The Harris campaign wants only sensory impressions — buzz phrases, ‘vibes,’ and hot musical numbers — and it’s gonna get it.
Allow me to reprint, in full, what I took down as an Actual Journalist Doing Journalism yesterday while covering the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago:
8/21/24 — CONVENTION NOTES
I wish I had more to offer than that about the third night of Kamalapalooza ’24, but there’s no more water in the well. Some fun things happened yesterday — grabbing lunch with NR alumnus John McCormack and Mary Katharine Ham is nothing to sneeze at — but nothing at all newsworthy, because it has become soul-deadeningly obvious even to the likes of the Economist that the Harris campaign is determined to remain a gaseous word-cloud of buzz phrases, “vibes,” and surprisingly hot musical numbers rather than offer any serious policy proposals for the next four years.
So what is there really to say about last night? The most memorable moments came from entertainers: Mindy Kaling was charming (and, frankly, looked like a million bucks) during her tenure as emcee. Meanwhile, viewers surely must have marveled at how the Harris campaign’s speechwriters took one of the funniest men in modern sketch comedy, Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson, and somehow failed to write a single joke for him. (Stephanie Cutter needs to yell at her staff, or maybe herself.) Oprah Winfrey, still boundlessly charismatic, offered viewers everything but a new car in return for their support of Kamala, but the routine felt misapplied to a candidate about whom voters still — quite intentionally — know almost nothing.
And my thrill at seeing Stevie Wonder speak (there’s one guy whose teleprompter you don’t have to worry about) and then break into “Higher Ground” quickly turned to disgust at the appallingly white, lame, and uncool audience. They should have been singing every word and throwing a party on the convention floor; instead, they just sort of stood there, swaying. Democrats, we need to have a talk, or maybe an intervention — when the Republicans in Milwaukee are better at getting down than you, something is seriously amiss with your internal political culture.
If you’re asking me for serious thoughts about the political speeches, then my offer is this: nothing. And not for any lack of effort on my part. No, it’s because absolutely nothing of note or value was said, insufferably so. There was no policy substance to respond to, only sensory impressions — which is precisely how the Harris campaign wants it. So it’s gonna get it: Bill Clinton delivered a speech that reminded me — in its unfocused rambling, halting meter, and raspy voice — of Joe Biden, a sad comment on both. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro performed an incredibly eerie karaoke-night impersonation of Barack Obama. Watching Pete Buttigieg speak makes me understand why the Harris campaign passed him over as VP: I fear America simply isn’t yet ready to vote for a closeted heterosexual.
As for the vice-presidential nominee himself? My impression of Tim Walz is that he is a Midwestern Foghorn Leghorn, a bloviating actor who throughout the course of a self-promoting career constantly lied about and exaggerated his biography to elevate himself just an inch or two above his peers. All of that came through in his mercifully brief speech last night, particularly when he attempted to dunk on J. D. Vance by noting that Walz had 24 kids in his high-school class, “and not one of them went to Yale!” Vance didn’t go there immediately either; he joined the Marines as an enlistee after high school — and then went to Ohio State University on the GI Bill. Vance’s childhood miseries are perhaps the best known biographical fact about his life – they made a movie about it, after all – so it is a particularly grotesque sort of insult to attack Vance for having gotten himself out of a difficult situation by serving his country. (For what it’s worth, I may not like Walz, but as the father of a special-needs child myself, I think his son Gus is a real champ.)
We head into the final day of the convention with the least exciting roster of speakers of any of the four nights — who wants to hear Adam Kinzinger’s big speech, everyone? Give it up for Arizona congressman Ruben Gallego! — and that is almost certainly by design: Nobody can be allowed to outshine Queen Kamala on the night of her public coronation, now, can they?
Except for Queen Bey, that is. Yes, the worst-kept secret at the United Center is that everyone here — from volunteers and delegates to extremely high-ranking congressional staffers to even a random U.S. Capitol policeman I talked to outside — expects Beyoncé to make an appearance tonight. They’ve been playing her music all week at the convention, and, given the fact that I’ve even heard people excitedly chatting about it as they gaggle about in the halls, I have to assume it will happen. It will no doubt be rapturously reviewed by the media, though I can’t help but poke the Beyhive by noting that Beyoncé is — to put it generously — not even “yesterday’s papers” in terms of music or cultural impact; at this point she’s more like a rerun of an old ’00s TV series, one you liked as a kid but now realize was atrociously written hackwork. Let’s not kid ourselves: The Democrats wanted Taylor and couldn’t get her. She’s too savvy for that.
So, buckle up — or lie down and go to bed — for what will be the longest, least interesting night so far, the conclusion to a convention purpose-built to lull its participants — and hopefully viewers across America — into a somatic stupor. A celebrity may appear. Gretchen Whitmer will go out there and gretch onstage. Kamala Harris will finally appear, long after prime time, and deliver a speech nobody remembers two days later. It’s all by design: The minute the Harris campaign crystallizes into something real — when she has to face serious questions from the media or Trump — the cloud of vibes will vanish. And what of substance will remain behind the smoke? Either something noxious to the American people, or nothing at all.