Dem Convention Day 1: Speakers Sound Themes of Patriotism and Hope

This story first appeared at Newsmakers with JR.

Framing the election as hope versus fear, Democratic speakers at the first night of their national convention sounded themes of freedom, patriotism and optimism for the future that would have made Ronald Reagan blush.

“I mean, they’ve flipped the script, right?” said Kamala Harris biographer Dan Morain, on the scene of the convention in Chicago’s United Center.

In a long night of oratory that spotlighted some of the Democrats’ deep bench of political talent, speaker after speaker after speaker appropriated optimistic, country-loving rhetoric that once belonged to the pre-Donald Trump Republican Party.

Perhaps no feature of opening night reflected this more than a new Harris campaign video, titled “Freedom,” after the Beyoncé hit that provides the musical score for the ad.

Although the long lineup of speechifying pushed President Joe Biden’s long-awaited valedictory out of prime time on the East Coast, Democrats largely focused on an inclusive message of unity and hope, alternating with slashing attacks on Trump and his legal troubles, as well the controversial, right-wing “Project 2025” plan produced by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Morain, on hand at the convention to gather material for a soon-to-be-revised edition of Kamala’s Way, the first thorough, full-length biography of Harris, said the patriotic oration began hours before the night’s formal presentations.

For example, Morain dropped into the morning session of the LGBTQ caucus, and was surprised at the contrast between what he heard at previous conventions and this week’s:

“I don’t think they did that the last time I went to a Democratic convention,” he said with a smile. “But (the chair) gets up there, he talks about freedom, and that sets off the crowd of, “U-S-A! U-S-A!” Okay. Pretty interesting.”

Biden, capping the evening with a stemwinder that put the most positive spin possible on the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris term, extended the tone of the night with the first words of what amounted to a farewell address to the party in which he has wielded influence for six decades.

“Are you ready to vote for freedom?” Biden said, “Are you ready to vote for democracy in America?”

A few hours before the president spoke last night, Morain checked in with Newsmakers from his perch in “the nosebleed seats,” from where he had just watched Biden do a run-through of his speech.

“It’s such an extraordinary story,” he said in our conversation. “You think back to how Vice President Harris was just being pilloried by the Right, but also by the Left, in 2021. She caught very few breaks in that first year, and it’s turned…now it is her party.

“I don’t know whether she is going to win — she’s still an underdog,” Morain told us. “If the election were held today…would it be a jump ball? He probably would win…but clearly she has momentum.”

“The mood is…energized. They’re definitely, definitely energized…nobody’s saying they’re going to win, but they’re feeling pretty good,” he added.

Morain was in Las Vegas last week to watch his subject and running mate Tim Walz perform at an electrifying rally before many thousands of cheering support in perilous heat.

“I watched her onstage, and she really seemed to be…free — she’s letting it rip,” he said. “She’s having fun. She’s smiling, she’s laughing. Of course, she’s making points, and she can be quite pointed when she does that. She was trained as a prosecutor, and she was prosecuting a case. We’re all sort of her jury.”

In our conversation, Morain also spoke about:

• Chicago hospitality efforts include a very large police presence that seems more than enough for the so-far peaceful thousands of demonstrators gathered to protest the Administration’s pro-Israel stance on the war and Gaza, as well as many other issues. “There’s a big police presence in Chicago. They don’t want to have to make arrests, but they’re clearly willing to make arrests.”
• The city’s efforts to impress the tens of thousands of delegates, journalists and other hacks and flacks: “Chicago is amazingly beautiful…the city is just rising to the occasion…it’s really clean — I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ve done with their homeless people, but I don’t see a lot of them around…and a lot of plants planted.”
• Dramatic and radical changes in the media environment that have made Team Trump seem pretty dated in its attempt to stir up controversy over Harris’s failure to date to hold an extended press conference or sit for an in-depth interview at the same time her team is performing at a high level on social media: “You can view that as trivial journalism, but it certainly is communication and they’re connecting with people in new ways.”

Check out our conversation with Kamala Harris biographer Dan Morain via YouTube below or by clicking through this link, or listen to the podcast version here.