VP Harris promises to deliver at the Convention, voters will pay attention to the message we Democrats send in Chicago
The last week has been a whirlwind.
(Heck, I even wrote my first diary in years.)
That huge, heaving, creaking sound you’re hearing way well be the worn La-Z-Boys of our collective assumptions being forced to twist and pivot by events and actors that seem to be reshaping the political playing field before our eyes.
Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party have reset the conventional wisdom. The party’s base is now rallying to support the Vice President as if she were the beloved figure we’ve been pining for and following closely for years.
That’s no small feat, but it’s also no accident.
Given that, it’s worth looking at our easy assumptions, how they’ve been forced to change, and then look down the road at how the playing field might change even further in the days and weeks to come.
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This day was a long time coming, but, in fact, the foundations for the last few days were laid long ago.
Conventional wisdom might have made us doubt Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, or even our commitment to follow the leadership of a woman a few short weeks ago.
However, contrary to what this C/W might have led us to assume about Joe and Kamala, we’ve done this before.
This is not new territory:
- We returned Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House in 2018 demonstrating the collective power of women as grassroots organizers and placing a woman at the very top of party leadership. (She’s still there, btw.)
- As a party, after a series of debates and primaries with a multi-focal dynamic, we rapidly coalesced behind Joe Biden in 2020 showing our pragmatism and unity. We united then, like we are uniting now.
- Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his VP knowing full well she would likely succeed him. His choice made this moment possible. We should never forget this.
- Speaker Pelosi, and I don’t think gets enough credit, then voluntarily ceded her leadership post in 2023, and Hakeem Jeffries rallied House Democrats to succeed her as House Minority Leader in the New Congress. This set a new standard for our party.
- President Biden then completed the circle, very much at Pelosi’s bidding, by ceding his own claim to seek a second term while bringing to the fore his endorsement of Kamala Harris to lead the entire Party.
We are now poised to run a convention behind Kamala Harris as our nominee and a pick a VP to seize this moment and the political momentum in the 2024 campaign.
Have Democratic Presidential tickets pivoted quickly in a time of uncertainty to run hopeful, inclusive, optimistic conventions that play to our strengths and values as a party?
Clinton/Gore ‘92 and Obama/Biden ‘08 wrote the playbook for exactly such a scenario. This is not new, either.
So, can Democrats unite? Hell yes.
Do we center women as organizers and leaders of our party? Hell yes.
Can Democrats let go of power voluntarily and pass the torch? Yes, and yes.
Are we a coalition party in which the best and brightest leaders and ideas compete and emerge to help move us all forward? Most definitely.
Do we have a playbook to run a great convention on short notice? Yes.
The conventional wisdom, as recently as two weeks ago was that we were toast, Biden would lose, Trump was ascendant, and there would be no accountability at the ballot box for Trump, for the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade (and the draconian, abhorrent laws that have followed in its wake), for the circus that has been the GOP House, for the evil blueprints of Project 2025, or for the insurrection that was January 6, 2021. There would be no option for voters to endorse our agenda, our values, or our vision.
Except, we as a party were exceptionally ready to pivot. In fact, we’d laid the foundation already.
And we pivoted to Kamala.
Let’s look forward for a second and look at what else we might have in store.
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VP
What’s most important about the VP pick right now are two things:
First, and this is something we have no control over, it has to be a choice that Harris, as a leader, is 100% happy and on board with. Leadership and partnership, in this case, is more important than convenience.
Second, in addition to being pragmatic, the “vibe” of the ticket has to send the right message: unity, energy, inclusiveness, and a commitment to communicating our platform to all 50 states. This is crucial. Especially with such a short time frame.
In my view, there’s absolutely zero reason that a woman VP pick could not meet those two criteria. There’s also zero reason why the VP pick would “have to” be a white man or have “military experience” or “should not” include a pick who is gay, or Jewish, or from a Red State, or currently hold elected office, etc.
The next VP nominee might well be a white man. Or they might not be.
We will know it when we see it. We can only hope the above two criteria are met.
Like so many things in history, conventional wisdom says something is true, until events and the facts prove otherwise. Our job, as activists is to help make something new, possible.
We’ve done it before. We can do it again in 2024.
Convention
As I mentioned above, we need 1992 and 2008 energy.
But beyond that, we should look beyond the too easy interaction between the press and our base; we should not allow ourselves to think that our 2024 convention is only about rallying our base, or getting glowing reviews, or reconfirming our opposition to Trump.
We have the voters attention.
We must not squander it in Chicago.
The voters, not ourselves, not the pundits, are the one and true audience of our 2024 convention.
Our message, despite what anyone might say, needs to aimed squarely at the coalition that can deliver us victory. We need to give a clear rationale directly to the voters who will make the margin of our victory on election night.
At the end of our convention we need our voters, whatever party they identify with, to be able to answer one question:
Why is it important for me, for my family, and for my community to vote Democratic in this election? What will I get out of a Democratic victory?
We need to reach those voters and make them feel spoken to and listened to. That’s what we need from our Convention in 2024.
Policy Positions
Clearly enunciating who we are and what we stand for is essential for us to win. This is the core why Joe Biden had to step aside. He simply could no longer successfully communicate this to the public.
But this hides another, equally essential reality.
Clearly enunciating our positions is just as important if we go on to lose.
The painful impact of losing at the ballot box is compounded if voters don’t know the clear choice they just made.
In retrospect, the fact that Hillary Clinton had spelled out, in minute detail, the cost of a Trump presidency, allowed us to coalesce and organize voters immediately when that tragedy happened.
However, also in retrospect, the failure of our 2016 campaign to spell out what was in it for voters if they supported our ticket in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, may well be why a crucial few votes in those states tilted the election to the popular vote loser, Donald Trump.
When Vice President Harris says, “Let me be clear” we should all magnify and celebrate her warnings and, more importantly, the Democratic priorities she and our Party are communicating to the voters.
Our Bubble
We need to get out of our bubble.
The first step in getting out of our bubble is accepting that it exists.
For some, our bubble is spelled MSNBC. For others, it is spelled dailykos.com. For many of us, it is the companionship and camaraderie of “people just like us.”
For many of us, the progressive assumptions we make, the media we consume, the positions we spout, are like breathing. It’s like confirmation bias 24h a day.
But the sober reality is that parties that live in even the most spectacular bubbles don’t win elections in the real world.
According to the latest polls, Kamala Harris now has a commanding national advantage among voters under 40.
The truism that we assumed in 2016, the ad nauseam debates we had about talking to grumpy uncles and conservative aunts and “voters in diners” may never have been 100% true when it came to defeating Trump, but the landscape is certainly different now.
There’s a whole new universe of voters, and some of them are moving towards us.
So, we need to be fact based. Follow the data. And we need to listen to, not just talk to, voters.
This, like all of the above, is nothing new. It’s how Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won in 2020.
But we are going to have to reinvent the formula for a new political landscape four short years later; and we can’t do that if all we do is the same thing we’ve done for the last twenty years.
The Obama formula
The Obama formula was to go “over the top” with a crystal clear message.
But the Obama formula was also to go “through the grass roots.”
Both are important.
However, we are the grass roots. Our postcards, our GOTV, our activism, our phone calls, our texts, and our donations are our part of a 2024 victory.
That’s why signing up to volunteer for Kamala Harris or your local Democratic Party is so important right now.
“The most important election of our lifetime”
This truism is always true.
In case you haven’t noticed.
But what’s also true is that what we do, even the small stuff, is important. Not just for this election, but for elections yet to come.
And that’s always true, too.
And the reason that’s important is that we may not win this election, despite it being so important.
And if that happens what will matter is what we said, and how we organized, and who we built our coalition with; because what we do matters and what we say matters, and who we organize with is crucial win or lose.
That’s a good thing.
It’s the power of NOW, and, there’s no time like the present.
Sometimes the conventional wisdom is simply true.
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