It was the blockbuster of the summer, the one everyone had waited for, even though it might be objectively called a ‘rush job,’ taking only a month to produce. But when Vice President Kamala Harris strolled across the stage at Chicago’s United Center last Thursday night, judging by audience reaction, timing could not have been better. The reception, thunderous.
The last time a crowd at this arena was this raucous, ‘number 23’ was running the Bulls to another championship. This time, however, the cheers were for the woman they hope, on November 3rd, is christened ’number 47,’ as in 47th president of the United States.
The road to Chicago and the Democratic National Convention were not supposed to end this way, with a mixed race Black and Indian woman carrying the hopes of a party fatigued by an ex-president who refuses to stop tweeting about a ‘stolen election’ in his 2020 loss to Biden or painting daily portraits of dystopia.
President Joe Biden was supposed to be Thursday night’s keynote and the party’s nominee. Instead, he spoke Monday night, a man now relegated to the party’s past.
A mixed-race woman of immigrant stock named Kamala would instead, be the keynote and the blue party’s hopes and dreams.
The stars aligned for Democrats and especially for Harris. Instead of running as a number two with the President, she introduced herself—especially with her stirring convention speech—to the party and nation as a woman ready to lead.
The fabric of her speech was woven with personal reflections on a childhood forged by apragmatic but loving immigrant mother who filled her and a younger sister with strength, ambition, respect for others and commitment to excellence.
Included in Harris’s acceptance speech was a lifelong lesson passed down to the Harris girls by her mother. “Don’t do anything half-assed,” Harris said with a silky-smooth delivery. The six-word bromide ignited the United Center crowd.
A speaker who preceded Harris was Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a politician recently mentioned as a potential running mate and whose life was once threatened by Trump supporters. Whitmer praised Harris as someone “who gets us, she sees us, she is us.” In contrasting the ex-president with Harris, she said, it’s an easy choice. “Why wouldn’t we choose a leader who’s tough, tested, and a total ‘bad ass?’”
In the multi-ethnic, gender splitting and generation-spanning crowd for the DNC gala was a
smattering of Colorado Latinos, a number of whom were veterans of these every-four-year gatherings. Colorado’s delegation included state Democratic political icon, Polly Baca, who has been attending DNC gatherings since 1964. Also there were former Denver City Council president Ramona Martinez and Colorado’s first Latina Speaker of the House, Crisanta Duran.
Unlike the RNC gathering a few weeks before where the crowd was nearly ethnically monochromatic, a simple pan of the United Center crowd reflected the ethnic smorgasbord that is 21st century America. Its iteration is literally a changing of the guard.
“It was overwhelming,” gushed Trinidad Democrat and party veteran Pam Espinoza. Harris, she said, “was not only our second woman to be nominated for the position of president but our first woman of color.” The spirit of 2024, she said, made up for the feelings she had just eight years ago when a New York television star shocked the nation winning the presidency.
Espinoza remembered the 2016 morning after. The Trinidad woman said she “could barely get out of bed,” she was so heartbroken. “We had lost our opportunity to break through the glass ceiling.”
But it was another Black woman who wowed Grand Junction delegate Maria Cisneros Keenan. “Michelle Obama’s speech was amazing,” Keenan said. “But every woman who spoke lifted up the Democrats.”
The former First Lady’s Wednesday night speech soared, generating excitement throughout the 21,000-seat arena. She found a way to inspire the crowd with uplifting rhetoric while at the same time also weaving in a few zingers aimed directly at her husband’s successor.
Turning the tables on Trump who recently complained that new immigrants were taking away ‘Black jobs,’ she deftly flipped the script. Trump, she said, is feeling “threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” before adding, “Who’s gonna tell him that one of those Black jobs he’s seeking just might be one of those ‘Black’ jobs?’”
Mrs. Obama’s speech ignited an extended standing ovation and prompted the speaker following her to humorously apologize for happening to be the following act. That, of course, was President Obama who delivered his own four-star address.
The DNC was an array of top-level politicians, including former presidents, secretaries of state, pop culture icons and one inspiring NBA champion player and coach recently back from winning a gold medal in Paris—Steve Kerr. Also mixed in was a diverse slice of former Republicans, including high level state elected officials, Congress members and White House staffers.
Former Republican Congressman and January 6th Committee member Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Lieutenant Geoff Duncan, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham and former National Security expert Olivia Troy all spoke at the Chicago convention urging fellow Republicans to vote for Harris.
Former Republican Georgia Lieutenant Duncan bluntly called Trump “a direct threat to democracy.” Kinzinger, who has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics and who voted to impeach the former president, told the audience he “never expected to be here.” But his presence, he said, was patriotism not political. “I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party,” the former Republican House member said. “The Democrats are as patriotic as us.”
Each night of the DNC event featured familiar faces and deeply impacting messages, none of which was the one delivered by Golden State coach Kerr. “As soon as I was asked (to speak) that it was too important as an American citizen not to speak up in an election of this magnitude.” Kerr has been as outspoken about politics and social issues as any celebrity or athlete. His own father, Malcolm, was kidnapped and assassinated in 1985 while he taught at Iran’s American University.
The election, set for November 3rd, is slightly more than two months away. Anything can happen to alter the state of events. But in just a matter of five weeks when President Biden bowed out and endorsed his Vice President, polls that once showed only gloom and doom for Democrats have tilted and states once thought in-the-bag for Trump now appear to be too close to call.
While money is said to be ‘the mother’s milk of politics,’ momentum, which has swung mightily to the left and generated an excitement both unexpected and tangible, is not far behind.
