CHICAGO — The Democratic Convention wrapped up after Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech to a reinvigorated Democratic Party Thursday night. Here are six key takeaways from a week of speakers, songs and a reminder to Democrats from Michelle Obama to “do something.”
Biden passed the torch
President Joe Biden addressed the crowd on the first night of the convention. Beginning the week with his speech signified what the past month has been leading up to: a changing of the guard.
“The torch has been passed,” former President Barack Obama said himself on Tuesday. “Now it is up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in.”
The first night featured prominent figures of the party’s past making the case for the future represented by the Harris-Walz ticket. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, addressed the crowd, and if this was the end of her era, it finished with an ironic reversal as the crowd at the United Center chanted “lock him up” in reference to former President Donald Trump.
Joe Biden ended Monday night with a fiery speech, looking to move past the debate performance that led to him dropping out from the race. As the crowd waved signs reading “We heart Joe,” Biden ushered in a new chapter for the Democratic Party.
“America, I gave my best to you,” he said.
Rising Democratic stars made their mark
Each night, rising stars in the Democratic Party gained a bigger audience than they had perhaps ever addressed. These are people who gave notable speeches and will likely run for something bigger in the future.
New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given an evening speaking slot on night one of the DNC. A prominent name in the party’s left wing, her speech garnered raucous applause not just from progressives but also by the broader Democratic base in the United Center.
“I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Georgia U.S. Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock lit up the crowd in a speech delivered like a sermon.
“I need all children on both sides of the tracks to be okay,” Warnock said. “Because we are all God’s children.”
Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who gained national attention after being expelled from the Tennessee state house for participating in an anti-gun violence protest, was the delegate selected to speak on behalf of his state’s delegation.
He, like Warnock, invoked the speaking style of a sermon to really get the crowd going.
“The movement for justice and love, rooted in Tennessee, is still strong,” Pearson said. “Because we believe that justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
Pearson and the other two members of the “Tennessee Three” who were expelled alongside him were scheduled to speak on Thursday night but were cut for time.
Harris billed herself as a warrior
Playing into the prosecutor vs felon angle, the DNC spent all four days portraying Harris as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor who would always stand up for people in need.
Since her first public address after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July, Harris highlighted that past.
"[I’ve fought] predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain," she said in July. "So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type."
Since then, the messaging has largely been the same, with Harris being made to be strong, justice-minded, and a protector, while DNC speakers framed Trump as caring solely about himself.
Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff even called Trump, and Republicans by proxy, “cowards” in his speech Tuesday.
“Cowards are weak, and Kamala Harris can smell weakness,” Emhoff said.
Democrats pitched a big tent
With Republicans like former Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger alloted primetime speaking slots, Democrats aimed to show off the “big tent” they have pitched this election season. Welcoming in anyone who dislikes Trump, speakers emphasized that being American and caring for this country and its future is still a major unifying factor.
“All across America in big cities and small towns away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there,” former President Obama said Tuesday night.
Patriotism also factored largely into this, with speakers emphasizing that love for this country is not reserved for a specific group or demographic.
“No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” former First Lady Michelle Obama said during her Tuesday remarks.
Democrats are hoping to recruit moderates and even Republican voters who dislike Trump to their cause and have now switched their messaging from what would excite their base to what would excite the median voter.
But that “big tent” didn’t include a Palestinian speaker despite the support of major figures like the United Auto Workers and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, garnering backlash from the uncommitted movement and progressives.
Harris sought to strike a balance in her stance on Gaza
On the subject of Israel’s war on Gaza, Harris toed the line during her acceptance speech, pledging to uphold the United States’ close relationship with Israel while also mentioning the “heartbreaking” suffering in Gaza.
Harris made it clear the U.S. would always support Israel’s right to defend itself and asserted that she would “ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” seemingly refusing to take up the left’s demand for an arms embargo against Israel.
But she also called for the Palestinian peoples’ right to freedom, dignity and self-determination, a line that yielded some of the loudest applause of her speech.
While Harris has shown herself as more sympathetic to the suffering of Palestinians, she has not differentiated her policy from Biden’s on an issue where many in her base would like to see change beyond sympathetic words.
Throughout the convention, the around 30-person uncommitted delegation lobbied for a speaking slot at the DNC, five minutes where a Palestinian American speaker could speak about their people, even staging a sit-in outside the United Center on Wednesday night, but the Harris campaign reportedly refused to accommodate their request.
Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American, was the name put up by the delegation, and she later posted the speech she would have given online.
“Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur,” Romman’s speech read. “Let’s fight for the policies long overdue — from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can — yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us — Black, brown and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.”
After having their demands rejected, the uncommitted delegates, who came to the DNC hoping Harris may give them a reason to support her, left unsatisfied. They represented more than 700,000 votes in the Democratic primaries, many in the key swing state of Michigan.
Democrats sold optimism for the future
The rallying cry of the DNC, over and over, was that if Harris and Walz are elected, a better future lies in wait.
While Michelle Obama’s commitment to “when they go low, we go high” seems to be a thing of the past as Democrats call Republicans “weird” and make suggestive jokes about “crowd size,” the party showed they still intend to lead with positivity over the fear mongering and negativity they said Republicans exhibit.
Project 2025, a set of policies drafted by the Heritage Foundation for Republicans to use if elected that include banning abortion nationwide and abolishing the Department of Education, has been a bogeyman the entire convention, with Democrats calling the ideas outdated and dangerous. It symbolizes, to them, the past that they are fighting against to bring America into the future.
“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz represent the new way forward,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said on Monday night. “We’re not going back.”
Annika Bereny is a Senior Staff Writer and the former Special Pages Editor for The Daily Cardinal. She has written in-depth for state and campus news. Follow her on Twitter at @annikabereny.
