Democrats’ new focus on “joy” has some party leaders thinking they’ve finally cracked the code for taking on Donald Trump without turning off voters.
But at the Chicago convention center, grassroots delegates made clear they are not ready to stop launching direct attacks on the former president. The most attention-grabbing remarks at the convention center were direct attacks on the Republican and repeated invocations of his felony convictions, as well as specific comments about Trump and women.
Clinton, Raskin and Crockett call Trump a “vile villain” and predator
During her spirited speech to the Democratic convention last night, Hillary Clinton and other speakers made clear that there is another animating force: the one beating back at the Republican who shattered his own dreams of a White House in 2016 and has tormented Democrats ever since.
For Clinton (who was once the target of repeated “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies), it was her line about Trump’s criminal conviction that most enraged the crowd.
“Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to receive 34 felony convictions,” Clinton said, before members of the crowd began chanting “lock him up.”
For Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, what got the crowd fired up was the line calling Trump “a sore loser who can’t take no for an answer from American voters, American courts or American women.”
President Joe Biden wipes away a tear after being introduced by his daughter Ashley during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. The night was also marked by relentless attacks on Donald Trump
For first-term Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), it was calling Trump “a vile, vindictive villain who violates voters’ vision… I hear alliteration is back in style” that sent the crowd into a frenzy.
“I’m known for hitting back, and that’s what we were going to deliver,” Crockett told DailyMail.com after her speech, after crying on stage as she told a story of how Kamala Harris once comforted her.
Not that Democrats didn’t enjoy his one-liners.
When the Rev. Raphael Warnock spoke about his historic Senate victory, his comments about the Bible were what got the crowd excited. “I saw him holding the Bible and then propping it up, like it was needed,” he said. “You should try reading it.”
“We all have a role to play,” Rep. James C. Clyburn (D-S.C.) told DailyMail.com after his own speech. “I don’t expect Kamala to play the role that I’m going to play in this campaign. So when I talk about Project 2025, she can talk about it philosophically. But I’m talking about what it really is: Jim Crow 2.0.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) shed tears during her own remarks. “I’m known for fighting back, and that’s what I was going to say on my behalf,” she told DailyMail.com.
Hillary Clinton referenced her own “glass ceiling” speech when introducing Kamala Harris for the White House, which she once aspired to.
The ambition to unseat Trump helped explain the extraordinary effort to get rid of Biden and put Vice President Kamala Harris in his place. It happened so quickly that the party platform released Sunday repeatedly invoked a second term for Biden.
“They want red meat,” former congressional candidate Robert Zimmerman, who was defeated by former Rep. George Santos, who pleaded guilty Monday to fraud charges, told DailyMail.com. “They want to take it to Trump. But they’re doing it in a very positive way,” he said.
The red meat followed a first half of programming that attempted to check every box in the Democrats’ electoral coalition, with a particular emphasis on energizing Black voters, who have been coming home to Harris after drifting away from Biden compared to their 2020 numbers.
Biden’s time
Party leaders seemed unconcerned about TV viewers missing President Joe Biden when they scheduled him for 9:50 p.m. local time. But it was nearly 10:30 when he began (11:30 p.m. in New York), with a speech that ran through his favorite themes: Charlottesville, infrastructure and the soul of the nation.
Organizers had to scrap some speakers (and a planned song by James Taylor) to try to keep the event going. At times, the teleprompter took on a life of its own, ruining one of Raskin’s best lines. By the time Biden finished his remarks, it was 11:20 p.m. in the hall, and there were a few empty seats up top. That meant it was well past midnight on the East Coast.
Excitement in the room
There was plenty of excitement in the room, and there was clear affection for Biden, 81, among the crowd, even without the pre-printed signs reading “We love Joe.”
He received a standing ovation when he entered the room. Biden looked shocked and wiped a tear from his face after his daughter Ashley’s introduction.
When people chanted “Thank you, Joe,” he tried to be magnanimous. “Thank you, Kamala,” he responded.
But there are still signs that the handover he was forced to make rankles. Even as he praised Harris, Biden couldn’t help but say, “And like many of our greatest presidents, she was also vice president.”
It was brief appearances by Harris, 59, that electrified the crowd.
As Biden resorted to some of the affectations and reused phrases that had appeared in four years of speeches (“that’s not hyperbole, I mean that literally”), there was gratitude, tinged with relief.
“I promise I will be the best volunteer Harris and Walz have ever seen,” Biden said, identifying a greatly diminished new role as he embarks on a vacation in California.
A series of black speakers reveal their interest in attracting black voters at home
Early convention speeches and videos featured historic candidacies by Rep. Shirley Chisolm, who sought the presidency in 1972, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who ran historic campaigns in 1984 and 1988.
“It’s been a long struggle and a long journey,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a video played for the crowd, who then gave a standing ovation when Jackson appeared in a wheelchair.
If Trump found ways to pack his convention with minority speakers, Democrats featured a long list of established and younger black lawmakers, plus a bit of Spanish and an acknowledgement of Native American tribal lands.
This came after NAACP President Derrick Johnson joked that “I’m here to do my black job,” and followed opening comments from DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Chicago native Minyon Moore, as well as numerous members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Polls since Joe Biden dropped out of the race have shown the centrality of black voters to the Democratic coalition. Harris has outperformed Biden nationally and in key states, after consolidating support among black and younger voters. Maintaining her support and bringing turnout back to Biden’s level in 2020, which was a drop from that of Barack Obama, is critical.