By Matthew Continetti
Friday, August 23, 2024
‘Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” asked Michelle Obama at the top of her stemwinder speech to
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. “You know, we’re
feeling it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across this country we love.
A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know
what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.” Hope and change:
the twin themes of her husband’s winning 2008 campaign.
Michelle knew what she was doing. And she wasn’t the only
speaker at the DNC who portrayed Kamala Harris as Barack Obama’s rightful heir.
Obama himself did the same. Democratic heavyweights, from Bill and Hillary
Clinton to Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro, suggested that circumstances are
ripe for a “Yes, We Can” repeat. They painted a picture of a bleak and divided
country where personal rights are under threat and working families have
trouble making ends meet. A country desperate for new leadership. A country
like America in the autumn of 2008.
The convention’s goal was to revive the faded tropes of
Obamamania and use them to aid Harris in November. Entertainment figures who
appeared on stage and in the audience turned the proceedings into not just a
political event, but also a cultural one. Harris has her own
Shepard Fairey poster. Stevie Wonder, who rocked Mile-High Stadium when
Obama was nominated in 2008, spoke and sang in Chicago. Oprah Winfrey
campaigned with Obama at a critical point in his ascent. She endorsed Harris
from the dais. “We won’t go back,” Winfrey told the adoring hometown crowd. “We won’t be sent back,
pushed back, bullied back, kicked back. We’re not going back.”
Oprah, where have you been? If you watched the DNC, you
would have come away thinking the current president is Donald Trump. More was
said about him than any issue or policy. The Democrats charged Trump with
insurrection, bigotry, misogyny, lawlessness, and cruelty. And that was just
night one. Every night featured a segment on the Heritage Foundation’s Project
2025, a policy handbook Trump disavows. Not that Trump’s actual agenda mattered
to the Democrats. He was blamed for all problems facing the country — the
economy and inflation, the border and immigration, the uncertainty of abortion
law.
The man who has lived in the White House since January
20, 2021, was hustled off the stage as soon as he finished his speech after
midnight Tuesday and shipped to a ranch in California. From that point on, Joe
Biden’s name was barely uttered. An occasional speaker would thank him,
perfunctorily. Not for his public service. For withdrawing his candidacy. For
endorsing Kamala Harris. She’s the one they’ve been waiting for.
This was the convention Democrats wanted to hold in 2020.
Barack Obama helped to select the past three Democratic presidential nominees
despite leaving office eight years ago. He never wanted Biden to lead his
party. He pushed Biden aside in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. Oops. Clinton lost
and Trump took power. And Obama cast about for a non-Biden alternative. He’s
known Harris for years and boosted her 2020 campaign.
Back then, Harris ran as a “Squad”-adjacent progressive
who embraced the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, Defund the Police, DEI, and
decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Harris had a brilliant debut,
summoning crowds in Oakland and sliming Biden as an opponent of racial
integration. But she stumbled, her campaign lost momentum, and she dropped out
two months before the Iowa caucuses.
Obama briefly moved on to Pete Buttigieg, to little
effect. Bernie Sanders won the first three contests. Miraculously, Biden came
back with a sweeping win in South Carolina. He was the only candidate with
widespread support from black voters. Obama pressured Buttigieg and Senator Amy
Klobuchar (D., Minn.) to drop out, and Biden went on to winning Super Tuesday.
The 2020 election took place amid a pandemic and, after
the death of George Floyd in May, nationwide social unrest. The Democrats held
a virtual convention. The pressures of the moment changed Biden. He had always
wanted voters to think of him as a moderate, as a small-state, down-to-earth
guy with working-class roots. The coronavirus made him believe he could be FDR
reborn. The mostly peaceful protests and riots pushed him toward political
correctness and identity politics. The Sandernistas wrote his “unity” program.
Biden swore he’d choose a woman as vice president and a black woman as his
first Supreme Court pick. And Harris returned to presidential politics as his
running mate.
Biden’s term has been a disaster, the result of
recklessness and incompetence compounded by age and infirmity. The Obama crew
is no happier about it than you or I. Finally, when Biden relented and gave up
the nomination, Obama and his allies reasserted their authority. Harris was
eager to accept their counsel. Obama consigliere David Plouffe joined her campaign. Stephanie Cutter, Jennifer Palmieri,
and Mitch Stewart signed on as well.
Harris took on more than Obama’s staff. She adopted the
message that Obama strategist David Axelrod had been urging Biden to use for
months: Drop the threat-to-democracy talk and instead cast the election as a
choice between future promise and dwelling on Trump’s past; concern for every
American, not concern for Trump’s interest; and lowering costs versus Trump’s
tariffs. Harris has followed the plan, while appropriating old-guard Republican
buzzwords such as freedom, opportunity, and optimism.
The Chicago Democrats loved it. Biden’s absence from the
ticket has unleashed a torrent of energy, enthusiasm, and unity. The party
assembled at the United Center doesn’t want to go back to Trump, but it does
want to go back to the Obama era, when the coalition of the ascendant and the
Rising American Electorate was going to overthrow the patriarchy and white
supremacy and guarantee progressive rule for generations. That’s the future
Harris represents to the MSNBC talking heads swooning over her.
Will it be our future? The race is a tossup. The
convention had nothing to say to young men. There is only so much Amanda Gorman
a person can take. Nor did the convention have much to say to working-class
voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania concerned about the lower
standard of living during the Biden administration, the broken southern border,
the sense of public disorder in cities and on college campuses, and a world in
chaos. If you don’t share the Democratic view of social and cultural issues, or
the Democratic understanding of “true freedom,” you saw a bunch of Democrats
who hate Trump and are very, very happy they no longer have Biden as their
nominee.
Kamala Harris is not Barack Obama. She didn’t risk her
career over a stand against the Iraq war, only to see her party move toward
her. She is not known for a groundbreaking speech, or a worldwide bestseller,
or rallying a movement to win a sharply contested primary against a two-term
senator and former first lady. She didn’t win a primary at all. She has no
defined set of policies — no Obamacare waiting in the wings. Tim Walz said that “Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is
experienced. And Kamala Harris is ready.” Three more whoppers from the “dad in plaid.”
Walz may want to give Harris a few lessons in
demagoguery. Her speech dragged in the beginning. We heard a little about
Harris’s background, and a lot about the threat of a second Trump term. The
first half sounded more like a State of the Union address than an acceptance
speech. There was a partial defense of her record, but no signature line, no
memorable image. Things picked up when Harris turned to foreign policy. Israel
got cheers — but from this crowd, the Palestinians got more. Harris became most
impassioned when she vowed to defend the United States. She may have raised a
few eyebrows in Moscow and Tehran and Pyongyang and Beijing.
Then she retreated into generalities and cliché. It was a
serviceable speech, but nowhere as effective as Walz’s or as gripping as
Michelle Obama’s and Barack Obama’s. This convention has revealed that the
Democrats have a deeper bench of political talent than I had thought. To win in
November, Harris will need all the help she can get.
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