Biden Promises 'Light' After Trump's 'Darkness': 7 Takeaways From The DNC

 DOMENICO MONTANARO

Win McNamee/Getty Images

 Democrats have to be very happy with what they were able to accomplish this week with their convention.

Their production of the first all-virtual convention went off mostly without a hitch. At times, the last night seemed like whiplash with a serious segment on faith and forgiveness followed by snark from emcee Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for example.
But none of that will be remembered. What will be, and perhaps for a very long time, was the speech Joe Biden was able to deliver. Biden gave a lot of thunderous speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate when he was a senator and he has appeared at conventions before, but no speech he has ever made was as important, and perhaps as well-delivered, as this one.

With that, here are seven takeaways from a consequential week:

1. Biden may have delivered the best speech of his career
It was more fireside chat than convention barn burner, and he has never been an arena orator like the man he worked for, Barack Obama. But, frankly, it worked for Biden.
He delivered a sober and urgent speech directly to the American people with a clarity of message, one of light versus dark. Biden, a devout Irish Catholic, seemingly channeled years of homilies about good versus evil, right versus wrong. If he wins, it will be a speech for the ages.
"Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst," he said. "I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness."
The Trump campaign might regret setting the bar so low to the point where as long as Biden got through the speech, he would dispel questions of his mental acuity. But he did far more than that. For the first time, perhaps even since he began this campaign, Biden showed why he should be president for reasons other than simply being not Trump.
2. Democrats offered a different choice
Even before Biden's speech, Democrats were able to lay out a different choice, a different version of what the country could be, for those disaffected by Trump.
Look, Trump's supporters are locked in. But Democrats took aim at that sliver of truly persuadable voters and tried to win them over. Democrats' vision for America is one that celebrates diversity, adheres to norms and will change direction.
Change is one of the most powerful motivators in politics, and it particularly sticks when things aren't going well in the country. Think Ronald Reagan following Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton after George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama after George W. Bush. If Americans are looking for change again, Democrats presented it.
It's up to Trump and Republicans next week to try to sell steadiness to right the course. That's something that can work for presidents seeking reelection, though it's made tougher by Trump's volatility.

Jill and Joe Biden, wearing face masks, watch fireworks outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., after Biden's acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination.

3. A unified Democratic Party was on display
One advantage of a virtual convention is the boos aren't magnified. Past conventions have featured at least some unrest within the base.
That was certainly true in 2016 with Bernie Sanders supporters who did not go gently into that good night. And it was true of Sen. Ted Cruz supporters at the Republican National Convention the same year.
But it wasn't just the lack of in-person delegates, it was the clear and present threat of Donald Trump for progressives. Sanders spoke strongly on Biden's behalf; and single-payer advocate Ady Barkan, who has ALS, praised Biden and promoted progress over purity.
Sure, there was some grumbling about who got time, who didn't and who got more, but this is a far more unified Democratic Party coming out of this convention than the one taking on Trump the last time.
4. It wasn't all about Trump
For as much as this election is all about Trump and as much as Biden's supporters are mostly motivated by antipathy for Trump, the convention did buoy Biden personally and made an affirmative case for Biden's vision for the country.
It became pretty clear, if it wasn't going in, that a message Democrats wanted to get across was: The Bidens are decent people, people you can trust and who care about people like you.
But as his speech showed, don't mistake kindness for weakness. It's almost as if one message was — he'll fight for kindness.
5. Kamala Harris is the heir apparent

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during the third day of the Democratic National Convention.  Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

If you had any doubt that Harris was the right pick, she proved she's ready for prime time. She delivered a solid speech and has hit all the right notes since being announced as Biden's running mate.
Being a Black and South Asian woman, she highlights the diversity of the Democratic Party and of America. Her simply being on the ballot is a statement against Trump. But she has shown, throughout her career and highlighted this week, she is far more than that. 

 She's sharp, can deliver a punch and has provided some needed energy to the Biden candidacy. At the end of the day, Biden won the Democratic primary, in part, because he was seen as the most likely to beat Trump. But it's clear, given that he has said he would be a transitional president that he is a bridge and Harris is on the other side.

Democrats Question Whether Postmaster General's Hiring Skirted Background Checks
6. An economic message didn't break through
Biden has led Trump in almost every issue area consistently and by a lot, except when it comes to the economy. Democrats didn't seem to do anything to break through with an economic message, beyond saying that the pandemic had to be solved and other boilerplate Democratic points, like securing the social safety net and having the rich pay their "fair share."
Biden was involved in one segment Thursday dealing with the economy, where he talked with workers. At one point, he said that he believed the auto industry could be revitalized back to its peak in the 1940s and 1950s. But no economist thinks that's possible.
He also said he wants to invest $2 trillion in infrastructure, something every president says he wants to invest in but has been unable to get the parties to agree on how to pay for it.
It sounded as if Harris was on track to pivoting to a new emphasis on the economy when she was picked to be Biden's running mate when she talked about Trump spoiling the economy he inherited from Obama. But that was not something much talked about during these four days.
7. It's about voting, voting, voting

Former first lady Michelle Obama, and her necklace, urged viewers to vote on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Chris Delmas /AFP via Getty Images

If there was one message Democrats hope people take away from this week it was that people need to go vote.
While wearing a V-O-T-E necklace, former first lady Michelle Obama implored people get on their "comfortable shoes" and bring their dinners, maybe even breakfasts and wait for as long as it takes.
Her husband, former President Barack Obama, ended his speech with a similar urgency:

WATCH: Barack Obama's Address To The Democratic National Convention

"We have to get busy building it up by pouring all our efforts into these 76 days and by voting like never before for Joe and Kamala and candidates up and down the ticket," he said, "so that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for today and for all our days to come."
Democrats really feel if everyone votes, and if all their votes are counted, they win.
And now it's on to the Republican convention starting Monday, where it will be interesting to see whether there are any new ways that Trump frames the argument for why he feels he deserves four more years.

What President Joe Biden would do to stop Covid-19

VOX 

I asked some experts last month how Biden’s proposed Covid-19 response differs from what the current federal government has done. They pointed to a few specific provisions in his plans:

• Establishing a public-private “pandemic testing board” to scale up and allocate testing across the country. (“This would deal with one of the problems we still seem to have, that supply and demand are out of sync,” says Jennifer Kates with the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
• Creating a state and local government emergency fund that would pay for medical supplies, hiring more health care workers, and providing overtime pay for certain essential workers.
• Eliminating cost-sharing for Covid-19 testing and treatment — and changing the law so that provision would apply to future public health emergencies.
• Setting minimum standards for the number of testing sites in each state, including 10 mobile or drive-through sites.
• Establishing a national public health jobs corps, which would employ at least 100,000 people to do contact tracing.

As NPR reported, right now most states do not have enough people to perform that job. 

“Contact tracing has been mostly ignored at the federal level, and states have been left to prioritize as they see fit,” Joshua Michaud at the Kaiser Family Foundation told me. “Which means that some have done more and others have done much less.”

The on-and-off supply shortages that lead to test results being delayed to the point that they are nearly worthless for contact tracing also reflect the lack of a national coordinated strategy. State and local governments are going to need another injection of stimulus to fend off debilitating staff and service cuts, but the latest stimulus talks have stalled out because Democrats want to put more money in the package but the Trump White House wants less.

Biden is promising much more aggressive federal intervention. As he said in his acceptance speech, concluding his list of Covid-19 policies: "In short, we'll do what we should have done from the very beginning."

"I KNOW WHAT A PREDATOR LOOKS LIKE"

 

 4 takeaways from the third night of the Democratic National Convention

WASHINGTON POST

Democrats on Wednesday night formally nominated Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as Joe Biden’s vice-presidential nominee, making her the first woman of color on a major-party ticket, while the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, issued an extraordinary rebuke of his successor, President Trump.

Wednesday night’s acceptance speech was an opportunity for Harris to redefine herself — after her 2020 primary campaign flamed out early and at a time in which she’s not just vital to Democrats’ 2020 hopes, but is set up to be their standard-bearer in future presidential elections.

Two lines stood out: “I know a predator when I see one,” and “There is no vaccine for racism.”

“I have fought for children and survivors of sexual assault,” Harris said. “I fought against transnational criminal organizations. I took on the biggest banks and helped take down one of the biggest for-profit colleges. I know a predator when I see one.”

That line, which is similar to one she used when campaigning for herself, came before Harris’s address explicitly turned to President Trump, but it was clearly intended to paint a picture. It was a subtly delivered but not terribly subtle allusion to the character of the man who occupies the Oval Office. In fact, Harris has previously followed up similar comments by directly invoking Trump, saying, “And we have a predator in the White House right now.” Harris also uttered it while talking about her past as a prosecutor — seeking to turn something of a liability with progressives into a positive.

Harris later described racial injustice as a “virus,” likening it to the coronavirus pandemic.

“This virus, it has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other and how we treat each other,” Harris said. “And let’s be clear: There is no vaccine for racism.”

The speech was short on direct attacks on Trump — the traditional role of a running mate. But it seemed to pave a path for doing so next.

2. Obama’s big break with history

For years, Trump built his political career by using Obama as a boogeyman — mostly as the lead public face of the racist birther movement. Despite this, Obama in 2016 initially offered Trump the kind of well wishes we expect during a peaceful transfer of power. He even called their post-election conversation “excellent” and professed to be “encouraged” by it.

On Wednesday night, Obama was done putting anything amounting to a good face on things, utterly departing from traditional post-presidential protocol. While Obama has increasingly criticized Trump, on Wednesday he went further.

In his speech, Obama said that the man he hoped would rise to the task had utterly failed — and didn’t really even try.

“He never did,” Obama said. “For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work, no interest in finding common ground, no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends, no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.

“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever.”

The comments echoed former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech Monday night, when she said Trump “cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”

Barack Obama also suggested that Trump used law enforcement as political pawns and averted “facts and science and logic” in favor of “just making stuff up.”

“None of this should be controversial,” Obama said, before alluding to his 2004 convention speech: “These shouldn’t be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They’re American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him have shown they don’t believe in these things.”

Obama added: “This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes for them to win.”

The former president spent most of his speech on the kind of high-minded rhetoric that characterized his 2004 speech and on vouching for his former vice president. But his decision to go so hard on Trump was surely one he arrived at after years of Trump laying waste to so many of the other norms of American politics. Democrats have trodden uneasily around just how much to go down that path themselves, and that made this a significant moment.

3. Hillary Clinton turns her disappointment into a call to action

Ever since unexpectedly losing the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton has blamed various factors — many of them credibly, given the narrowness of her loss — often re-litigating things even as some Democrats wanted to turn the page.

But on Wednesday night, she found a way to turn her disappointment into a perhaps more fruitful call to action. Reflecting on her own loss, Clinton implored Democrats not to be overconfident or take things for granted.

“For four years, people have told me, ‘I didn’t realize how dangerous he was,’ ‘I wish I could do it all over’ or worse: ‘I should have voted,’” Clinton said. “Look, this can’t be another woulda, coulda, shoulda election.”

She added later: “And don’t forget, Joe and Kamala can win by 3 million votes and still lose — take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming, so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”

That last line could be read as an allusion to Russian interference and other factors that Clinton has suggested made Trump’s win illegitimate. It could also be read as an allusion to Trump’s 2020 maneuvers with the post office. But the practical impact is probably the same.

4. Sidelining the left-wing insurgency

Around the time the convention began Monday, a quarrel broke out between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Ohio governor John Kasich (R). Kasich, who would speak that night, had suggested that Ocasio-Cortez’s role in the modern Democratic Party was overstated, and she hit back hard. For a party that has largely tamped down tensions between its left wing and the establishment since Biden emerged as its nominee, it threatened to be an unhappy sideshow.

Since then, though, it’s been “kumbaya.”

For the third night in a row, a leader of the liberal movement in the United States spoke at the convention — Bernie Sanders on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday and Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday. But there has been almost no real dissension expressed. Sanders even offered an enthusiastic endorsement of Biden’s health-care plan, which he had attacked in the 2020 primaries.

Criticism of Biden — or even a hint of it — was never going to happen in such a prepackaged virtual convention. But that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be avenues for dissension about the future of the party — as Monday showed. Thus far, there’s almost no indication of that. Apart from grumbling about the likes of Kasich and Colin Powell speaking, it’s the picture of a party united behind a common cause — at least for now.

Trump revives ugly tactics with anti-Harris attacks

 

How both parties have responded to the Harris pick

VOX

• On Tuesday, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden selected California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate — a historic choice, and by all appearances one that Democrats are extremely excited about. [AP / Alexandra Jaffe and Will Weissert]
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• Harris has already powered the Biden team to record-setting fundraising numbers. The campaign reported Thursday that it raked in $48 million in the 48 hours immediately after the pick was announced. [Twitter / Johnny Verhovek]
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• That’s a major boon for Biden, whose July fundraising lagged the Trump campaign’s by about $25 million. Still, as of last week, the two campaigns were on roughly even footing in terms of cash on hand, with both hovering around the $300 million mark. [CNN / Eric Bradner, Sarah Mucha, and Donald Judd]
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• Harris could also provide a boost far beyond that initial surge. As Recode’s Teddy Schleifer reported on Tuesday, Harris’s ties to Silicon Valley run deep — which could well give the Biden campaign a valuable edge with Big Tech’s donor community. [Recode / Theodore Schleifer]
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• And according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, her favorability numbers exceed Biden’s with several potentially important groups of voters — including some Republicans. [Reuters / Chris Kahn]
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• While the Trump team has launched an expected barrage of attacks at Harris, the Republican response can best be characterized as scattered, veering from accusations that Harris is too liberal to criticisms of her record on criminal justice. [BuzzFeed / Kadia Goba and Henry J. Gomez]
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• Trump has also resurrected birtherism as a line of attack on Harris, who is Black and South Asian American. The racist conspiracy theory he helped popularize when Barack Obama was president is just as racist — and just as patently false — now. [Vox / Ian Millhiser and Aaron Rupar]
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• Such attacks on the Biden campaign are becoming a theme for Trump, who on Wednesday appealed to racist fears about suburban integration by tweeting that “Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge! [sic]” [NYT / Annie Karni and Jeremy W. Peters]
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• Trump has claimed that the "suburban housewife" will vote for him in 2020, but evidence suggests that racist and sexist attacks like those he's leveled at Harris are having the opposite effect. His support in the suburbs has eroded since 2016, and there’s little evidence it’s coming back. [Politico / Meridith McGraw]

Sen. Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's VP pick

 

VOX

• On Tuesday, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden announced California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. [Vox / Li Zhou]
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• It’s a historic pick: Harris becomes the first Black woman and the first Asian American woman ever to run for vice president on a major-party ticket. [NPR / Scott Detrow]
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• On Twitter, Biden wrote that Harris, along with his deceased son Beau Biden, “took on the big banks, lifted up working people, and protected women and kids from abuse. I was proud then, and I'm proud now to have her as my partner in this campaign.” [Twitter / Joe Biden]

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• Harris is no stranger to the campaign trail. She ran for the Democratic nomination for president last year, dropping out in December, and drew headlines for a clash with Biden over his record on desegregating schools in the first Democratic debate. [Washington Post / Amanda Erickson]
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• She straddles the divide of the left and moderate wings of the Democratic Party, and has a background in criminal justice: She served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before her Senate bid. [NYT / Alexander Burns and Katie Glueck]
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• That background, however, has drawn criticism from some criminal justice reform advocates, who argue she was reluctant to embrace reforms as a prosecutor. [NYT / Danny Hakim, Stephanie Saul, and Richard A. Oppel Jr.]
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• As a senator, BuzzFeed notes, Harris's national profile "was elevated by her grilling of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings," including US Attorney General Bill Barr. [BuzzFeed / Henry J. Gomez and Molly Hensley-Clancy]
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• And Harris has championed police reform and racial justice issues in the Senate, particularly in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. [Politico / Adam Cancryn and Carla Marinucci]
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• Harris’s selection cements the Democratic presidential ticket with less than a week to go until the Democratic National Convention. Though ostensibly in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the majority of the event will be digital. [NBC News / Dareh Gregorian]
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• Now that the ticket is set, Harris and Biden will make their first public appearance as running mates Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware. [Reuters / James Oliphant]
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• Harris will also face Vice President Mike Pence at the vice-presidential debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 7. [Vox / Catherine Kim, Hannah Brown, and Cameron Peters]

ERROL LOUIS, DAILY NEWS

Harris’s place on the Biden ticket is all about increasing Black voter turnout for Democrats.

In 2016, Black voter turnout fell by 7% after 20 years of steadily increasing turnout. According to the Pew Research Center, “the number of Black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012.”

The falloff in Black voters helped doom the Hillary Clinton-Tim Kaine ticket. Dems famously lost Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — three traditionally Democratic states — by a combined total of less than 80,000 votes. This was part of a general phenomenon of Dems staying home: an estimated 4.4 million voters who had supported Obama didn’t come out in 2016, and a third of them were Black.

Democratic strategists are keenly aware that a more robust showing by Black voters in Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia might have won those states for the Democrats in 2016, and the White House with it.

She should make an effort to educate younger voters about her record — and make ample use of a line that Biden often quotes: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

This is a golden opportunity for hard bargaining around federal sentencing guidelines, programs to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, rewriting of the drug laws, prison-reentry programs and other tangible benefits. Harris will be willing to make a deal with activist Democrats. As the vice-presidential candidate, that is her job.