat before Peggy Noonan was born. The Republicans can no longer hijack those values from the rest of us."
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