First Night

Image by Muhammad Farhad

It’s the day after the first night of the Democratic Party convention in Chicago. I read the newspapers (online), think-piece journals (online), and various political blogs (online). And I wonder, “Did they watch the same convention I watched?” True, I didn’t watch all of it, so I can’t comment about the first couple of hours, but I certainly have watched enough political conventions in my life to know how stultifyingly dull they can be with speech after speech that inevitably evokes a snore at some point or other by all but the most diehard party followers. But not last night. So, there was the inevitable pontificating the following day, the what were the highlights, the lowlights, the between-lights, and did they make Joe Biden stay up past his bedtime?

Why should I leave all that pontificating to the professionals? No reason, so read on if you want my take on the goings-on.

I started watching just as Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow introduced an oversized copy of the infamous Project 2025, which tries to lay out how Trump will attack, undermine, and destroy the US government and Constitution by turning the entire government into a political operation serving the interests of one man, Donald Trump. (If you think that’s a wild exaggeration, read it yourself.) That, however, was not what the rest of the night was like, no matter how often they said that we’d be hearing a lot about that document throughout the rest of the convention.

Instead, what we really got throughout the evening is something that I’ve been saying the Democrats have needed to embrace for several years. For too long, Democrats have thought that programs and policies win elections, that they are what wins the battle over hearts and minds. They’ve been wrong. Yes, programs and policies are nice, they’re useful, they’re even important, but not unless they’re within a context. And that context is America, its hopes and dreams, its promise. Democrats have long surrendered patriotic American symbolism to Republicans. They surrendered the flag, patriotism, freedom, and the essence of the Constitution itself to Republicans. Last night, they reclaimed those things for themselves. “Freedom” has become a great rallying cry for the party faithful, with flags flying and shouts of “USA.” It’s about time.

They also brought to the fore a phrase I’ve used several times in past pieces, “For the People.” In case you’ve forgotten its origin, it’s in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Who were the dead that should not have died in vain? The Union army’s soldiers who died while turning back those trying to secede from the Union, the slave-holding states of the South. Or, as Donald Trump sagely noted, the “suckers and losers” he described to General Kelly when deciding not to visit the graves of soldiers who had died on the beaches of Normandy while engaged in a similar enterprise.

Do you think it was mere coincidence that a frequent line on the first night went something like, “The first time she appeared in a courtroom, she introduced herself by saying, “Kamala Harris, for the people.” And the phrase, “for the people,” kept being repeated endlessly through the night as a description of Harris.

That night, there was no mention of her race or gender. There was no need to. Anyone looking at her knows she is not Caucasian. Certainly, the Republicans have ensured that everyone who listens to them knows Harris’s race. After all, for them, anyone who gets a job and is BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color, for those of you who haven’t caught up to current language police acronyms) automatically becomes undeserving of it because it means that a better qualified white person was aced out of the running. Or, as Donald Trump might put it, the election’s already been stolen. (Remember when Blacks couldn’t possibly be pro football quarterbacks because they were too dumb? Was that only yesterday?)

In fact, there was little mention of race or gender last night, except when it came to reproductive rights (otherwise known as abortion). But even with abortion, there was care to demonstrate that it’s an issue that affects men as well.

For a party that has found itself steeped in identity politics, perhaps foundering in identity politics, it was a relief for it to have largely disappeared, at least for that night. Instead, we had “we the people” and Kamala Harris, “for the people.” That meant all the people white, BIPOC, LGQBT+, Republicans, Democrats, and anyone else who is an American. There were no hyphenates, no Latinx-Americans, Asian-Americans, no Red State or Blue State Americans, or anything else-Americans. There were just Americans. It’s about time.

And yes, there was more. There was the use of the word “joy” to describe the atmosphere, the mood, the beingness of Kamala Harris as a successor to the original Happy Warrior, FDR, the looking forward to the future rather than back to the past. Or, as she said, “We will not go back.”

And there was the defining of Harris to be accomplished. She’s the child interposing herself between her friend and a bully and getting a bloody nose for her efforts, but a lifelong friend at the same time. There is the prosecutor vs the felon. There is the fighter “for the people.” That is the version of Harris that she wants us to take away from the night. I hope that’s who she really is.

And, yes, Hillary gave as good a speech as I can remember her ever giving. And, yes, we got to see the new and tempered version of AOC, who made sure we understood she intended to become a major player in the party, not just an ideologue. And Joe Biden gave a great Joe Biden speech. Yes, he had an ebullient reception from the crowd, tempered in my mind only by knowing that if he were still running, it would have been much less enthusiastic. But when he said that he’d made many mistakes in his life, I thought, did you ever hear DJT or, for that matter, Bush 43 ever acknowledge a failing? Do you remember Bush being asked during a press conference if he had ever made a mistake? After thinking for a moment, he said, “No.” “I made a lot of mistakes in my career,” Biden said, “but I gave my best to you.” You know what? I believed him.

So, there you are. The first night. Freedom. Joy. USA. And above all, Kamala Harris, for the people.

Let’s hope it’s real. Let’s hope she’s real. I’m willing to believe.