The Democratic Convention that ended on Thursday with Joe Biden’s acceptance speech, was a dull affair. That wasn’t just because there was no live hoopla on a convention floor. It was also that the convention organizers had failed to find a visual equivalent to that by creating fanciful settings in which to set the speeches. They did have a moment when you saw the states nominate Joe Biden with their landscapes in the background, so New Mexico looked like itself, as did American Samoa. But they needed the sort of people who design the opening night spectacles at the Olympics to choreograph some pageantry for an event that looked, instead, like something out of the early days of television. You might have thought that would be unnecessary given the gravity of the issues facing the nation, and these were indeed alluded to. Barack Obama took on Trump’s character, as well he could and might, but he did not spell out why the man is unfit for office. Why was he pulling his punches? Do the polls tell the Democrats not to go after Trump personally? Various speechifiers did lambast Trump on the issues that I, for one, think important. Trump had separated toddlers from their parents and made it hard for them to be reunited. He had not criticized Putin for putting a bounty on the lives of American troops. Unmentioned, however, was Trump’s on again and off again negotiations with the Chinese that had left farmers in the lurch. The speeches tended to be flat, more like a telethon, as one wag had it, which means for me that the speeches all said the same thing, which is that we would be spiritually better off if we give money to and, in this case, vote for a good cause, one that will bring us all together. Jerry Lewis did it better.
Perhaps the reason for going light on issues is that there is not much left to say to win people on the Trump side over to the opposition. There is nothing left to argue about. What Trump is is obvious and so political rhetoric is pointless, as it was not at the time of the Civil Rights Movement or the start of the women’s movement. Those were new issues or old issues given new life. So all that is left are platitudes. Trump is shocking to his detractors; he is refreshingly shocking to his supporters. That may be why I found the Democratic Convention so dispiriting: it tried to make it as if there were two sides to the debate in that both sides respected the rules of debate, when it seems to me that the Trump side just doesn’t feel the need to debate anything at all. So who were the Democrats talking to?
Another thing about the Democratic Convention was the lack of conflict. Yes, maybe AOC could have had a few minutes more and the same could be said for Doug Jones, fighting to retain his seat in Alabama, or some other rising star who would show what the next generation of the party would look like and so the direction in which it was heading, embodying the future of the part by talking about it, as Barack Obama had done at the 2004 convention and Mario Cuomo had done in 1984. There was none of that crisp language. Maybe the convention designers decided that emotion was enough, and so they spent too much time on Kamala’s and Jill Biden’s background stories, so as to get people moved by such appeals, and so downplaying the issues that divide the Democrats from the Republicans. I hope it works though I remain one of those old fashioned people who wants to see clearly stated ideological positions rather than the mush of John Kerry saluting at the beginning of his acceptance speech in 2004 and saying “Reporting for duty.” That fell flat, as did his campaign. As Everett Dirksen said in 1952, looking down at Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, “Let’s not go down that road again”, which meant to support Robert Taft rather than Dwight David Eisenhower, even if Eisenhower looked like a sure thing to win the general election if he got the nomination.
I have been a follower of national political conventions ever since that one in 1952 which nominated Ike on the third ballot and that was the last time there was ever more than one ballot, John F. Kennedy just barely managing to win his nomination on the first ballot. They had a lot of drama in spite of that as well as the ability to familiarize viewers with all the major players in the two political parties, which made the campaign itself easier to comprehend. There were battles on the convention floors about civil rights and civil liberty planks; there were battles in the streets of Chicago outside the Democratic convention of 1968; there were personality conflicts, as when Lyndon Johnson had the lights turned out at the 1964 Democratic Convention so that the long extended response to RFK’s speech might not result in a rush to nominate him, or when Ted Kennedy clearly was reluctant to embrace Jimmy Carter, the man whose renomination he had opposed; or the behind the scenes political infighting in 1980 when Henry Kissenger tried to create a ticket where Gerald Ford would be Vice President to Ronald Reagan but totally in charge of foreing policy, which would mean Kissinger would be in charge of foreign policy. The drama was over by, let us say, 2000. Gore was the pre-anointed successor to Clinton and George W. Bush was the pre-anointed successor to his father. The nomination is settled in the primaries and the conventions are showmanship.
Whatever the failure of the present convention organizers as showmen, however, they did make two political decisions of considerable consequence. First, they were playing to their base rather than to changing the minds of the Trump base or those in the middle. They took it that bringing out the Black and Hispanic vote were key to their success in that one of the reasons to explain Hillary’s defeat was that Black voters stayed away from the polls even though those who did show up voted in overwhelming proportions for her. The Democratic Party had to show that it was keen on that vote, wanted to energize that vote. That was the reason for the selection of Harris as Veep. It was also why there were so many Black faces at the convention, and that in part because at the moment Black participation rests on the recognition of the importance of Blacks as a group rather than on just having policies that favor the Black voter. John F. Kennedy, for his part, had to argue that Catholics had a right to become President, a case Biden doesn’t have to make, and Jews don’t want a Jewish President because that will just get them blamed for everything that goes wrong. Putting Blacks in the spotlight was the reason for giving time to Steph Curry, an athlete who does not have much to contribute to the political discussion, but does have a charming family.
The second decision was to make the Democratic Convention appeal to emotions rather than to sharply draw policy differences, though there are enough of those to go around. And so there was a lot of time spent on the tragedies in Biden’s personal life. These may have contributed to the formation of his character but were here referenced to make the voter identify with his suffering and that is a bond that can tie into a vote. That is part of the telethon mentality. Look at people suffer; we all suffer; give your dollar and your vote. So more time was spent on Beau Biden than was necessary however much Beau Biden may well have been an extraordinarily moral and upstanding individual. Joe Biden is willing to wear his pain on his sleeve, and that is the case with other politicians who sell their personal misfortunes to buy voter support. John Kennedy also sold his family and Michael Dukakis sold his wife Kitty and Bill DeBlasio sold his son’s Afro, while Ike did not sell Mamie and George McGovern did not sell the fact that he had been a decorated bomber pilot in World War II. This time, the thing to sell is emotional identification with the candidate as a nice and decent and empathetic person who thinks he is no better than you are.
What the convention organizers could not control was the only thing that would remain as really important after the convention was over, which was the candidate himself, who had been kept out of the limelight, making only brief appearances in public, few unscripted, so as, I suppose, to lesson the chance that he would indulge in one of those gaffes for which he is famous. But he had to deliver his acceptance speech and he had to hit that one out of the park, as the expression goes, to show that he was up to the job. Now that is a very low bar. The speech was pre-written and up thee on the teleprompter for him to read. But he did deliver it well, with few verbal slips, and with vigor and without tiring towards the end, so that Joy Reid could say with relief when it was over that the speech put a rest to the talk that Biden had gone soft in the head.
The speech did effectively tick off the points that Biden will use against Trump for the duration of the campaign: that Trump was indecisive in his leadership against the coronavirus, and the toll in lives has been very significant because of that; that Trump has not come up with an economic recovery plan; that he is on the wrong side of the current debate about Black lives mattering; that he doesn’t understand that fighting global climate change is all about producing jobs for both the well educated and the not so well educated in any number of industries; and that, last and certainly least, about standing up to dictators rather than fawning over them. Those five issues certainly provide a significant enough platform from which to oppose Trump.
Biden, though, did more than sound vigorous and spell out his differences with the President. His master stroke was his tone. He was able to sound righteous without being self righteous, which is something even the most eloquent of recent Presidents have not tried to do because it is so difficult to do one without the other. Obama described moral dilemmas with the authority of a college professor; George H. W. Bush was all practice and little theory; FDR was patrician folksiness. You have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt or even to Lincoln to find righteousness unalloyed with condescension, and TR mobilized “Rugged Individualism” on his side while Lincoln did it by deploying a biblical lilt in his prose. Biden did it by sounding pained that he should have to say unflattering things about his opponent, though truth had to be told. A masterful performance to end a dispiriting convention.