One day after Biden took the stage to cheers of ‘We love Joe!,’ the 81-year-old felt like a distant memory here in the convention arena.
Chicago – One day after Joe Biden took the stage to cheers of “We love Joe!,” the 81-year-old president felt like a distant memory here in the convention arena Tuesday evening as speaker after speaker in the United Center – Michelle and Barack Obama included — kept the focus firmly on his much younger replacement.
Drafting off of weeks of glowing media coverage, Democrats are over the moon here in Chicago about their new nominee, Kamala Harris, who rallied Tuesday evening in Milwaukee in the same convention hall where her GOP rival, former President Donald Trump, accepted his party’s nomination just four weeks ago. Her decision to skip out on the second night of the convention is another indication that the Democratic ticket is springing into action to juice as much battleground-state enthusiasm as possible.
Inside the convention Tuesday evening, delegates danced, whooped, and cheered throughout an enthusiastic roll-call vote during which a D.J. played a different song for each state delegation. Democrats can finally feel the hope and excitement again.
“The energy is the first and the biggest change that we’ve seen so far,” Representative Summer Lee (D., Pa.) said in an interview on the floor Tuesday night. “People are feeling like there is something to be joyful about, to fight for, And I think that’s what this moment — this shift — has done.”
What has Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket accomplished? “I think it brought a lot of the supporters that were probably not thinking about voting for Biden or were probably thinking about not showing up to vote, period,” cheesehead-sporting Wisconsin delegate Izzy Hasseynevarez said in an interview Tuesday evening.
“She seems like the right candidate at the right time to move our party forward,” California delegate Steve Bott told National Review. “He spoke of the “bottled up” energy that Democrats had on reserve because of the “low-level excitement” they experienced with Biden at the top of the ticket, “after the debate especially.” That “bottled-up energy had to go somewhere,” he added, “and it’s here at this moment, and hopefully that’ll translate” in November.
That “out with the old, in with the new” theme found its way into keynote addresses from the two Democratic heroes who still know how to rile up their base like no one else.
Michelle Obama electrified the crowd with the “magic” of 2008, made no mention of Biden, and even seemed to imply that the dreary Biden years were simply an extension of the alienation that Democrats experienced under Trump, describing the enthusiasm of the convention as “a familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for far too long.”
The former First Lady also spoke in uncharacteristically frank terms about Trump. “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” said the former first lady, who has always urged her supporters to go high when others go low. Not Tuesday night: “His limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be black.”
Then came her husband, former president Barack Obama, who praised his former vice president Joe Biden’s “decency and empathy” but wasted no time turning to the new star of the show, Kamala Harris, his friend of 20 years. “Now the torch has been passed,” Obama said. Those searing words will sting Biden and his family, who are currently vacationing in California and who have had a historically complicated relationship with the 44th president after his endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“For all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country,” Obama told the crowd. “A country where too many Americans are still struggling. Where a lot of Americans don’t believe government can help. And as we gather here tonight, the people who will decide this election are asking a very simple question: Who will fight for me? . . . One thing is for certain. Donald Trump is not losing sleep over that question.”
Also on Tuesday evening, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff humanized Harris in a speech that called her a “joyful warrior” and shed light on her personal side as a stepmother to his children, who call her “Momala.” Aboard Air Force Two on her way back from Milwaukee on Tuesday evening, the vice president watched her husband tell voters about how he met her on a blind date as a single father of two: “You have to decide who to trust with your family’s future. . . . I trusted Kamala with our family’s future. It was the best decision I ever made.” Emhoff beamed when he told the crowd that Harris will deliver her speech formally accepting their nomination on Thursday — their tenth wedding anniversary.
Hours before Obama took the stage, other delegates inside the arena were already heeding his warnings about a “tight race” and cautious optimism.
“I’m recharged, but it’s definitely time to mobilize and really put our foot on the gas. We really don’t have the bandwidth, we don’t have the leeway to let up,” Pennsylvania delegate Tanya Allen said in an interview Tuesday evening. “While I’m excited, energized, and really feel like we got our marching orders, we are still the underdog. We know that we have to really convince voters to feel comfortable” making the decision to cast their ballots for Harris.