Here’s the thing about political conventions: They are, foremost, productions—obsessively planned and guided heavily to what looks pretty on screens. But here’s the thing about the Democratic Party: Now, as ever, it is a bit of a mess.
A seemingly happy mess. But a mess nonetheless. And this can make for an awkward production.
Up and down the Democratic pecking order, everyone in Chicago in these first 24 hours of the Democratic National Convention has tried to put a chipper face on the proceedings, embracing the “politics of joy” around new running mates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The party is unified and has great momentum, went the prevailing message I gleaned as I wandered through the United Center starting yesterday afternoon. November looks much more promising than it did a month ago. All of these happy feelings seemed plausible enough but also complicated, as the Democrats tend to be.
Heading into the first night of programming, I heard delegates, donors, and various press hacks speculating about whether there would be any fallout from this summer’s switcheroo of nominees. Would President Joe Biden or the first lady have any freighted backstage (or onstage) encounters with the party leaders, among them Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who helped push Biden aside last month? Would Pelosi have a run-in with her once and possibly still nemesis Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Tim Walz with VP runner-up Josh Shapiro, or John Fetterman with a rapidly expanding number of people in his party? (Never mind, he skipped the convention.) So far, tensions have not been obviously evident, though both Biden and Pelosi gave indications in media remarks that some tensions definitely linger.
Still, after watching Republicans assume a uniform posture of bended knee to Donald Trump at their convention last month, Chicago has felt like a healthy and honest reckoning. Big and unruly families have to learn how to fight, hurt one another’s feelings, clean up their messes, and heal themselves. Democrats were willing to dump their drooping nominee last month. That feels, at this moment, like it was the right move.
“I think our moral obligation as a party was to figure out how to put ourselves in a position to put our best foot forward,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told me. (To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what Bennet meant, but it sounded on point.) At the very least, a good mess can make for a rich pageant of parsed words and Kremlinology—starting with the speech delivered by the sitting president, last night’s man of honor.
“I love my job, but I love my country more,” Biden said in his keynote/thank-you/farewell/good-riddance address last night, which nearly bled into this morning, long after many viewers had gone to sleep. Let’s be very clear (not a joke!): Biden really, really, really loves his job, as you’d expect of someone who spent most of his life gunning for the gig and a good chunk of the summer clinging to it.
“It’s sort of a ceremonial, polite thing—to let Biden get the love and the bouquets,” the historian Douglas Brinkley, whom I found chatting with some friends of his in the Rhode Island delegation, told me. “It’s like, ‘We love you, Joe, but please don’t get in the way, unless we really need you as a surrogate in Pennsylvania.’”
The arena was filled with people who have genuine gratitude and affection for the president but who also seemed eager to get on with the future, starting now. Or, in fact, about four weeks ago—or much longer ago, in the case of Representative Dean Phillips, whom I saw holding court for a scrum of cameras just off the floor as the speeches were getting started. Phillips was of course the one serious Democrat who dared to run against Biden in the primaries this year, because he thought the president was too old and in decline, and likely to lose to Trump. And, yes, that argument has aged a lot better over the past year than Biden has.
“I’m just really happy,” I overheard Phillips saying. I didn’t catch the context, but it seemed to be in keeping with the upbeat tenor of the gathering, and perhaps sweetened a bit in his case by the nectar of vindication.
“We’re saying thank you to Joe Biden tonight,” Phillips’s House colleague Jim McGovern, of Massachusetts, told me a few minutes later. “He helped save our democracy. He did a lot of good stuff. And he made an incredibly selfless decision to step aside.”
I couldn’t help but interrupt when I heard the “selfless decision” part, because it conveniently erased the whole “no way I’m leaving” aspect of Biden’s campaign exit. For those of us old enough to remember, you know, last month.
“Selfless?”
“Yes, I mean, it’s not easy for anybody to pass the baton,” McGovern told me. He acknowledged that he’d had concerns about Biden’s ability to perform and win, even before the president’s debate debacle on June 27. “I don’t understand why he debated,” McGovern told me. “I thought it was a terrible mistake.”
On the other hand, maybe it was precisely the godsend that Democrats required. A painful godsend, but a godsend still, allowing them to get on with the big uncertain mess of things, including the future.