Aug.23

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DNC, Day 4: It's Harris' Party

The train has reached the station and the DNC is over. If you want to watch Day 4, you can do so here:

And now, the 10 biggest storylines of the day, as we see them:

1. Trump Gone Wild: It is possible that the single-most important thing that the Democrats could accomplish with this convention is to poke Donald Trump in the eye a few times, causing him to lose his cool, and to say stupid, impolitic things. If so, then mission accomplished.
   
   This week, Trump has been telling anyone around him who will listen how much he hates, hates, hates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (not to mention the Obamas, the Clintons, the Bidens, etc.). Yesterday morning, he went on Fox to vent, and unspooled a rambling, eight-minute word-salad monologue. Here's a representative chunk:

   Kamala has been the worst. Everything she touched turned bad. California turned bad. San Francisco. You can't walk into San Francisco. You barely can go into California anymore, people. It's a state that's in terrible, terrible crime. Trouble in every other form of trouble. Monetary troubles. It's got nothing. Drugs all over the place. You go into Los Angeles, you can't walk down the streets. It's a shame between Gavin Newsom, but it was really more Kamala because she was your, district attorney in San Francisco. San Francisco is unlivable now. Unlivable 15 years ago as the most beautiful city, one of the greatest cities in the world. Today, it's unlivable. It's going to have to be hopefully be able to be brought back, if that's possible. Kamala, who's a Marxist and a radical left, frankly, she's a radical left lunatic. And if she became president, if this country would turn out to be a big version of San Francisco or a big version of California itself. So these guys, they talk about that, they talk about all different things that they know are totally discredited. They have a thing with soldiers where I'm looking over the graves of soldiers and saying, horrible thing about dead soldiers from World War One. It was totally made up. It was a made up story. I confirmed that was confirmed, but my side of it by 26 people in the military that it never happened. They had one lunatic, talking about it, and they use it all the time.

   This is roughly 20% of the overall commentary.
   
   During Kamala Harris' speech last night, Trump live-Truthed the whole thing, firing off roughly 50 "Truths" in a little less than an hour, with such observations as "Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH!," "She's talking about the Middle Class, but she's the one who broke the Middle Class, and made it UNSAFE AND UNAFFORDABLE!," and "She caused the Attack of October 7th. Iran was BROKE - Didn't have money for Hezbollah!" With analysis like that available, why are you wasting time reading our site?
   
   Incidentally, Trump's messages got about 12,000 "likes" each, presumably from the same people over and over again. Barack Obama sent one tweet about Harris' speech, and got 210,000 likes. If Trump insists on getting into the gutter, and making this personal, he's playing the game the way the Democrats want him to play it, and the way the Republicans are begging him NOT to play it.
   
   
2. Stirring the Pot, v3.0: Trump and his acolytes just keep trying to score hits against the Democrats, with limited success. To start, in response to Oprah Winfrey's staunchly pro-Harris address on Day Three, the Trump campaign released a letter that the TV mogul wrote to Trump a quarter-century ago, thanking him for some kind words that appeared in his book The America We Deserve. Perhaps the point here is that this document from the past proves that Winfrey really thinks you should be voting for Trump, despite her words to the contrary. If so, however, then what does the $5,000 check that Trump wrote to Harris' AG campaign in 2011 say?
   
   Moving along, Mike Lindell has shaved off his mustache, and is prowling the DNC as an "investigative reporter," apparently in search of unisex restrooms and other fodder he might use. The good news is that the MyPillow guy did manage to generate a meme-worthy moment, one that circulated widely. The bad news is that it is a clip of him debating a 12-year-old about election security... and pretty clearly losing. The kid quite rightly recognized that Lindell had no evidence for his claims, and eventually concluded with: "So, your source is 'Trust me, bro'?" Game, set and match.
   
   And now, the really sleazy part. We noted yesterday that there were many displays of emotion during Day Three of the convention, perhaps none more notable than Gus Walz' bursting into tears during his father's speech, and exclaiming how proud he is. No less a luminary than Michelle Obama weighed in with praise for the young man, thanking him for "showing us all what real love looks like."
   
   Naturally, some folks on the right did not see it the same way. Ann Coulter, for example, tweeted: "Talk about weird..." Trump supporter and delegate Mike Crispi added: "Tim Walz' stupid crying son isn't the flex the left thinks it is. You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male. Congrats." There were many other tweets and truths along these lines.
   
   Needless to say, this is vile. Maybe these people know, maybe they don't, that Gus Walz is neurodivergent, and has a number of challenges he must live with. What they definitely know is that he is not 18 years of age. You probably shouldn't attack anyone for the "crime" of loving their father. You definitely shouldn't attack a minor child; the world of politics may be cutthroat, but kids are off-limits. (Incidentally, both Coulter and Crispi got so much blowback they deleted their tweets.)
   
   We think there's a pretty clear message in all of this. Debating a 12-year-old? Attacking a 17-year-old? There is simply no political gain to be had in any of that. From this, we conclude that Trump's supporters are as upset and as scared as he is right now, and are likewise being guided by emotion rather than by what is politically wise. If Trump keeps shooting himself in the foot, and if his devoted supporters "help" by firing a few additional shots, then it's not going to be good for his campaign.
   
   
3. Democrats Do It Better?: If you made a list of the 20 best speeches of the Democratic National Convention, there are probably only two from yesterday—Gabby Giffords and Kamala Harris—that would make the cut. On the other hand, there were at least five or six speeches yesterday that were as good as anything at the Republican National Convention. With the entire DNC in the books, we stand by our previous assessment that the Democrats are, on the whole, head and shoulders above the Republicans when it comes to public speaking. It wasn't always true, but it is right now.
   
   We asked readers for their thoughts on this question, and we said yesterday we would share some of those. So, here are half a dozen readers on whether we are right and, if so, why the Democrats might be (so much) better than the Republicans:
   
   
   • A.R. in Los Angeles, CA: Besides the reasons you posit, I also think that the folks chosen to give speeches are better writers. I'm sure some of them had a good portion of their speeches written for them but most probably had to put in some work themselves. This could be a subset of being in a profession that requires persuasive writing skills like law, or really believing in the message the Democrats want to send, but the substance of the speeches was so stellar in addition to the excellent delivery.
     
     I also think it stems from a genuine commitment to public service and a love of country. I'm so thrilled to see the Democrats taking back patriotism and reminding Americans what that word means and embodies. When that kind of passion drives a public address, it shines through and also helps calm the nerves.
     
     
   • J.S. in Columbia, MO: Spewing hatred is exhausting while spreading kindness is exhilarating.
     
     
   • E.G. in Rosemount, MN: I was noticing how strange it was that Democrats have all of these past presidents to headline vs. there being very few real heavy-hitters at the RNC. Yes, there are more presidents and VPs alive on the Democratic side, and they are younger, but there are still some big guns on the Republican side. The problem is that many of them won't stand by Trump (George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mike Pence), while others may be unwelcome because Trump does not want to be upstaged (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY; maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger). It feels so "uniting" on the Democrats' side and just goes to show you how fractured the Republican side is. What if these burned bridges were available to shine their light on Trump?
     
     
   • S.K. in Lobitos, Peru: I have been thinking about the same issue, and my theory (to add to yours) is that the Republicans have limited themselves to only Trumpistas. Thus they have a smaller pool of speakers from which to draw, unlike the Democrats, who are doing a much better job keeping their tent large and promoting the voices of all ranges of the party.
     
     
   • J.A. in Dripping Springs, TX: I take exception. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) WAS stellar... in the sense that a black hole is a stellar body. A soul-sucking singularity where everything goes to die.
     
     
   • E.G. in The Villages, FL: Ted Cruz is a better speaker than everyone at the DNC combined.
     
     
   The last comment, from a person who might not be aware that marijuana is not yet legal in Florida, is the only one we got that disagrees with our premise.
   
   
4. The Missing Link: There were two elements to the program on Day Four that were rumored, but did not come to pass—one serious, and one kind of silly. The serious one is that there was considerable pressure on the DNC to give a speaking slot to a Palestinian American, so they could give their views on the War in Gaza. If the DNC had acceded to this request, the choice would presumably have been Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN), but it didn't happen. Maybe the party leadership decided that it would cost more votes than it would gain, especially since the party is making an aggressive play for Middle America. They might also have wanted to leave that subject for Harris; she had a passage in her speech expressing empathy for the people of Gaza.
   
   
5. The Other Missing Link: On a much more silly note, there was a gap in the convention schedule, which gave rise to claims that the singer Beyoncé was going to make a surprise appearance. The gossip website TMZ.com went so far as to report that an appearance was definitely happening. It did not, causing much consternation on social media. CNN's Abby Philip, apparently without irony, declared: "TMZ lost a lot of credibility tonight." We didn't know they had any to lose.
   
   
6. Job No. 1: Thus far, here are the viewership numbers for the two conventions:
   
   

   Day	Republicans	Democrats
   1	18.1 million	20 million
   2	14.8 million	20.8 million
   3	17.9 million	20.2 million
   4	25.3 million	???

   
   These are all the average number of viewers tuned in during primetime hours. Also, Nielsen does not include streaming viewers in their figures, so the Democrats' advantage is probably a bit bigger than it appears here.
   
   Barring the unexpected, the viewership for Day Four will be the largest, attracting several million people who have not otherwise tuned in. In view of this, the folks running the show yesterday clearly had several major tasks they were trying to accomplish. The first of those was a classic on the convention to-do list: Give some face time to candidates running for key offices.
   
   In particular, there are 19 Democratic and 3 independent Senate seats that are part of the Democratic caucus and are up this year. One of those, of course, is a lost cause (West Virginia), while others are completely safe (California, Hawaii, etc.). Roughly speaking, there are nine Senate Democratic caucus seats that are plausibly in play: Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
   
   Angela Alsobrooks (MD) spoke on Day Two and Amy Klobuchar (MN) spoke on Day Three. Last night, the blue team got four more folks in competitive races up on stage: Ruben Gallego (AZ), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Bob Casey (PA) and Tammy Baldwin (WI). That means that only Jacky Rosen (NV), Jon Tester (MT), and Sherrod Brown (OH), arguably the three most endangered senators, did not make an appearance. A speaking slot would have been theirs for the asking, but all three decided that they didn't want to risk having to own anything unpopular that might take place while they were in attendance.
   
   Incidentally, there are also two Democrats with a chance to unseat a Republican. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL) took a pass on speaking (though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, made a pitch for her), while Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) spoke last night.
   
   
7. Job No. 2: A second task for the evening (and for the convention, of course), was to make the case against Donald Trump. Sometimes this took the form of serious critiques of the man and his ideas. Sometimes this took the form of snark; plenty of speakers let the former president have it with both barrels.
   
   Other than Harris' speech, there were four particularly effective Trump-critical moments yesterday. First, after an introduction from Al Sharpton, four members of the "Central Park Five" spoke. Recalling that Trump pushed aggressively for them to be imprisoned, even after their innocence was beyond doubt, the clear message here was: "Don't forget, Trump's a racist" (which Sharpton did not hesitate to point out).
   
   Second, there was a Daily Show-style bit where the correspondent visited a Trump rally for United Auto Workers, only to be unable to find any actual auto workers. The message here, of course, is that Trump doesn't actually care about organized labor.
   
   Third, there was a different bit in which Harris' young nieces were brought out to conduct a lesson in the proper pronunciation of "Kamala." The message here was: "Trump mispronounces Harris' name deliberately... because he's a racist."
   
   Fourth, former Republican representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois was given a prime speaking slot, and made the (very reasonable) case that Trump is not a conservative.
   
   
8. Job No. 3: The most important job yesterday, of course, was to introduce Kamala Harris to the country. There were numerous videos documenting her story. For the first one, they got the most ideal and the most obvious celebrity narrator we can imagine. If you haven't seen it, and you want to take your best guess, we'll tell you who it was at the very end of this item. But we'll say not too many people out there can speak with the voice of a president AND the voice of God.
   
   On the whole, the evening had considerably less political starpower than the three previous nights. This is not a coincidence. First, you can't have someone on the speakers' list who outshines the candidate (which is why, incidentally, you don't put Hulk Hogan on stage just minutes before the candidate's acceptance speech). Second, the heavy-hitter speakers last night were chosen primarily so that they might attest to various elements of Harris' résumé.
   
   For example, Elizabeth Warren's job was to explain that Harris has credibility on pushing back against the abuses of Wall Street. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland ran through Harris' environmental bona fides. Former representative Gabby Giffords (D) and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), were there to assure everyone that Harris cares about gun control. (Sidebar: Given how grievously Giffords was injured, she looked and sounded great and, as we note above, gave one of the best speeches of the night.) Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was responsible for affirming Harris' foreign policy chops.
   
   Note, incidentally, that all of these speeches were supplemented with videos, remarks from other speakers, etc.
   
   
9. Ella Enchanted: It wasn't always this way, but these days, the custom is to invite family members of the candidates on stage to talk a little bit about their mother/father/stepmother/stepfather/aunt/uncle/godmother/godfather, so as to humanize the candidates. Last night (and this was surely planned well in advance, and wasn't just trolling), Ella Emhoff was on stage to talk about her stepmother. She was wearing a dress that—gasp!—showed her tattooed arms. We assume that many Republican pundits went into fits of apoplexy as a result.
   
   We had a number of readers write in yesterday with comments on why Emhoff's inoffensive physical appearance was nonetheless so triggering to many people on the right. The response, from reader I.T. in Orlando, FL, captures the tenor of most of those messages:

   I believe the "nightmare" is that she presents as a bit androgynous. The tattoos and sleeveless shirt play a role, but it's the overall breach of traditional femininity that so flummoxes the conservative critics. Even the picture you featured on your site (she seems to be mid-yawn perhaps) I believe was carefully selected—by a fundamentally classless person—to suggest that she's conventionally unattractive. And while many of us might not only vehemently disagree with such a sentiment, but also recognize that it is apropos of nothing, we should not lose track of the real suggestion here. It is not a suggestion that she is unattractive, but a suggestion that anyone who deviates from traditional gender aesthetics is unattractive.
   
   The degree to which the conservative movement is currently dominated by gender obsession cannot be overstated. Everything boils down to "he's not a real man" because he's a man who expresses emotion (Gus Walz) or "she's not a real woman" because she wears pants or has long hair or, god forbid, leaves her mouth open long enough for it to be caught on camera, instead of smiling a tight-lipped smile like a model woman should. It's a distorted expression of generationally baked-in insecurity, and it is the cause of so much mental and emotional dis-ease in our world. That's how I see it, anyways.

   That seems a pretty good explanation to us.
   
   
10. A Star Is Born?: To a large extent, the candidate's speech is when everything is on the line. If they succeed, the convention succeeds, pretty much regardless of what came before. If they fail, the convention fails, again regardless of what came before. If Harris had blown it, it would have been very deflating for the Democrats, after having such a successful first 3.75 days, to fall short right before the finish line. The good news for the blue team is that she most definitely succeeded.
    
    Let's talk about stagecraft one last time. To start, Harris clearly puts a lot of thought into her sartorial choices. There is simply no question that she thought very carefully about what she should wear on stage last night; she probably discussed it with one or more advisers, too. In the end, she chose an all-black suit with a lavallière shirt. We are not fashion-expert enough to fully parse this, but we can say that it's obviously a very formal choice, and one that caused her facial expressions to stand out, framed by the blackness of the suit and the blue backdrop of the stage. Her suit also had a bit of an Abraham Lincoln vibe; he often wore mostly black. And finally, if you want to dissect things on an Elizabeth II level (the queen was often suspected of using her fashion choices as a way of subverting the prohibition on royals expressing opinions), well, a lavallière shirt is also known as a "pussy bow" shirt. A subtle reference to "grab 'em by the pu**y"? Maybe. Just to make sure we weren't visiting crazytown, we took a look, and confirmed there are others thinking the same thing.
    
    Moving along, we wrote at the time—and we still feel—that Trump's convention speech was a disaster. One obvious reason is that it went on way, way too long, clocking in around 92 minutes. Presumably, Harris learned long ago that you just can't prattle on that long. Or maybe she learned from Joe Biden, whose 2020 acceptance speech was just 25 minutes in length. Or maybe she watched the crowd at the RNC as some of them fell asleep, and figured it out that way. However she got there, Harris' speech was roughly 40 minutes in length (though the CNN fact-checkers would undoubtedly tell you that's incorrect, and it was actually more like 39 minutes and 20 seconds). Leave your audience wanting more, not less, is the general idea.
    
    At a more nuanced level, let us note that classic movie/theater plot structure goes something like this: In Act 1, you are introduced to the protagonist or protagonists. In Act 2, the protagonist or protagonists go on a journey, in which they experience a series of setbacks and triumphs. In Act 3, their journey climaxes, either in ultimate triumph or final defeat. Trump presumably knows none of this. Certainly, he structured his acceptance speech completely wrong. The very best part was the first 20 minutes or so, and then it was all downhill from there, like a balloon deflating. How does a reality TV star not know where to put the climax? Readers can write their own jokes about him climaxing after just 90 seconds.
    
    Harris presumably does know something about proper structure. In Act I of her speech, she introduced herself and reiterated the details of her story, much of which had been covered by the videos. In Act II, she talked a bit about her journey, some of the pitfalls she encountered, and how dealing with those set her on the path to public service and politics.
    
    The biggie, of course, was Act III. The rather thunderous climax came when she formally accepted the Democrats' nomination for the presidency. That was followed by some commentary about why she should be president and why Donald Trump should not. Her critique of Trump was framed very well; she argued that he is an unserious man who nonetheless presents a serious threat to the country. Surely we'll hear that framing again, at the debates, if nothing else.
    
    As to Harris' case for being president, we're still sitting on a piece about her agenda, and whether she's not doing enough to give specifics on policy. For now, we will say two things on the subject (which we'll expand on next week). The first is that specifics are, to an extent, a fantasy. Nobody can possibly know what is possible in 2025 until they know the composition of the House and the Senate. The latter, of course, sits on razor's edge, and there is a world of difference between 50D/50R and 49D/51R.
    
    We will also add that... she did give specifics. Over the course of the evening, she specifically committed to a bill that will combat price gouging, a tax cut for working people, passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and passage of the currently-dead border bill that was negotiated by Chris Murphy, James Lankford and Kyrsten Sinema. Those seem like quite a few specifics, to us.
    
    So, Harris did well. Very well, in fact; one of the two or three best speeches of the convention. The candidate and her team must surely be thrilled with how it went.

And... that's the ballgame. The ultimate conclusion here is this: the Democrats put on as successful a convention as we've ever seen. Perhaps that is remarkable, given the recent change at the top of the ticket. Or maybe it's not remarkable at all, for the same reason. Now, we all sit back and wait to see if the Harris/Walz ticket benefits from the big show.

There will be endless articles and maybe some polls in the next few days, but perhaps one early glimmer of what is going to happen is a focus group CNN ran in central Pennsyslvania with 8 undecided voters who watched Harris' speech together. Most were blue-collar workers and some were members of the UAW. While the union leadership is very pro-Harris, some of the members have other ideas. In the end, six of the eight will vote for Harris, one will vote for Trump, and a young woman won't vote. She didn't explain why though. All we can infer is that she wanted something else than what is being offered.

Oh, and the narrator for the first Harris biographical video was Morgan Freeman, who played the president in Deep Impact and God in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty. (Z)