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Re-energised Democrats return to Chicago for DNC to bid Biden farewell, celebrate Harris
Democrats gather in Chicago to celebrate Kamala Harris's presidential nomination, bid farewell to Joe Biden, and oppose Trump, aiming for a poll boost and unity.
Democrats will congregate in Chicago from Monday to celebrate the nomination of Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate for the presidency, bid farewell to Joe Biden, hear former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and project a message of hope about the future and determined opposition to Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The Democratic National Convention kicks off this week at United Center, the home of the Chicago Bulls, just a month after the Republicans held their convention in Milwaukee. Trump then appeared heading for a landslide as he emerged with a heroic image after an assassination attempt and faced a feeble Biden whose ratings had plummeted after a disastrous debate performance.
But it has been a month when American politics has altered dramatically. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and backed Harris. Harris not just sealed the nomination, unopposed, in record time, but also united the party, energised the campaign, raised over $300 million, nominated Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and crafted a new political message around “freedom” and economic message around “lowering the cost of living” and “strengthening the middle class”.
Harris will walk into the convention after campaigning extensively across swing states with a set of lines from her stump speech that are set to become the defining themes of her message.
When Harris has retraced her past as a prosecutor and declared, “I know Donald Trump’s type”, Democrats have applauded her going on the offensive against a felon. When Harris has said, “We will not go back,” it has resonated among Democrats who neither want to return to the Trump presidency but also among swing voters who want to make a fresh beginning after a Biden presidency. When Harris has said, “When we fight, we win”, it has charged the party base that was low on morale and had almost given up on the election.
When she has spoken of freedom of women to make decisions about their own body, it has showcased Harris’s image as a fighter for abortion rights, the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans, and reframed the debate as one where democracy was at stake to one where personal liberty was at stake. And when Walz, her vice presidential pick, has deployed his own midwestern roots to make fun of Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as “weird”, it has made supporters laugh and given an adjective that depicts Trump’s dangers and without exaggerating his power.
Even as Harris will reiterate these messages, she is expected to tell Americans her life story and define her broad policy positions when she speaks on Thursday. But before that, on Monday, Biden will speak as supporters bid him farewell after half a century of service in Democratic politics. On Tuesday, Obama will address the convention, even as many of his former aides are now helping Harris run her campaign. And on Wednesday, Walz, who was barely known outside his state and among Democratic operatives, will introduce himself to America.
For the party, there is good news coming in from recent polls. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, released on Sunday, found 49% registered voters backed Harris compared to 45% who backed Trump. A New York Times-Sienna poll found that Harris had put the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina back in play where she was, on an average, tied with Trump. Last week, the Times-Sienna poll had shown Harris narrowly leading in the midwestern states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. These seven swing states will determine the election outcome.
But both the Harris and Trump campaigns are acutely conscious that this remains a close election. For Harris’s team, the hope is that the convention will give her a bigger bounce in polls and she can then use the momentum up to the presidential debate on September 10 and beyond, while the party beefs up its ground operations. For Trump’s team, the hope is that while Harris will keep the lead till the end of the month, based on what they see as a “honeymoon” phase, the dynamics of the race will return to the “fundamentals” as voters think of inflation and immigration as core issues; these are issues on which Trump believes he is more trusted than Harris who he has framed as a “dangerous San Francisco liberal”.
For Democrats though, the return to Chicago brings back memories of a volatile summer 56 years ago.
In 1968, an incumbent Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race, just like Biden did this year. The party faced a far-Right challenge in the form of Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate, just as the party faces Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement this year. Democrats confronted an internal challenge from students and progressive protesters furious about the Vietnam war, just as they will confront protests this week from those horrified with American complicity in Israel’s brutal war in Gaza that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians. And there was a climate of political violence, with both Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy having got assassinated in 1968, just as political violence has returned to America, visible in the assassination attempt against Trump but also the earlier January 6, 2021 mob attack on the US Capitol.
But unlike 1968, when Democrats were unable to manage the internal dissent and eventually lost the election, in 2024, the party faithful will return to Chicago, relatively more confident of their ability to defeat Trump and more united than they have been in recent years. As they celebrate the first Black woman and first Indian-American woman on top of the presidential ticket, American politics is headed for another historic week in this already historic year.
