Listen To This Story

Two nights, two blooms of a party reborn.

Night One

The Democratic convention, which opened in Chicago Monday night, was giddy. For long stretches, no one could seem to keep a straight face. 

It had the feeling of someone who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, had made preparations to die, then suddenly got a miraculous reprieve, and then went out on a bender. You’re going to be alright! Back from the dead! 

Maybe it had that feeling because that is exactly what it was. Politically speaking, Joe Biden was a dead man walking. Donald Trump was all but certain to win the election and probably win big. Republicans were going to carry both houses of Congress. Democracy was finished. A dictatorship loomed. And then…

Well, you know what happened then. First relief — huge relief. What no one suspected was just how much joy had been lurking beneath that gloom — torrents and torrents and torrents of joy. Kamala Harris unleashed it, and the conventioneers Monday night luxuriated in it. You felt like dancing in your media room.

But there was another sort of joy, too, alongside the joy of narrowly escaping political death. There was the joy of seeing the Democratic Party being reborn. 

This was fully intentional. The night was dedicated to this. It was not just a celebration, but a coming out party for a whole new group of potential stars. And there were rising stars aplenty, among them, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY); Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX); Gov. Andy Beshear (KY); Sen. Raphael Warnock (GA), each of whom made a mark. In one tweet, on July 21, the party had gone from crepuscular to muscular. Monday night was a demonstration.

And there was even a third kind of joy in Chicago — maybe the most profound joy. The Democratic Party seemed to have found itself again. For too many years, Democrats had had to tread lightly, on the false but widely-held belief that America was essentially a conservative country — this despite the fact that Democrats had won the popular vote in every presidential election since 1992, save for 2004. Democrats were proud of their heritage as the spearhead of social progress, but afraid of it too — afraid of being labeled liberal, as if the scarlet L had been branded upon their foreheads. Democrats had to moderate, curb their enthusiasm.

Not Monday night. Monday night, it felt as if Democrats could finally let go and embrace their true selves, which actually are much closer to the majority of Americans than the neo-Nazism that prevails within the Trump Party — to call it what it really is. They were free to embrace the union movement, to embrace government activism (I loved hearing the words “corporate greed”), to embrace freedom and democracy, to embrace equality, to embrace minorities and inclusion and diversity, to embrace compassion — to embrace them unabashedly. 

Democrats were back to being Democrats. They loved it. You could feel the air filling the balloon.

And there was a nostalgic joy, too, especially in Hillary Clinton’s speech, which may have been the finest of the evening. Clinton — so much maligned in her career, so unappreciated with the misogynistic claims, even among Democrats, that she was a letdown — stirred the audience with the prospect of a woman president, stirred them with what it meant. Which was not just a milestone, but an advance for the nation — a manumission from traditions that had kept women in their place, and the country in its place, which place was short of its idealistic goals. 

What made it so powerful, I think, is that Clinton was speaking from the depths of her own awful experience — her own defeat — while celebrating a looming victory.

When Joe Biden finally took to the podium, it seemed anticlimactic after all the joy, all the hope, all the harbingers of what was to come for this party. Biden could only remind us of what was. 

Biden was never a star. He wasn’t a JFK or Clinton or Obama or, now, Harris. He was just a regular guy, which was a big part of his appeal. And his speech wasn’t one of soaring rhetoric. It wasn’t ambrosia. It was meat and potatoes. It wasn’t a particularly good speech. It was basically a laundry list of accomplishments — albeit significant accomplishments for a man who is now recognized as one of our most significant presidents. 

But there was real pathos to it — not because it was a valedictory (because it really wasn’t much of a valedictory either) but because this good, kind, decent man felt compelled to tell us what he had done, as if he were afraid we would forget, as if he were afraid he was not only being discarded but also forgotten. Indeed, the best thing about the speech were the tears he shed over his wife and his daughter, Ashley, who introduced him. 

He needn’t have worried. We will remember his humanity. We will remember his sacrifice. We will remember the way he changed the country and saved it from a dictator, and, when the time came, left the battlefield to a younger warrior. We won’t forget.

Night Two

Obamas, Obamas, Obamas. Night two was less celebratory than Night One, though it did have its moments. 

There was a whole speech full of zingers from Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker that was as good as any late-night, anti-Trump monologue from Steven Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel. (“Democrats are for lower taxes and higher wages, less inflation, and more business growth. We just think it’s wrong to craft those policies for Elon Musk and not for everyday working people.”) 

And there was Bernie Sanders doing his familiar Grumpy Old Man shout (how is it that Sanders seems stuck at one age?), and in doing so, reminding us of how far America has fallen short of other industrialized nations in taking care of its citizens. 

And there was a lovely, modest talk — it really wasn’t a speech so much as a reminiscence — from Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. It was the sort of sincere, sentimental toast you hear at weddings — and I mean that in a good way.

And then there were the Obamas. Oh, were there the Obamas. On the New York Times “scoreboard” this morning, none of the observers gave Michelle Obama’s speech a “10” — to which I can only say, if that wasn’t a “10,” then I don’t know one when I hear one. 

Some of this is personal. Because I believe America’s crisis is a moral crisis — a crisis of values, a crisis in which we let a madman vitiate basic goodness. Michelle Obama’s speech was directly aimed at this very condition. It was value-laden. She discussed the values that her recently-departed mother had inculcated in her and how those values guided her life. She said her mother had taught her the “belief that if you do unto others… if you love thy neighbor… if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off — if not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.” 

It was a speech of compassion, decency, kindness, service, respect toward others, above all, empathy — and what each of these means: helping others, looking out for your community, working to even the playing field. 

Of her parents, she said, “They understood that it wasn’t enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning.” 

She asked us not to be small, petty, like Trump. And then she delivered the most withering put-down of the night:

His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black. 

Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those “Black jobs”?  

She asked us to rededicate ourselves to those values that her mother taught her and that our parents taught us — those values many of us have feared lost since Trump ridiculed them. 

And, finally, she asked us to “Do something!” Do something to revive our morality. Do something to elect Kamala Harris and vanquish Donald Trump.

And then came Barack Obama, delivering the second of this one-two punch. Michelle Obama’s speech was about values, and how, in restoring them, we restore hope. Barack Obama’s speech was about social engagement, about how we actualize those values in pursuit of hope.

He reamed Donald Trump. He extolled Kamala Harris. But then he addressed the polarization among us. “The vast majority of us do not want to be in a country that is bitter and divided,” he said. He urged us to find common ground and to grant respect even to those with whom we disagree: 

That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or they don’t bother to vote. 

And he said, “Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us. That’s how we can build a true Democratic majority, one that can get things done.” I am not sure I believe that is possible. But Obama does.

He admitted that the nation had changed and that we as a people had changed and become disconnected from one another, not only politically but socially: 

We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other. 

But he said this too: The “ties that bind us are still there.”

Citing his late mother and his mother-in-law, he returned to the issue of values:

They knew what mattered: things like honesty and integrity, kindness, and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things. 

This is what he believed Americans wanted: “a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other.” And he closed by saying that this is what the election was really about.

These were great speeches, stirring speeches, substantive speeches — for me, personally, as I said, speeches that addressed what I think truly ails us. 

But they were also depressing speeches, as much as they were hopeful. It was hard not to be depressed listening to the lovely loftiness of the Obamas, of hearing their call to empathy, of being elevated by the cadences of their confidence, and then thinking of a nation where Donald Trump is still only narrowly behind Kamala Harris in the polls — when, in a sensible nation, any chance of his winning the presidency should be eradicated by now. 

How can this possibly be? How can anyone who listened to these two exhilarating speeches opt for the ugliness of Trumpism? How?

The Obamas reminded us last night of who we can be. And they reminded us to “do something.”

Reprinted, with permission, from Neal Gabler’s Substack, Farewell, America.

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