That was a great convention

A unified party and a candidate who knows what her mission is

I have been watching party conventions since 2000. The first acceptance speech I watched was from Al Gore when I was in eighth grade. I have watched every Democratic nominee’s acceptance speech since 2000 and have watched most Republican nominees’ acceptance speeches. The 2008 Democratic convention was a great one and was my favorite until this week. I don’t know that this Democratic convention was the best one ever, but it was the best of the ones I’ve seen.

I honestly don’t know how it could have gone better. It’s crazy to think how radically different things are from just barely a month ago. I didn’t watch every single speaker there, but the ones who mattered were all great. The Obamas were great and so were the Clintons. Plenty of governors and senators spoke and I thought they did well, too. AOC was great and I say that as someone who’s traditionally not a fan of hers. The speech she gave was short, but strong and effective and could have been given by most any other Democrat.

If you haven’t watched Tim Walz’s speech yet, you can watch it here. He killed it. Any doubts about whether he was a good pick should be laid to rest. I’m a very unsentimental person when it comes to politics, but I’m not going to lie, seeing his son’s reaction to him pointing out his family got to me a little.

As for the main event, Kamala Harris was outstanding. Her speech humanized her very well and went into detail about her life story and why she chose her career path. She made a great case against Trump and did so in a new kind of way, which I will get to in a bit. In discussing foreign policy, she was hawkish and said things that a pre-Trump era Republican could have said. On immigration, she talked almost entirely about border security and the efforts she has made as attorney general of California and VP to combat traffickers.

Her speech overall was decidedly centrist. That’s true not just on policy, but on rhetoric. Her presidency would obviously be historic. She would be the first woman president and the first black woman president, too, but she never mentioned it. In fact, she only mentioned race once when discussing her mother’s experience. When talking about economics, she talked about “opportunity,” not “equity” and  never used any of the jargon popular with left-wing advocacy groups. That’s another convention takeaway I will get to shortly.

She was light on policy details, but convention speeches always are. She talked about the need to bring down the costs of items from prescription drugs to housing to groceries, but in very broad strokes. So far, she has not articulated many details on policy matters. Many commentators have been unhappy with that, but I think it’s smart. She understands her mission, which is to win and this election won’t be won on policy details.

Going into details is something you do after the election when you’re trying to govern. There is an old saying that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. It’s cliché, but it’s true and Harris knows it. The less detailed her plans are, the better. In any event, it’s not like Trump is giving much in the way of details either. The most detailed plan out there, Project 2025, is one he’s trying to pretend he knows nothing about.

Project 2025 was something that came up repeatedly at the convention. Initially, I wasn’t sure whether attacking it by name would catch fire, but it clearly has. God bless those at the Heritage Foundation for coming up with that name. Had they called it something innocuous like “Blueprint for America’s Future” or cheesy like “Make America Great Again, Again,” I doubt attacking it would have gained much traction. Project 2025 sounds like something a supervillain would call their plan for world domination.

The convention was full of patriotism. There were chants of “USA,” American flags were prominently displayed and there were many speeches given by veterans. There were celebrations of people living the American Dream and the opportunities and great things this country has to offer. I loved every bit of it.

It wasn’t just a patriotic four days. It was hopeful, joyful, optimistic and normal. People were genuinely excited about the ticket and that’s how I feel, too. Virtually all the speakers were positive and happy. There was no sign of the doomerism, catastrophism, hopelessness and despair that has characterized much of the far-left and left-wing advocacy group worldviews.

What was almost as telling about the state of things at the convention was what didn’t happen. In the months and weeks leading up to the convention, there were fears of a repeat of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Then, police violently clashed with people protesting against the Vietnam War. The worry was that pro-Palestinian protesters would have violent clashes with the police and that would overshadow the convention. Organizers hyped up the protests with some claiming as many as 30-40,000 people would show up.

As it turns out, they were all bark and no bite. There were protesters, but only a small fraction of what organizers predicted. Those who showed up were almost all peaceful and only a handful of arrests were made. There was no rioting, looting or vandalism and nobody was beaten let alone killed. It was not in the same universe as 1968.

The hyping of the protests versus the reality of what actually happened should not be lost on anyone. When thinking about that crowd in the future, this episode should never be forgotten. The obvious thing to take away from the last few days is that they are a small number of people and don’t speak for anyone but themselves. They’re a big hit on social media, but they’re nothing outside that tiny world.

That’s something to remember not just about the particular protesters and groups in Chicago, but about the entirety of what I call the professional protester crowd on the left.¹ While pro-Palestinian protesters and groups have gotten the bulk of the attention lately, environmental groups and activists can be like that, too. They are very loud and overrepresented on social media. They love to protest and put on a show, but they are a small number of people who don’t represent any significant voting constituency.

This has nothing to do with the merits of the Israel-Palestine issue or environmental issues. Those are both important, substantive matters that involve tradeoffs and nuances. My beef is not with those who argue in good faith on any side of those issues. It’s with bad faith actors who don’t really believe in what they say they do. In the case of Israel-Palestine, I think Harris threaded the needle perfectly in her speech. The position she stated of supporting Israel’s right to exist and self-defense while also pointing out the dire situation in Gaza and the need to end the war there is probably where most people are.

Normies have won

As I mentioned earlier, the convention was very normal. There was no talk of revolution, socialism, burning things down or any weird left-wing fads. All of the important speakers talked about things normal people understand and can relate to. There were pleas from speakers to reach out to people who are not diehard supporters of Democrats and to show them respect. While he didn’t use the word woke, Obama took a clear swipe at it and implored everyone to be more understanding of those who sometimes say cringy things.

The talk at the convention was lightyears away from the 2019-2020 presidential primary. From listening to speakers over the four days, you would never know the activist wing of the party exists. Five years ago, candidates were falling over each other to go out into left-field and were using all kinds of academic buzzwords that no normal person understands. There was none of that in Chicago.

The phenomenon known as wokeness is something I have written about many times before, especially when I first started blogging in the summer of 2020. That was when wokeness was at its peak and the obsession with identity politics was in full swing. The murder of George Floyd sent it into overdrive. Looking back, that was its peak and it has been on the decline since then.

Between the convention being normal and the protests fizzling out, I no longer think wokeness is declining. I think it’s terminally ill and is not coming back from it. I doubt it will go away entirely, but it will have almost no influence and nobody will be afraid to push back against it.   

In Chicago, there was very little talk about race, gender, sexual orientation or any other kind of identity. There was a huge diversity of speakers that included just about every group there is, but few of them directly mentioned it. Like Obama understood when he was running, Democrats understand (again) that harping on about identity is not necessary and can be off-putting to a large number of voters. For a time during the Trump years, it was thought that identity politics was the wave of the future, but it turned out to be a dead end and I’m glad to see Democrats everywhere recognize that.

On policy, abortion was discussed frequently. What wasn’t discussed was all the other social and culture war issues and the weird terminology and phrases that come with it. I didn’t hear any speaker talk about gender affirming care, transgender athletes, pronouns, campus protests or whatever the latest culture war fight of the hour is.

Abortion is a major issue that people care about and will vote on. None of the culture war fights that are popular on social media and cable news are things people are going to vote on. Normal people care about abortion. They don’t even know about let alone care about drag queen story hour, DEI, ESG, critical race theory or whatever Fox hosts pull out of their asses at any given moment.

It’s Democrats who are the party of normal people. Republicans are the party that welcomes freaks, lunatics, grifters, sociopaths and conspiracy theorists. As if any more evidence of that was needed, RFK Jr. dropped out of the race on Friday and endorsed Trump. Republicans can have him. He’s not welcome in the Democratic Party.

A new way of attacking Trump

In 2016, the main attack on Trump was that he was a moral abomination and unfit to be president because of it. In 2020, the main attack on Trump was that he was a threat to democracy and was reckless in his handling of the pandemic. Those are all still true, but Harris has lately been attacking him in a different way. While Clinton and Biden portrayed him as a big, menacing threat, Harris is portraying him as small and weak.

In her speech, she said Trump was, in many ways, an unserious man. Barack Obama mocked his obsession with crowd sizes and may have implied a certain part of him was small. Michelle Obama mocked him, too, as did other speakers. At the same time, there were plenty of warnings about the dangers of him being in charge again and nobody acted like the race was over.

Which one is it? Is he a menace and a threat to democracy? Or is he a small, pathetic, insecure, petulant child? The answer is he’s all of those things.

I have always seen Trump as an incompetent and buffoonish version of The Joker from The Dark Knight. He is clownish, inept and is an expert at self-sabotage. He’s also extremely dangerous, morally despicable and shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House.  

Attacking him on all those fronts isn’t contradictory, it’s complementary. What’s different is the attacks on him for being unfit and dangerous aren’t new. Contrary to what some seem to think, those attacks do work on him. Trump has paid a big price for being a horrible person and hostile towards democracy. The Republican Party has paid an even bigger price as Trump’s ascendance has spawned many imitators who have blown winnable races.

Attacking him as being small has risks, as any strategy does, but it has upsides as well. The same kind of mockery being used against Trump now was used with great effect against his imitators in 2022. It’s not a line of attack he’s used to hearing and it could easily get under his bacteria thin skin. We’ve seen many times before what happens when he gets mad. He lashes out, says something awful and makes his problem worse.

In Harris, Trump is facing a new and unexpected kind of opponent. She has generated levels of enthusiasm far above anything Clinton or Biden did. That is to say nothing of any of the Republicans he vanquished in the primaries. Trump is used to being the one with a big fan base and having a monopoly on large rallies. Harris has been having bigger attendance at her rallies. He doesn’t like that and has embraced conspiracy theories claiming the pictures of her rallies are AI generated.    

Playing to win

If her speech is any indication of how she will campaign between now and November, I think things will go very well. It was a clear sign that she knows she needs to move towards the center. As I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t just on policy where she was centrist, but in her rhetoric. For example, she pledged to be a president for all Americans. That’s hyperbole and impossible to do, but it’s still important to say. It’s an effort to send signals to those who are on the fence that she cares and wants their support.

Harris knows she has a big opportunity. Trump has no intention of reaching out to those who are not diehard supporters of his. In his eyes, he can’t lose unless he gets cheated. His goal is to win, at most, 46-47% of the vote and rely on the same electoral college advantage he had in 2016 and 2020 to carry him over the finish line. It could work, but it’s leaving a large number of voters on the table.

Harris has a luxury that Clinton and Biden did not in that she has been able to generate enthusiasm for her candidacy itself. The insane amount of money she’s raised, the huge number of people going to her rallies and her being a big hit online have nothing to do with her stance on housing costs. Like Obama before her, people are thrilled about Harris the candidate.

That gives her more freedom to move towards the center where elections are won. Moving towards the center is what Obama did and, believe it or not, it’s what Trump did in 2016. Both had strong enthusiasm for their candidacies and were guaranteed to get support from the party faithful. Because of that, their deviance from some policies and upsetting of some party-aligned groups was overlooked. Notice I said moving towards the center, not moving to the center. Moving towards the center means she can be center-left just as a Republican can be center-right.

Candidates who don’t organically generate enthusiasm often find themselves placating their party’s most ideological wing to get them fired up. Most infamously, John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Clinton and Biden, to make up for a lack of enthusiasm, tried to placate their party’s left-wing in different ways. For Clinton, it meant going out into left-field on cultural issues. For Biden, it meant courting Bernie Sanders and his supporters and giving them a big say in writing the party’s platform. As president, Biden has been much more deferential to the left than Obama was.

Harris doesn’t need to throw the left any bones. Every Democrat is in her corner and will swim through lava to vote for her. It doesn’t matter which policies she deviates from or which groups she pisses off, she has their support. We already have plenty of evidence for that. She has gotten no pushback for disavowing her previous support for banning fracking nor she has she gotten any flak for focusing heavily on border enforcement when discussing immigration. Nobody has complained about her emphasizing her career as a prosecutor.

I’m glad she has made those moves and have no doubt she will keep emphasizing those positions and her career, but I hope she doesn’t stop there. Of all the problematic left-wing positions out there, it’s on environmental issues where I think the most damage is being done to Democrats’ electoral prospects. That is one part of the left that Biden was unwilling to anger. Harris has a big opportunity here.

She should brag about the record oil and gas production that has happened since 2021 and she should endorse the permitting reform bill that has bipartisan support in the Senate. I think she is aware of the need to distance herself from the environmental crowd. In her speech, she only mentioned climate change once and I don’t think that was an accident.

Given all the enthusiasm she has generated, if she does start talking about the record oil and gas production, I doubt many on the left will care. If they protest, she should ignore them. Maybe then it will become clear about the environmental protest crowd what has become clear about the pro-Palestinian protest crowd. They are a small number of people who are very overrepresented on social media, but have no relevance anywhere else. They can yell, protest and tweet and that’s it.

We’re terrible at predicting the future

Of all the plot twists to happen this election cycle, the biggest is one literally nobody saw coming, which is Harris generating Obama levels of enthusiasm. Never in a trillion years did I think that would happen. As recently as late June, I thought she would be even weaker than Biden. Life comes at you fast.

A regular theme of my writings is that we aren’t good at predicting the future. That’s why I seldom make any predictions. Despite my frequent admonitions, I still did that with Harris and was highly confident of it. Like everyone else, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Humility is something we all need more of and I’m not exempt from that.

We have no idea how we’ll react to hypothetical situations. I thought I would be unenthused about her candidacy. As of now, I’m as thrilled about her candidacy as I was about Obama. We have a long way to go until election day and maybe things will take a turn for the worse, but I’m ecstatic right now and haven’t been this excited about an election since 2008. May that continue into November.

1. Most of the groups involved in organizing the protests were pro-Palestinian, but there were many others that had different agendas. As is always the case these days with left-wing protests, there is no specific focus or goal. It’s just a hodgepodge of unrelated left-wing ideas thrown together. It’s not uncommon to find one protester with a sign talking about Gaza next to another protester with a sign talking about trans rights next to another protester with a sign bashing oil companies. To paraphrase Brian Cox, these are not serious people.