Election Countdown, 74 Days to Go: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Convention.
With Roman numerals thanks to Wallace Stevens, and content via the DNC.
The ticket, last night in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
I. This was the most smoothly run convention in modern times.
In the months following the Democrats’ choice of Chicago as their convention site, “Remember 1968!” pieces were a dime a dozen. In the weeks after Joe Biden’s withdrawal, warnings of a fractious “open convention” took their place. Even in the days before this week’s convention opened, we had cautions about the deep intra-party fissures likely to erupt.
Perhaps the warnings were prudent and useful. But now that the final gavel has come down, we can say that this convention ran with fewer glitches, with less overt disagreement or tension, with more carefully thought-through coordination of theme and “messaging,” and with more effective presentation of current and future leadership than any other in my memory and experience. And I’ve been following them for 60 years.
-Minor illustration: balloons. Last night viewers saw wave after wave of balloons descend upon the crowd, seemingly as limitless as the tide, in one memorable TV scene nearly burying a stalwart Secret Service agent. Pulling this off is harder than it seems. In 1980, the snake-bit incumbent Jimmy Carter could not even get the balloon drop to work. (In 39 days, this same Jimmy Carter will observe his 100th birthday. I have to believe that he is hanging on to cast his vote in Georgia, and see the results.)
-Major illustration: closing speeches. Very few Democrats left the hall last night, or turned off their TVs, feeling disappointed in how Kamala Harris had concluded the week’s events. By contrast, large numbers of the crowd in Milwaukee had slunk toward the exits by the time Donald Trump had wound up his “Sir”-and-grievance filled rant at the end of their convention. Trump moved his campaign backward. Harris moved hers ahead.
The main apparent “glitch” with this convention is that it went “beyond prime time” in the Eastern time zone. OK: They fixed that by the last night, so that Kamala Harris could speak before the local TV news (in places where that still matters) even on the East coast. But in the big picture, the delays were like a one-tenth-point deduction for a champion gymnast.
II. Many more good speeches than bad ones.
The speakers at this convention worked in a wide variety of registers.
-Adam Kinzinger, Geoff Duncan, Stephanie Grisham, John Giles, and others giving “permission” to their fellow Republicans to come aboard. Sample from Duncan: “Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching: If you vote for Harris in 2024, you are not a Democrat. You are a patriot.”
-Jasmine Crockett, Kenan Thompson, Mallory McMorrow, JB Pritzker, and others smiling while sticking in the shiv.
-The icons of the party, led by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama giving perhaps the greatest speeches of their public lives, with explainers by their respective husbands.
-Strong “here I stand!” speeches by the two people on the ticket, about which more in a minute.
-Powerful “the person I know” family speeches, including outstanding ones by Ashley Biden (Joe’s daughter), Doug Emhoff (Kamala’s husband), and Maya Harris (Kamala’s sister). Plus a great “how do you pronounce Kamala” segment by two charming grand-nieces. And the unforgettable scenes of Tim Walz’s children, Hope and Gus, beaming as he spoke.
-A detailed, mini-State-of-the-Union address by Joe Biden, making the case for all that he has done.
-Next-gen presentations by Josh Shapiro, AOC, Pete Buttigieg, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Gina Raimondo, and many others.
-An extremely powerful “policy” speech by Leon Panetta, warning against the national-security threat posed by Donald Trump.
-A great speech on leadership by someone with a lot of first-hand experience at the United Center: Steve Kerr, who was just back from coaching the US Olympic men’s basketball team to a gold medal.
-Oprah!
Here’s the main point: There are two or three speeches I would have cut in length (starting with Bill Clinton’s), and several I’d rather have scheduled for mid-afternoon. But the huge majority were interesting, powerful, coordinated in message, and not too long.
III. The acceptance speeches were among the best of their kind.
Tim Walz had been virtually unknown outside Minnesota. (See background here.) Kamala Harris has been “known,” as vice president, but not really in frequent, extended national view since her failed run for the nomination four years ago.
All sensible acceptance speeches boil down to a simple three-part structure: Who I am: the origin story. What I’ll do: the platform. What we’ll do: the vision and vibe.
Track Kamala Harris’s speech last night, and Tim Walz’s the night before. You can plot out this structure page-by-page.
-Tim Walz was effective in combining his humor with his edge, and his self-mocking coach’s “we’re behind but we have the ball!” closing pep talk. Connection with pop culture never hurts, and this reached across the generations to connect Hoosiers, with Friday Night Lights, with Ted Lasso.
-Kamala Harris was effective in showing herself in many tones and roles: Daughter, sister, family person, prosecutor, legislator, national-security official. “Show rather than tell” is the main lesson in persuasion. She showed that she had a wicked sense of humor—“Simply put, they are out of their minds,” in a wry rather than scolding tone. And she also showed, through every instant of her presence, something she didn’t need to say (and didn’t): That she would be the first woman, and second Black person, to become president.
There were few “fancy” lines in her speech. That was a plus.
IV. Let there be light.
People would rather feel good than bad, hopeful rather than worried, generous rather than resentful and aggrieved.
Over the past decade-plus, as Deb and I were traveling in smaller-town America for the Our Towns project, we found again and again that the civic fabric of the country was still present, that manufactured resentment did not reflect the main national mood, that the country was still (mainly) functional and reasonable at a street-by-street, community-by-community level.
That was a constant theme of this convention—for instance, in Kamala and Maya Harris’s stories about their childhood, and Tim Walz’s connection with his students and football players.
Presidential candidates usually win with visions of an America that is promising and on the way up. Ronald Reagan, 1980. Bill Clinton, 1992. Barack Obama, 2008. Occasionally they win with visions of an America that is going to hell. Richard Nixon 1968. Donald Trump 2016. The Democrats are betting on hope.
V. USA! USA!
The line I noted again and again from speakers, Kamala Harris on down, was a variant on: We’re fighting this fight because we love our country. The closing words of her acceptance speech were:
Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth.
The privilege and pride of being an American.
I’ve never heard it put just that way before. But this is exactly right — I say as someone who has lived through some of America’s darkest chapters, and has spent a dozen years living outside its borders.
Trump’s GOP portrays the United States as a shithole-country in waiting. Harris’s convention portrayed it as the country we love, and want to improve.
In the long run, hope has beaten fear in American elections. But will the long run kick in, with only 74 days to go?
VI. Honor the troops.
Twenty years ago, I was in Boston for the DNC convention at which John Kerry began his acceptance speech by saluting and saying “I’m John Kerry, and I am reporting for duty.” (This was also the convention at which Barack Obama burst into prominence with his keynote address.)
Kerry’s salute and first line were legit—he had been in combat as a Navy officer in Vietnam—but in all the tensions of that era it came across as a stretch, as a way for Democrats to claim credibility with the military.
This time, from Tammy Duckworth and Ruben Gallego (and Adam Kinzinger and Pete Buttigieg) to Mark Kelly and Leon Panetta, the Democrats were more able to assert their respect for and knowledge about the military. It’s not their leadership who talked about combat casualties as “suckers” and “losers.” It is their current president who closes every one of his speeches with “And may God protect our troops.”
VII. Big tent.
The Republicans who spoke got big cheers, with no suggestion of “what took you so long?” or “are you really with us?”
The two strategies in politics are inclusion—“come join us”—and exclusion, “we’re all against them.” The long-term play is on inclusion. But again the question is how “long-term” matches up against the next 11 weeks.
VIII. Containing multitudes.
Everything important is contradictory. That goes for conventions too.