The Democrats’ new focus on ‘joy’ has some party leaders thinking they have finally cracked the code for how to take on Donald Trump without turning off voters.
But in the convention hall in Chicago, the rank-and-file delegates registered hat they aren’t ready to give up slashing attacks on the former president. The lines that most lit up the convention hall were direct blasts at the Republican and repeated invocations of his felony convictions – as well as specific digs about Trump and women.
Clinton, Raskin and Crockett cast Trump as ‘vile villain’ and predator
During her animated speech before the Democratic convention last night, Hillary Clinton and other speakers made plain that there is another animating force: thumping the Republican who shattered her own White House dreams in 2016 and tormented Democrats ever since.
For Clinton – herself once the target of repeated ‘lock her up’ chants at Trump rallies, is was her line about Trump’s criminal conviction that most fired the crowd.
‘Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person 34 felony convictions,’ Clinton said – before members of the crowd started chants of ‘lock him up.’
For Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin it was the line that called Trump ‘a sore loser who doesn’t know how to take no for an answer from American voters, American courts, or American women’ that got the crowd going.
For first-term Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) it was calling Trump a ‘vinidictive vile villain who violates voters vision … I hear alliteration is back in style’ that sent the crowd into a frenzy.
‘I’m known for hitting back – and so that’s what we were going to deliver from me,’ Crockett told DailyMail.com after her speech, after tearing up on stage while recounting a story of how Kamala Harris once consoled her.
It’s not that the Democrats didn’t take joy in their one liners.
When Rev. Raphael Warnock spoke about his historic Senate win, it was his digs about the bible that got the crowd going. ‘I saw him holding the Bible and then endorsing the Bible, as if it needed it,’ he said. ‘He should try reading it.’
‘Everybody has roles,’ Rep. James C. Clyburn (D-S.C.) told DailyMail.com after his own speech. ‘I don’t expect for Kamala to play the role in this campaign that I will play. So when I talk about Project 2025, she can talk about it philosophically. But I’m talking about what it really is: Jim Crow 2.0,’ he added.
The driving ambition to take down Trump helped explain the extraordinary effort to dump Biden and put forward Vice President Kamala Harris in her place. It happened so fast that the party platform released Sunday repeatedly invoked a second term for Biden.
‘They want red meat,’ former congressional candidate Robert Zimmerman, who was defeated by former Rep. George Santos, who pleaded guilty Monday to fraud charges.’They want to take it to Trump. But they’re doing it in a very positive way,’ he told DailyMail.com.
The red meat followed a first half of the programming that tried to check every box in the Democrats’ electoral coalition, with a particular emphasis on energizing black voters, who have been coming home to Harris after slipping away form Biden compared to his 2020 numbers.
Biden time
It already looked like party leaders might not have minded if TV viewers tuned out on President Joe Biden when they scheduled him to speak at 9:50 pm local time. But it was nearly 10:30 before he began (11:30 pm in New York), with a speech that ran through his favorite topics of Charlottesville, infrastructure, and the soul of the nation.
Organizers had to scratch a few speakers – and a planned song by James Taylor – to try to keep things moving. Sometimes the teleprompter took on a life of its own, botching one of Raskin’s best lines. By the time Biden finished his remarks, it was 11:20 pm in the hall, and there were some empty seats up top. That put it after midnight on the East Coast.
Emotion in the room
There was plenty of emotion in the room, and there was clear affection for Biden, 81, in the crowd – even without the pre-printed signs that said ‘We love Joe.’
He got big standing ovations when he entered the room. Biden looked impacted, and wiped a tear from his face after daughter Ashley’s introduction.
When people chanted ‘Thank you, Joe’ he tried to be magnanimous. ‘Thank you Kamala,’ he responded.
But there were signs the handover he was forced to make still stings. Even when complimenting Harris, Biden couldn’t help but observe, ‘And like many of our best presidents, she was also a vice president.’
It was brief appearances by Harris, 59, that electrified the crowd.
As Biden fell back on some of the affectations and repurposed lines that have featured in four years worth of speeches (‘that’s not hyperbole – I mean it literally’) there was gratitude, tinged with relief.
‘I promise I’ll be the best volunteer Harris and Walz have ever seen,’ Biden said – identifying a new, vastly diminished role as he sets out on a California vacation.
String of black speakers reveal focus on bringing black voters home
Early convention speeches and videos featured historic bids by Rep. Shirley Chisolm, who sought the presidency in 1972, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, who made historic runs in 1984 and 1988.
‘It’s been a long struggle and a long journey,’ said Rev. Al Sharpton in a video that played before the crowd – who let out a huge cheer later when Jackson appeared in a wheelchair.
If Trump found ways to sprinkle his convention with minority speakers, Democrats rolled out a long line of established and younger black lawmaker, plus a bit of Spanish and an acknowledgement of Native American tribal lands.
It came after NAACP president Derrick Johnson joked that ‘I’m here to do my black job,’ and followed early remarks by DNC chair Jaime Harrison and Minyon Moore, a Chicago native, plus numerous members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Polls since Joe Biden dropped out have demonstrated the centrality of black voters in the Democratic coalition. Harris has been over-performing Biden nationally and in swing states, after consolidating support from black voters and younger voters. Keeping their support, and driving turnout to Biden’s 2020 level, which was a drop from Barack Obama’s, is critical.