DNC in Chicago offered energy, talent, hope; 4 key highlights
There were so many ways the Democratic National Convention could have gone wrong.
Start with thousands of impassioned protesters in the streets of Chicago, butting up against a police department that has not always risen to the occasion.
Add dozens of speakers, many stepping, blinking, onto the national stage for the first time, some of them children. Broadcast live.
And yet, as they'd say at this summer's other big summer event, the Olympics, the Democrats stuck their landing. The protesters stayed in their lane, mostly. The cops did their job well, even though most of that job involved enduring 12-hour shifts, standing around, waiting.
Remember where the party was just five weeks ago — a bag full of howling cats tied to the cinder block of President Joe Biden, whose deer-in-the-headlights debate disaster seemed to kill his chances of re-election.
Then, Biden did what he should have done a year ago: withdrew.
And Kamala Harris, his heretofore unexceptional, unnoticed and unloved vice president, locked down the nomination in 24 hours and went from virtual nonentity to adored superstar faster than anyone since Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris.
Given that dramatic starting point, had the DNC offered four days of Chuck Schumer tossing cards into a hat, the party mood would still have been buoyant. Instead, it was a parade of talent that got labeled with the sports cliche "a deep bench."
The only way to summarize the four-day party is with a four-item list, one highlight for each night. There isn't even room for Doug Emhoff, who would be the first "second gentleman," who's so comfortable in his skin that he made being a divorced Jewish lawyer from New Jersey sound practically iconic, like a being a lumberjack.
On to the daily highlights:
Monday: Biden, whose heroic denial of self-interest — or tardy acknowledgment of realty — allowed his party to soar, had his moment in the sun. Well, 47 minutes actually. But he delivered the goods: "We're in a battle for the very soul of America." If that Joe Biden had shown up to the debate, he'd still be the candidate.
Tuesday: Michelle and Barack Obama delivered a pair of speeches that can only be described as oratorical perfection. The former first lady, so reviled by her enemies, offered a vision of grace, poise and fierce intellect, evoking "a familiar feeling that's been buried too deep too long ... the contagious power of hope!"
She laid out the qualifications of Harris and defended the principle of everyone being included in our national story: "No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one." And phrases that will be put to immediate use in the battle against racism: "We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth."
She set a torch to Donald Trump, and then her husband came out and poured gasoline on the flames.
"We do not need four more years of blustering and bumbling and chaos," the former president said before delivering a kill-shot visual joke suggesting that Trump's obsession over the size of crowds might be connected to a lack of size in another department.
Wednesday: Tim Walz is that rarest commodity — an ordinary American projected to the heights of power, his personality somehow unruined. Think Harry Truman, 2024 version. Nationally unknown a few weeks ago, the Minnesota governor coined the "weird" label that is now tattooed over Republican candidates.
Twenty-four years in the military, a social studies teacher, a football coach, complete with aphorisms ("we played through to the whistle"). His neurodivergent 17-year-old son Gus crying to see his dad in the spotlight drew out ugliness from Republican trolls the next day on social media, unaware that, by mocking a child overcoming difficulties, they were making the case for Democratic acceptance and inclusivity better than the Democrats could.
Thursday: None of it would have meant anything if Harris hadn't delivered. But she too stuck her landing, in a speech that was forceful, with detailed policy points she's been accused of skirting, including the full-throated support for Israel that has been American policy for 76 years.
"I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself" she said, while making clear she also sees Palestinian agony. "What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating ... The scale of suffering is heartbreaking." She spoke on the matter for two full minutes.
Of course, there is a downside. Viewership of the convention hit 20 million, which means 92% of American adults weren't watching. The challenge now facing Democrats is to somehow catch their attention.