Joy and Hope and Vibes and Dreams
Living in Europe, 7 hours ahead of Chicago time, I watched the Democratic National Convention (DNC) essentially on delay via CSPAN. Like my family did with the Olympics, when I was growing up we watched the conventions. Part of the reason is because we had fewer channels back then (big three networks, PBS, plus a few independents) and the big three networks plus PBS were all showing the convention. We were an NBC house, to John Chancellor, David Brinkley and Tom Brokaw were my political voices of my youth. Also, back then not every Phillies game was on free tv (we didn’t have cable for a long while after it was available), and it was July or August, so not much else was on. But the main reason was because I had parents who were interested in current events. We had two newspapers delivered every day; the Inquirer in the morning and the Bulletin in the afternoon. The news, local and national, was on from 6–7pm most nights. Dinner discussions tended to be about what was going on in the world.
These news nerd habits are habits that stuck. So even now I pay attention to the conventions. But this year I watched much of the DNC.
Now it’s worth noting that having watched these things for so long, having paid attention to politics for so long, I’m old enough to be justifiably cynical, in a decidedly Gen X way, about politics. I’ve lived through Reagan, both Bushes, the in-hindsight monkey-paw pact of letting the Clintons & DLC rule the Democratic party, the Supreme Court deciding the 2000 election, the false hope of John Kerry, the distracting shine of John Edwards’ hair and smile that hid darker things, and the shock of 2016. I’ve perhaps earned the right to some weariness and cynicism.
Oh, and speaking of being around long enough to have seen some stuff, including very hazy memories of Nixon resigning (our parents called us inside from playing in the yard to watch), the six week between Biden’s debate performance, to the NYT leading the charge to hound him out of the race, to him standing down, and then to the absolute turn-around in tone and vibe with Harris and Walz? Man, now I have seen something.
It’s nice then to have watched the convention and come away feeling a bit hopeful again, even more hopeful than I was during Obama’s first run.
At the risk of succumbing to the vibes and overlooking any substance, the overriding emotion I have after watching the DNC over the four days (and rewatching the key speeches with my wife) is joy and hope. That’s in sharp contrast to the clips and reports I read about the GOP’s convention. That seemed, at least from the news, to be mostly about anger and fear. Now to be fair, I didn’t watch any of the RNC…I tried to watch a bit of Trump’s speech, but got bored five minutes in. I jumped here and there to a few other speeches but it was mostly about how horrible things are. Prices are too high, there’s too much stifling regulations, and immigrants are coming to kill and assault your wives and daughters. What I saw made Pat Buchanan’s speech back in 1992 seem like an uplifting story at a pep rally.
So we head into the business end of the campaign with the stark contrasts of the hope and joy of the Democratic Party contrasting and the anger and bile of RNC. Now to be fair, there was some anger at the DNC. It was directed at the gun violence that has taken far too many people, especially children. The anger was also directed at the restriction of women’s reproductive rights, and basic human rights for LGBTQ+ people. Totally legitimate targets of anger. There was perhaps too little anger at wealth inequality, and perhaps not enough anger at how Israel has conducted the war in Gaza. But overall, the conventions and the candidates’ approaches to their campaigns offered some stark contrasts.
Tim Walz boiled it down perfectly in his acceptance speech when he said it was a contrast banning books vs banishing hunger. A.R. Moxon, in his essay “The Normal Ones”, writes about the television images of an arena full of people holding up signs reading “Mass Deportation Now!” and not being able to connect with the feeling of wanting so many people around you to be disappeared. Contrast this with the Democrats’ border policy that could be described as too hawkish and framed by GOP talking points, but it at least speaks hopefully about pathways to citizenship and family reunification.
There were also wildly contrasting visions of freedom. The GOP sees freedom as the right to avoid any responsibility for the common good. It’s the right of corporations to be free of regulations and thus have the freedom to pollute the environment and to exploit workers. The right of rich people to avoid taxes that pay for schools, roads, and the national weather service. The right of a minority of religious leaders to proscribe the freedom for all people to love who they want, to have the type of family they want.
Freedom was a main theme of the DNC and it’s a theme for the Harris campaign. As she and Walz talk about it, freedom is in knowing you have clean air and water, knowing that you won’t be the victim of gun violence, freedom to love and worship as you desire. Government not as an inhibitor of freedom but an enabler and when necessary a protector of common good freedoms.
It wasn’t all happy vibes. There were a few unsettling moments. The stories of families who lost loved ones to gun violence, for instance. The Central Park 5 segment was incredibly moving as an example of actual justice, but a reminder that at the time, many people, including the GOP’s candidate for president, actively called for their execution.
The most upsetting moment for me was the video montage of January 6th. I remember the day, vividly. I was working most of the morning, then on a quick break saw reports on Twitter about what was happening at the US Capitol. I started watching live coverage and of course couldn’t get back to work. how could one work. All due respect to the work of my then colleagues, but nothing was as important in that moment as bearing witness, even via television, of an assault on the peaceful transfer of power, aided and abetted by the loser of the election.
But back to the joy. As many have noted it was refreshing to see normality celebrated. Doug Emhoff is a normie Gen X lawyer. His fantasy football team is named Nirvana. Yes, after the band. A normie Gen Xer. He’s just like me! (for years I’ve used a Radiohead song title for my team names). An accomplished man, yes, but a normal dude. Tim Walz is an accomplished man as well, but at heart a normie Gen X dude who jams to midwestern arena rock and loves his family, neighbors and students. Two normal guys who get joy out of seeing other people thrive and succeed, especially their own family.
It was refreshing to see a slightly less focus-grouped version of the Democratic party, one less ashamed of its left wing. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. A large part of the reason it’s better is because of the groundswell for Walz that led Harris to pick him. From what I’ve read, the Walz groundswell was due to his being pushed over the years by activists to lean into more progressive and humane policies like free school lunches.
It was especially refreshing to see the Democrats finally move back to the left economically. To not just accepting the endorsements of unions, but to actively support the cause of organized labor. It was refreshing to hear the candidate for VP say that housing and health care are human rights. It was refreshing to hear the party actively endorse the idea that the US needs to build more housing to help lower costs. I’m not sold on the deposit assistance or the focus on home ownership as opposed to acknowledging that renting as its own viable path.
As someone who voted for Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 primary and would have been happy to see Bernie Sanders win the nomination in 2016 or 2020, it was refreshing to see their legacies affirmed as the party has moved away from cautious Clinton neoliberalism to something that much more reflects a large swath of its coalition. The warm and boisterous applause that Warren received is proof that her message resonated more so than was reflected in her primary vote totals.
It would have been nice to hear more empathy and understanding of Palestinian suffering. There were some good words in Harris’ acceptance speech, balancing support for Israel with acknowledging Palestinian suffering, but it was a bad look to deny the Uncommitted group a few minutes to talk, especially when they agreed to endorse Harris and have their remarks vetted. But activism and pressure can get Harris to a better place than where Biden is now. She cannot, at this moment, stray too far from established Biden policy. But the minute she takes the oath of office, it’s her policy to own. It would also be nice to not see an immigration policy so firmly rooted in far right talking points. Here in Denmark that’s how the social democrats returned to power, by cooping the Folkeparti immigration plank. But again, that’s what activism is for. Get people in power who will overall do the better things, who are at least willing to listen, and push them to do the right thing in areas where you disagree. That’s politics and policy.
Then there’s reckoning with the Clinton legacy. It’s hard for people who didn’t live through it to understand that he meant as much to Democrats in the 1990s as Obama did from 2008 on and Harris does now. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush Sr., having a young boomer (before boomer became a bit of a slur) as candidate and then president was exciting. He was a compelling (if long-winded) orator. There has of course, always been a bit of uncomfortable smarm about him, and we saw it then. But in that political moment he was at least somewhat of a bulwark against the corrosive policies of the GOP. History has not been as kind to the Clinton legacy as we thought it might be, and for mostly good reason. But from 1992 onward, there was some progress, even if very incremental and couched in mealy-mouthed equivocating language. We now are seeing the damage of his centrism, yes, and this shift left is a chance to rectify it.
There’s also a reckoning with the Biden legacy, but kind of in reverse. Where once I viewed him as a blowhard who always wanted the microphone and thought he was the smartest guy in the room, I now see a president who governed with far more empathy and progressive policy than I thought he would. Much of that is due to activism; the Sanders and Warren wing of the party arguably pushed him left.
So if we want to keep Harris and Walz on a progressive path, we need to keep up the activist pressure. That means not just celebrating victories but accepting when we don’t get 100% of what we want. That’s the nature of change…it takes time but it’s doable. Coal doesn’t turn to diamond overnight, it takes years of pressure. Eventually you can get things to shine. For example, Obama was not in favor of marriage equality when he took office, but came around due to pressure.
Another thing I’m struck by is the deep reservoir of younger political talent in the party. Mayor Pete, governors Wes Moore (MD), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI) and many more in positions of statewide leadership. They came preaching hope, not fear. They came with a positive message, not yelling about mass deportation and an America in ruins.
Yes, I want the Democrats to be better on every issue. But they are better now on economic and social policy than they were in the 1990s and even during the Obama era. But the Obama administration was better than the Clinton administration. Some of that is due to natural progress and demographic change, but lots was due to activism and moving past the centrists and Blue Dogs who made the party corporatist and overly cautious. Biden was better than we thought thanks to activism from Sanders and Warren.
Because I took my time getting US citizenship, I didn’t vote until the 2020 primary election. I felt a buzz walking into my polling station in February and voting for Elizabeth Warren, even though by the time of the California primary it was over for her. I didn’t get the same exact buzz doing my by-mail ballot for Biden in November, but I was glad to vote and relieved when he won.
Even though I’ll again be voting absentee by mail, this time from much further away, I’m excited to do it. If your political leanings are anything but far-right, the stakes are too high to not vote. No candidate is perfect, but in this election one candidate and party are abjectly awful. Harris doesn’t deserve votes just because of that, she has, in my opinion, presented enough of a case so far that she will build on the Biden policies that were better than we realize, and lead an administration that will be for the better of the country.
The vibes will fade, of course, vibes inevitably do. But that’s where activism and pressure come in; activism and pressure on all elected officials — local, state, and national — to keep advancing policy for the common good. To, in the words of Tim Walz, banish hunger, not ban books.
