On the menu today: If you’re a Democrat, the two things that are spoiling your otherwise ebullient mood this morning are the thought that Michelle Obama and Barack Obama could have and should have started their grand-slam speeches earlier in the evening, and the realization that Tim Walz (tonight) and Kamala Harris (Thursday) will almost certainly not be as good as either Obama in their convention addresses. Meanwhile, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker make a perfectly contradictory pair of earlier-in-the-night speakers for the Democrats.
The Obamas: Still the Galvanizing Force within the Democratic Party
Oh, sure, if you’re right-of-center or intend to vote for Donald Trump, you’re more likely to contend that the speeches by former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama weren’t all that compelling or persuasive. But they weren’t designed to persuade you. They were designed to fire up Democrats, sell Kamala Harris as the natural and worthy next carrier of the Obama torch — which is distinct from the Democratic Party’s torch — and assure every American who voted against Donald Trump in previous cycles of the cruciality of doing it again.
Obama began with the standard patter about how Joe Biden was one of his first and best choices, but it felt pro forma, a checking-the-box exercise that he needed to get through before he got to the good stuff. Earlier this summer, Obama led Biden off the stage — literally; last night, he metaphorically finished the job.
The Obamas had a message that was loud and clear: In Harris, we have our true successor to “hope and change.”
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were awkward choices to carry the Obama mantle — too old, too white, too associated with the pre-Obama Democratic Party establishment. Obama has always been a fan of Harris; in 2013, he created a minor kerfuffle when he called her the “best-looking attorney general in the country.” (Ah, what sweet summer children we were.)
Last night was a reminder of what an astronomically talented orator Barack Obama was and is. A lot of Republicans have convinced themselves that John McCain and Mitt Romney were turkeys for failing to reach 270 electoral votes against him. But a generational communicator, plus the excitement surrounding the first black Democratic nominee, plus the Wall Street collapse and onset of the Great Recession would have been a steep challenge for even a Republican nominee as gifted as Ronald Reagan to overcome.
Michelle Obama, last night:
[Kamala Harris] understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. We don’t get to change the rules so that we always win. . . .
Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might be one of those ‘black jobs’?
You’re going to hear folks like my colleague Noah Rothman object that generational wealth and affirmative action are two very different advantages in life, and Obama is being disingenuous in comparing them. For starters, great wealth is not a federal-government policy. But what a lot of people will hear is, “Many of America’s wealthy and powerful are white, and they’ve always had their unfair advantages. Why is it so unfair to tilt the playing field in our direction indefinitely?” Of course, this treats all whites as advantaged and all minorities as disadvantaged, regardless of their individual circumstances.
As noted last night, Michelle Obama has made clear, many times, that she has no interest in running for public office. She does not sound like she particularly enjoyed being the wife of a candidate, and it sounds like she never looked at what her husband Barack was doing — fundraising, schmoozing — and thought, “Oh, that looks like a fun, worthwhile, and productive use of my time.” Nonetheless, every now and then, someone implausibly claims that Michelle Obama will parachute in and become the Democrats’ presidential nominee.
Republicans are lucky that Michelle Obama is so allergic to the indignities of the modern campaign process. Because as the rapturous response at the United Center demonstrates, Democrats absolutely love her, and would probably quickly unite behind her and walk barefoot over broken glass to elect her.
Bernie Sanders’s Steadfast Economic Gloom
Apparently, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders missed the memo about the Biden–Harris administration’s economic success story.
Speaking at the United Center Tuesday night, Sanders shouted, “Too many of our fellow Americans are struggling every day to just get by — to put food on the table, pay the rent, or get the health care they need. Bottom line: We need an economy that works for all of us, not just the greed of the billionaire class. My fellow Americans: While 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the top 1 percent have never had it so good.”
On the one hand, this is standard Bernie Sanders speech boilerplate. “The millyunayhs and billyunayhs and the big banks” are always lighting cigars with burning $100 bills, the working class is always getting squeezed like never before, the Hunger Games are always just around the corner, and so on. But it’s worth pausing and noting that Sanders’s assessment of the economy is always the same, whether unemployment is low or high, whether inflation is low or high, whether interest rates are low or high.
And Sanders sandwiched that familiar dire assessment of the American economy right between his early remarks crediting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for doing so much to help unemployed Americans, offer more health coverage, and expand the child tax credit, and his closing assessment that, “in the last three-and-a-half years, working together, we have accomplished more than any government since FDR.”
In other words, “We’ve done so much, but things have never been worse, but we’ve accomplished so much.” Some folks might conclude that either there’s a contradiction there, or that the “accomplishments” Sanders keeps touting are making economic conditions worse.
I Guess Bernie Doesn’t Follow Foreign News Closely, Either
Bernie Sanders, on the convention stage, Tuesday night: “Abroad, we must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages, and demand an immediate cease-fire.”
The news from the Middle East, two days earlier: “Hamas leaders on Sunday rejected a proposed cease-fire agreement hammered out in talks last week that had drawn optimism from U.S., Egypt and Qatar mediators suggesting a deal could be close.”
To call for a cease-fire when Hamas refuses to agree to one is to make yourself seem like an old man yelling at the clouds. Which I guess is what Bernie Sanders seems like a lot of days, anyway.
J. B. Pritzker, the Batman Villain with Bruce Wayne’s Bankroll
Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker combines the appearance of a Batman villain with the bankroll of Bruce Wayne. “Take it from an actual billionaire, the only thing Donald Trump is rich in is stupidity,” Pritzker bellowed in his convention remarks.
Back in 1988, Texas Democrat Jim Hightower sneered that Vice President George H. W. Bush was a man “born on third base [who] thought he had hit a triple.” J. B. Pritzker has played the game of politics on the easiest possible setting and has convinced himself he’s exceptionally skilled at it.
It’s easy to win a governor’s race in Illinois when you’re a Democrat. It’s even easier when you have a net worth of $3.5 billion and spend $350 million on your two races combined. Politico noted that Pritzker’s communications team in the 2018 governor’s race was bigger than any newsroom in the Midwest. In that first race, “Pritzker spent roughly $313,000 each day of the campaign — five times the median Illinois household income of $60,000.”
Ironically, just a few minutes earlier, Bernie Sanders had said, “At the top of that to-do list is the need to get big money out of our political process. Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections — including primary elections.”
Note that the assembled Democratic delegates applauded both lines and saw no contradiction between Pritzker boasting about being “an actual billionaire” and Sanders insisting billionaires shouldn’t be able to buy elections. Maybe some devious and subtle Democratic convention scheduler detected the glaring contradiction between Sanders and Pritzker and decided to have fun putting them back-to-back.
Pritzker was followed by Ken Chenault, the CEO of American Express for 17 years, and currently the chairman of the global venture-capital firm General Catalyst. Yes, there’s reason to believe that some scheduler at the DNC was trying to make Bernie Sanders’s head explode.
An Underrated Dark Horse in the ‘America’s Worst Governor’ Competition
New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham also addressed the DNC last night, offering some really cookie-cutter remarks on health care, abortion, and how terrible Donald Trump was, and you could see and hear the audience’s attention start to wander.
Thankfully the topic of her remarks was not “how you can completely ignore the Second Amendment, mock your state’s police for being ‘squeamish,’ have your own state’s attorney general declare something you did unconstitutional, and largely escape any political consequences.”
ADDENDA: In case you missed it, here are reasons to wonder if Harris is the Ukraine hawk who some people believe she is, and reasons why Donald Trump should be denouncing a failed Biden–Harris administration, not denouncing a “failed nation.”
Over in that other place I write for, here’s why the Democrats are still Barack Obama’s party, and here’s a podcast chewing over the convention’s first night with Dana Milbank, Jennifer Rubin, and Jonathan Capehart. If you’ve ever wanted to hear me be the skunk at the garden party, give it a listen.