The official nomination of Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate provided the main event of day two of the Democratic Party’s national convention—without the candidate even being present.
Harris chose, instead, to attend a rally in Milwaukee while delegations from every state and U.S. territory reported their votes for her as the party’s presidential candidate. With rare exceptions of ‘present’ votes, the state delegations overwhelmingly voted for Harris and her vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.
The roll call was followed by a brief, unscheduled appearance by Kamala Harris from the event in Milwaukee. Enthusiastic delegates will however have to wait to hear her acceptance speech til Thursday.
The coronation of the candidate, preceded by speeches from two former Trump supporters and two grandsons of former Democrat presidents, was followed by a lineup of various and sundry politicians and celebrities. While different in style and substance, the speakers had one thing in common: Their disdain for Harris’ Republican counterpart and the seemingly unending praise for the Democratic candidate.
In a short address following Harris’s quick appearance, TV host Ana Navarro, who defines herself as a Republican, compared Donald Trump to communist dictators. Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, had as his most salient point that Kamala Harris, should she be elected president, will need a Democrat majority in the Senate to support her.
Another U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders from Vermont, took the stage with a reminder to the convention delegates of the state of the nation in January 2021, as he saw it. He recounted the policy measures that, he explained, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and a Democrat majority in Congress implemented in response to the pandemic economic shutdown.
He summarized his ideological remarks with the comment that 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, while the very wealthy have “never had it so good.” In response to what he perceives as vast income inequalities, Sen. Sanders presented a long list of new or expanded welfare state entitlements that he called for to be passed under a Harris presidency.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, following Sanders, painted a compare-and-contrast picture between his own achievements as governor and Trump’s policies while in his first presidential term. Without any specifics, he presented the Democrats’ presidential ticket as a promise of “serenity” while portraying Trump as its antithesis.
Next, Kenneth Chenault, former CEO of American Express, presented Kamala Harris as a president who would help businesses thrive. He echoed similar points presented by earlier speakers—though with less emphasis—that a Democrat president is a promise for a stronger private sector and tax cuts for lower-income families.
Republican Mayor of Mesa, AZ, John Giles admitted he felt a bit out of place in a Democrat convention. He called for Americans to “put country before party” in the spirit of the late Senator John McCain. According to Mayor Giles, the Republican party of Senator McCain was closer to what the Democrat party is today than what it is under Donald Trump.
Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Senator from Illinois, explained that her two daughters would never have been born without access to in-vitro fertilization, IVF. She repeated a point made by several other speakers, namely that a President Trump would ban IVF just like he allegedly would ban abortion—a statement Harris previously made on social media, and Trump rebutted. The IVF issue has been front and center after VP candidate Walz on the campaign trail repeatedly referred to his and his wife’s struggles with infertility, warning that, as president, Trump would restrict access to IVF. Walz’s wife later had to clarify that while they had indeed used infertility treatments to conceive, IVF was not one of them.
Ironically, while massively supportive of infertility treatment, the DNC is equally committed to population control through ‘reproductive freedom’—including having Planned Parenthood provide free vasectomies and abortion pills outside the convention, and bringing a massive inflatable version of a intrauterine device (IUD) that they’ve even given a name: “Freeda Womb.”
Trump has expressed his support for IVF treatments and on Monday, he repeated in an interview with CBS News in no uncertain terms that, as president, he would not ban the cross-state delivery of abortion pills. “The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue,” he said.
Speeches were interspersed with celebratory videos. One outlined the components of Harris’s ‘opportunity economy’—a summary of her economic plan, which she presented in a speech on Friday, August 16th, while another recounted her career as a District Attorney and Attorney General in California, pushing the idea that Harris really is tough on crime.
To round off the evening, former First Lady Michelle Obama called on America to “vanquish the demons of hate” and proclaimed that “hope” is back. The word “hope” was the theme of the campaign that got her husband elected president in 2008. Ms. Obama tied her vision of hope to a recount of her mother’s life story as a poor woman who inspired her daughter to strive for a better life. She then explained that Kamala Harris shared the same “belief in the promise of this country” as Ms. Obama’s mother.
While the Obamas were late in putting their political heft behind Harris as candidate, no hesitation or limits to their support could be detected at the convention. When former President Obama took the stage, his speech made frequent refernce to his past campaigns, with his recycled “Yes we can” chant resurfacing as “Yes she can.”
The convention continues Wednesday, with the theme of the day being “A Fight for our Freedoms.”
