‘This is about the country, not the candidate’: Democrats push values over policy at convention
During Joe Biden’s first ill-fated run for the White House, he lamented the Democratic Party’s reliance on “14-point position papers and nine-point programs” to persuade voters.
More than three decades later, this week’s virtual Democratic National Convention is reflecting Biden’s preference for using shared values and empathy over policy prescriptions as political motivators.
The first two nights of isolated convention programming featured an array of Democrats — as well as a handful of rogue Republicans — leaning heavily into the anxiety of a nation reeling from a pandemic and summoning the urgency required to defeat President Donald Trump.
Largely absent was extensive talk of what’s exactly to come if Biden, who Democrats formally nominated for president Tuesday night, is elected. Weaved throughout the core of most speeches were the dire consequences if he’s not.
“It was absolutely intentional,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic National Committee member and strategist who appeared in a taped convention address on Tuesday night. “We’ve seen so many polls lately that have Joe Biden up by 12 to 15 points. That can lead to complacency, that can leave people thinking … there’s no way [Trump] can get re-elected. No, there is a way.”
Democrats have sought to portray Trump as a threat to democracy and tout Biden’s character and ability to restore a sense of normalcy in hopes of simultaneously turning out their base and appealing to GOP-leaning voters.
On Monday night, former First Lady Michelle Obama didn’t abandon her mantra of taking the high road, but she warned darkly that if Democrats don’t vote “like our lives depend on it” in November, things would get much worse.
Former President Bill Clinton’s descriptions of Biden on Tuesday weren’t overly effusive, calling him a “down-to-earth, get-the-job-done” candidate. But he likened the current Oval Office to a “storm center” of chaos where the “buck never stops.”
“Our choice is Joe Biden,” Clinton said simply.
Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife who delivered her remarks from inside a classroom, picked up on the theme that core values were necessary before bigger decisions could be made.
“We just need leadership worthy of our nation. Worthy of you. Honest leadership to bring us back together—to recover from this pandemic and prepare for whatever else is next,” she said.
Even Bernie Sanders — the democratic socialist and former presidential candidate most responsible for pushing the party to the left over the last four years — prioritized the threat Trump poses to democratic norms over the policy revolution he hopes to see advanced under a President Biden.
“The price of failure is just too great to imagine,” Sanders warned in a speech exalted by many mainstream Democrats who viewed him with disdain just months ago.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who serves as a co-chair of the Biden campaign, said much of the convention’s aim is to present to Americans a referendum on Trump and keep the alternative simple.
“So often Democrats overthink themselves and are divided. This time we’re making it very clear and we’re united,” Garcetti said. “This is two people with hearts and experience against a president that has neither. Keep it simple stupid.”
He added, “I think this ticket speaks to you, simply. It isn’t a complicated moment.”
Those familiar with the planning said the remainder of the convention would naturally turn towards making a more affirmative case for the Democratic ticket, beginning on Wednesday night with the showcasing of running mate Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American ever to appear on a major party presidential ticket.
Democrats have been heartened to see Republicans’ scattershot attacks against the California senator largely falling flat in the week since she was selected. And some see an opportunity for her to boost the ticket with the most widely watched speech of her career that will introduce Harris to millions of Americans who don’t regularly follow politics.
And Thursday night will spend a significant slice of time showcasing Biden’s life story — which is less known to Americans outside the Acela corridor — featuring his family’s economic struggles growing up in Scranton, Pa., to the jolt of life as a widowed father after his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident, to his most recent agony, the loss of his eldest son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
Tuesday night’s program did include an extended segment on health care in which Biden appeared on camera to reaffirm his pledge to offer Americans an option to buy into Medicare. Several supporters battling diseases faulted Trump and Republicans for trying to dismantle the Affordable Health Care Act.
A foreign policy segment that followed included a flurry of diplomats and national security officials that dubbed Trump “a danger to national security.” Former Secretary of State John Kerry said, “when this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission, it’s a blooper reel.”
Cardona said the ethnic, economic, generational and geographic diversity of the speakers displayed throughout the carefully packaged convention is designed to above all underscore Biden’s character strengths of empathy, decency and civility. In many ways, it’s a convention that could be created for any Democratic nominee.
“This is about the country, not the candidate,” Cardona said. “Joe Biden is not Barack Obama, Joe Biden is not Bill Clinton, Joe Biden is not John Kennedy. He may not wow you from here to the moon, you may not feel chills every time he speaks, But you are responsible for the outcome. You know Joe Biden is a good man, you know he has the experience. So freaking step up to the plate now.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2020 at 11:40 PM.
