Notes on the Democratic Convention: Day 3
Read my notes on Day 1 of the convention here. Day 2 here.
2020 Democratic Convention: Day 3 Review
I feel better knowing I’m not the only one who thought the keynote last night was a bit of a flop. Adam Harris at The Atlantic with this thoughts.
Jill Biden’s speech did the trick for S.E. Cupp, who said she’s voting for Biden.
I wrote Monday about my concerns about the draft platform’s section on faith. I’m very happy to say that the final platform corrects almost all of the issues I cited. Read the final platform here.
A bit late to the convention tonight as I was putting Saoirse down, so my apologies if I missed something important, but when I tuned in at about 9:08 PM EST, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was speaking and THAT is one heck of a way to open up the third day of the convention. Wow.
Notable again to hear activists (And activist language) put front and center early on in the evening, similar to last night and dissimilar from Monday.
Another notable aspect of this focus on activism is the focus on specifically young activists. I don’t necessarily buy the narrative, suggested on NPR today, that young people were feeling “left out” of this convention…I haven’t seen real evidence of that…but if that is out there, this evening’s program should help to address it.
Yet another notable aspect here is the repeated use of kids to deliver activist messages (on climate change, immigration) in the hope, I tend to think, that hearing these messages from kids might not put up moderate voters’ defenses so quickly. Alternatively, another way of looking at it is that it continues to drive the message that our kids are watching what is happening in our country. (Note: As the night continued, it became clearer in hindsight, as I’ll describe in greater detail below, that tonight was largely aimed at disaffected young people.)
Related to that last bullet point, but also a faith note, a montage on immigration with audio from a speech from President Obama’s presidency included a photo of two Muslim kids.
A video on women’s activism led into Hillary Clinton’s speech. Much here was powerful. It’s not new, but it never ceases to be cynicism-inducing how rhetoric about what women supposedly support and stand for actually obscures what Democratic women, not to mention women overall, think on abortion policy. They’re far more nuanced on the issue than the rhetoric Democrats sometimes use suggests.
Hillary Clinton did something that I hope we hear more of which is touch on a pro-family economics and pro-family policy. As I expected, Elizabeth Warren focused on this too, talking specifically about child care.
Speaker Pelosi: “Joe Biden’s faith in God gives him strength to lead. His love gives him strength to persevere.”
A longer video on the Violence Against Women Act…Biden’s leadership on VAWA is where all of the most important threads of his biography come together: his family, the values handed down to him from his parents, his ability to build relationships across the aisle to enact real change…It really puts it all together.
The video leading into President Obama’s speech was of Obama surprising Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is a clip that always gets me.
President Obama’s speech was as piercing, persuasive and rooted in America’s and Americans’ stories as I expected it to be. Read the full speech. I have seen some analysis that suggests this was a departure for Obama. That this was his turn away from hope and toward fear. That he had now soured on the idealism that he brought with him when he stepped onto the national stage 16 years ago.
That’s nonsense. This speech was pure Obama. Obama extract. His realistic reverence for the constitution comes straight from his chapter on the document in his book The Audacity of Hope (a chapter I wrote my very first college paper on as I compared his vision to that laid out in Justice Breyer and Justice Scalia’s recent books). He spoke from Philadelphia, the same city he chose for his famous and pivotal speech on race in 2008, and he directly lifted ideas and devices from that speech to use in this one. His willingness to say tonight that “I understand why a white factory worker who's seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all,” is consistent with his willingness to say in 2008 that “Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away.”
One more observation before I just give some excerpts, which is to note this line near the beginning of his speech:
Twelve years ago, when I began my search for a vice president, I didn't know I'd end up finding a brother. Joe and I came from different places and different generations. But what I quickly came to admire about him is his resilience, born of too much struggle; his empathy, born of too much grief. Joe's a man who learned -- early on -- to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity, living by the words his parents taught him: "No one's better than you, Joe, but you're better than nobody."
With this line near the end of the speech:
I've seen that same spirit rising these past few years. Folks of every age and background who packed city centers and airports and rural roads so that families wouldn't be separated. So that another classroom wouldn't get shot up. So that our kids won't grow up on an uninhabitable planet. Americans of all races joining together to declare, in the face of injustice and brutality at the hands of the state, that Black Lives Matter, no more, but no less, so that no child in this country feels the continuing sting of racism.
OK, a couple more critical excerpts:
This is it. This is the case.
The one Constitutional office elected by all of the people is the presidency. So at minimum, we should expect a president to feel a sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of all 330 million of us -- regardless of what we look like, how we worship, who we love, how much money we have -- or who we voted for.
But we should also expect a president to be the custodian of this democracy. We should expect that regardless of ego, ambition, or political beliefs, the president will preserve, protect, and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for; fought for and died for.
I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
But he never did. For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.
Finally, Barack Obama talking about early Civil Rights Movement leaders is my favorite Barack Obama (And, of course, he’s doing much, much more here):
Last month, we lost a giant of American democracy in John Lewis. Some years ago, I sat down with John and the few remaining leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement. One of them told me he never imagined he'd walk into the White House and see a president who looked like his grandson. Then he told me that he'd looked it up, and it turned out that on the very day that I was born, he was marching into a jail cell, trying to end Jim Crow segregation in the South.
What we do echoes through the generations.
Whatever our backgrounds, we're all the children of Americans who fought the good fight. Great grandparents working in firetraps and sweatshops without rights or representation. Farmers losing their dreams to dust. Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told to go back where they came from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect for the way they worshipped. Black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters. Beaten for trying to vote.
If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans. Our ancestors. They were on the receiving end of a democracy that had fallen short all their lives. They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth. And yet, instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work. We are going to bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.
Senator Harris’ acceptance of the party’s nomination as VP was historic. You can read and watch it here. Her references to history, her description of her family background, the cultural references she made were all deeply meaningful from a historical perspective, and of intense personal significance to many in the country who identify with her. Read 19th News’ Errin Haines Whack on this. I especially appreciated her reference to Fannie Lou Hamer, who has meant a great deal to me, as well as Shirley Chisholm who is buried in my hometown.
Harris used some interesting phrases in this speech. She referred to the idea of “chosen family” or the “family you choose” which is meaningful to many young people, but to the LGBT community in particular. Her reference to the Divine 9 must have been surreal for many Black folks watching given the stage and the moment. Harris has not always been, to my knowledge, very faith-forward. Less so than other Black politicians around her age like Cory Booker and Barack Obama, for instance. So I noted her reference to church choir practice growing up, as well as this key excerpt:
My mother taught me that service to others gives life purpose and meaning. And oh, how I wish she were here tonight but I know she’s looking down on me from above. I keep thinking about that 25-year-old Indian woman — all of five feet tall — who gave birth to me at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California.
On that day, she probably could have never imagined that I would be standing before you now speaking these words: I accept your nomination for vice president of the United States of America.
I do so, committed to the values she taught me. To the word that teaches me to walk by faith, and not by sight. And to a vision passed on through generations of Americans — one that Joe Biden shares. A vision of our nation as a beloved community — where all are welcome, no matter what we look like, where we come from or who we love.
A country where we may not agree on every detail, but we are united by the fundamental belief that every human being is of infinite worth, deserving of compassion, dignity and respect.
She referred to “The injustice in reproductive and maternal health care,” which I read as a rhetorical compromise from using the phrase “reproductive justice” which would have pleased many activists, but hit the ears of others in a different way.
One aspect of the speech that didn’t work, or alternatively, that the campaign will have to build on in the weeks ahead to vindicate, was the speech’s focus on arguing Joe Biden would bring Americans together. The odd thing about this is that Harris is not recognized broadly as someone who brings people together, certainly along the ideological spectrum. That is something Joe Biden is known for, or at least it’s been an aspect of how he’s portrayed himself throughout his career. If Kamala Harris was the party’s nominee, she would really benefit from having Joe Biden vouch that she would bring people together. But with Harris making the case, I was left wanting a bit for a more convincing narrative from her about why bringing people together is so important in her eyes, and some kind of description of she is willing to stretch herself to bring people together or what exactly she admires about Biden’s ability to stretch himself to bring people together.
What was undeniable was that Harris is not a filler running mate. She has loads of charisma, tenacity and personality. She evokes strong opinions. While her lines sometimes seem canned, as a person she has a kind of authentic aura, something about her that “cuts through” even as she’s also clearly a profoundly strategic and calculating (and I mean that in a value-neutral way) person.
Recap
If Day 1 was about setting an inclusive tone and putting the party’s best face forward for the broader public and casting a wide net, and Day 2 was largely about appealing to Democratic elites, Day 3 was about speaking to young Democrats and disaffected voters of all kinds (though certainly there were moments of broad outreach and appeal in Days 2 and 3 as well). I expect tomorrow will be a bit of a return to Day 1, bookends of the case to America, culminating with Biden’s nomination speech. I tend to think expectations are set in too low of a place for Biden…and he’s therefore well-positioned to far exceed them.
Again, I thought that with the exception of Giffords’ speech, the first 40 minutes or so of the Day 3 was not superb, but I do think the effect of the evening was on par with Day 1. With one day left, what I’ve seen is a Biden campaign that is absolutely dead-set on not leaving any potential voting bloc untouched. They may have their guesses as to which is going to be most critical, but they are going to err towards requesting the votes of many different kinds of Americans, rather than putting all of their eggs in one or two baskets. I think this is smart, exactly the right way to go about it. Some segments and speakers have seemed less critical to me. I’m sure some segments and speakers have seemed less critical to some of Biden’s own staff as a relative matter. But there’s something to admire about their willingness to feel that way, and yet still decide to make space for those appeals. It’s healthy for the campaign, and it bodes well for governing, should they have the opportunity.
We’ll wrap-up the Democratic convention together tomorrow evening.
-Michael
P.S. One bit of outside analysis I wanted to share is Matthew Walther’s quick analysis on Obama’s speech. Some really good stuff here.
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