CHICAGO — The 50-state ceremonial roll call got the second night of the Democratic National Convention rolling to a festive vibe, with Atlanta rapper Lil Jon providing the party with a viral moment in part due to the homophonic pun involving the vice presidential nominee’s name and the mildly explicit lyrics to the classic track “Get Low.”
I made my way out to the floor during Bernie Sanders’s remarks. The independent Vermont senator, like the president the prior night, has the tenor of an octogenarian shouting at people to get off his lawn.
But it seems like a different kind of lawn at one of Sanders’s proverbial three houses than the Biden family compound. In fact, Biden’s Rehoboth Beach vacation home reportedly has a $450,000 fence.
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In a true masterstroke of ironic booking, convention organizers followed up Sanders, a figure who has become almost synonymous with railing against the “billionaire class,” with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Pritzker, a beneficiary of even more inherited wealth than the Republican nominee and a potential vice presidential candidate, went on to claim that he was a real billionaire and Trump was not.
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Because in this context, the idea is that being a billionaire is a good thing, I suppose, and for Trump to be not a billionaire is a bad thing. And that’s like “bad” bad, not “bad” good.
After our “real” billionaire governor, I manage to work my way back behind the New York delegation in time for Doug Emhoff to begin speaking, and a member of the delegation playfully boos New Jersey’s shout-out in his speech.
Emhoff tells the story of becoming a lawyer (“with a little help from my dad”) and of leaving a rambling voicemail for Harris. He says she doesn’t tolerate any “BS” and talks about “that look” that she can give. That she will not be distracted by “nonsense.”
The Second Gentleman described Harris, with whom he is due to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary on Thursday, as a “joyful warrior,” a descriptor we heard time and time again this week.
But so far, this idea of being a warrior has not extended to a willingness to engage in any sort of rhetorical warfare in the form of taking tough questions from members of the press.
Meanwhile, her Republican opponent appears willing to go on any podcast, or livestream, with any actor or influencer. Even as former President Donald Trump castigates the Fake News Media, he is willing to stand behind a podium and take questions from anyone who asks on any topic, despite variable levels of cogency and veracity.
This contrast could not be sharper. As Harris has meticulously avoided having to answer questions from skeptical reporters until after the convention — questions like, “When did you change your position on this or that and why?” or even, “What is your position on this or that? Since your website lacks a ‘platform’ page, and generally looks more like Harris and Walz are running for county supervisor rather than the White House?”
But then again, the bet is that you do not have to go through the press to become president anymore. There’s took much content out there already anyway.
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The bet is that it’s better to get some organically shared memes. The Harris campaign is banking that no one cares what’s on its website. That no one cares if you don’t take a tough questions — like the ones at which Trump bristled when he faced at the NABJ convention in Chicago.
So the point of Tuesday’s speech from Emhoff was to humanize the vice president, who has yet to truly be defined in the public eye.
Hundreds of millions of dollars has been set aside on behalf of both campaigns with the intent of doing, so far without much extemporaneous speaking.
And so the second night of the convention headed into its main event, Barack and Michelle Obama. The hometown power couple, probably the highest compensated of the “content creators” the Harris campaign has working as its surrogates.
Michelle Obama had a powerful effect on the crowd.
“Pass the collection plate,” said a member of the New York delegation.
There was an unmistakable vibe in the room that this was the first person to have spoken at the convention so far who could have conceivably made a play to secure the nomination.
“If only she was running,” said another delegate, before being quickly shushed.
It was a line from Michelle Obama that drew perhaps the biggest reaction of the night: “Who’s going to tell (Trump) that the job that he is currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs?’”
The former First Lady hearkened back to her husband’s first campaign.
“Hope,” she said, “is making a comeback.”
Former President Barack Obama, after comparing Trump to a disruptive neighbor with a leaf blower, makes a hand gesture that is understood by most people in the room as a reference to Trump’s genitalia.
The former president then goes on to deliver a bit of reprise of the speech that made him famous two decades earlier, his depiction of “red” and “blue” states on behalf of Sen. John Kerry’s abortive attempt to stop President George W. Bush’s bid for reelection.
This time, there was a new villain. It’s not just politicians and “the media” that divides us. Now it’s also a mathematical concept — the algorithm — a shorthand for the widely reviled effect of social media and smartphones on society.
“We chase the approval of strangers on our phones; we build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves and then wonder why we feel so alone,” Barack Obama said.
“We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other — and in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other and troll each other and fear each other,” he said.
In effect, the Harris campaign is betting that it is better off trusting the algorithm and the content it serves the public than it is trusting the candidate with questions about her policies or positions.
Still too early to tell what impact the Harris campaign’s online outreach efforts will have, but it does look like the “creator lounge” has access to significantly better food than other conventiongoers.
Some of these people only have a few thousand followers, but maybe their content and the algorithm (a good one this time, not a bad one like Obama was talking about) is going to help make President Harris happen.
Earlier: DNC Day 1 Analysis: Dems Paint Picture Of Prosecutor Vs. Felon
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