Something extraordinary happened this week. After an extended campaign in which the GOP nominee has consistently told Americans that our country is a trash heap, Democrats became the party of America. And no, not the Ward and June Cleaver America of yesteryear that Donnie Doom keeps promising to restore; the America of tomorrow, as rich and textured as the reaches of our infinite roots around the globe.
At the DNC, the notion that America is exceptional lept from the stage repeatedly.
“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great,” Michelle Obama warned, “Because this, right now, is the greatest country on earth.”
An impassioned Joe Biden charged, "We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line! Don’t forget it!"
And President Obama’s entire speech was a dedication to the country he’s come to love as president. “The America I know is full of courage and optimism and ingenuity,” he said. “America is already great.”
Meanwhile on the Republican campaign trail:
Really, folks, what is going on here?! The GOP is in the midst of a full-scale rejection of who we are as a nation. In fact, part of what made the week so extraordinary was that it began to attach a different set of values to American patriotism.
So often we’ve seen politicians celebrate our fierce independence and extoll the virtues of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. But this week the Democrats pushed forward an uncompromising vision of diversity—diversity in the classic sense but also of thought, experience, and even ideology—and declared us “Stronger Together.”
“It's not just a slogan for our campaign,” Hillary Clinton told attendees. “It's a guiding principle for the country we've always been and the future we're going to build.”
And so it went. While the “Mothers of the Movement” for Black Lives provided one of the most powerful images of Night Two, the family members of slain police officers were equally as moving Thursday.
Former Jeb Bush supporter Jennifer Pierotti Lim of Republican Women for Hillary took the stage and called Trump’s “loathsome comments” about women “too important to ignore.”
Immigrant Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Florent “Flo” Groberg, who threw himself on a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, said, “I am here to remind you […] that your military protects you with their lives.” And retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen—straight from GOP central casting and flanked by a battalion of retired service members—issued a rousing call to action.
"To our allies and to our friends and partners, listen closely, we are with you, America will not abandon you," Allen said. “And to our enemies, to our enemies, we will pursue you as only America can. You will fear us. And to ISIS and others, we will defeat you!"
“USA! USA!” chants swept the crowd while the twitter verse found itself uniquely inspired.
In fact, national security wound up providing one of the most profound moments of the week when the father of a Muslim soldier who died in combat in 2004 gave Donald Trump a lesson in patriotism.
“Our son, Humayun, had dreams too, of being a military lawyer,” explained Khizr Khan, “but he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son 'the best of America'. If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America.”
Khan thrust a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution into the air and addressed Trump directly: “Let me ask you: have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.”
It was nothing short of extraordinary—even after suffering constant attacks on his faith and character by the GOP nominee, Khan wielded the foundational document of our country as his sword. (A similarly grieving parent at the RNC, egged on by chants of “Lock her up!” asserted on stage that Hillary “deserves to be in stripes.”)
As Khan anchored his criticism of Trump in the Constitution, the GOP nominee held a rally in Iowa where he endorsed waterboarding and lampooned Obama for ending the interrogation practice.
During her acceptance speech Thursday night, Hillary Clinton would tell the crowd, here’s “what Donald Trump doesn't get: that America is great – because America is good.”
After Democrats embraced diversity, declared itself the party of working people, championed national security, denounced our enemies, reinforced American exceptionalism, and proclaimed it was Morning in America (not really, but close enough), Republicans had nothing left other than fear and loathing.
“Well done, @realDonaldTrump. You made Democrats a party of sunny patriotism and values,” tweeted conservative writer Ron Fournier.
“Why this convention is better: It's about loving America,” the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg observed.
“How can it be that I am standing at my kitchen counter sobbing because of the messages being driven at the DNC?” lamented former Cheney press secretary Rich Galen. “Where has the GOP gone?”