For Democrats, a Big Cast Change Plays Out Onstage
The first night of the convention introduced the party’s new protagonist, and gave the old one a curtain call.
“Notice anything different?
The organizers of the Democratic National Convention hope you did. Less than a month ago, the party upended the election when President Biden withdrew from the campaign, and Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee. Suddenly, the previously scheduled rerun of the 2020 election, tuned out by many weary voters, was new programming, with a new cast.
The first night of the convention wasted little time unveiling its new star — even as it also had to finish off the last one’s story arc.
Early in the evening, Ms. Harris made a surprise appearance onstage in Chicago to her campaign anthem, BeyoncĂ©’s “Freedom.” The crowd of delegates exploded with cheers.
This was an energy that the party had been missing for a while, and the prime-time production was designed to flaunt it. Ms. Harris’s kickoff remarks were brief —“We are moving forward!” — but there was a showmanship to the moment that suggested that the candidate plans to take the fight to Donald Trump where he lives, in the TV lights.
If Ms. Harris’s unexpected cameo had a measure of Mr. Trump’s theatricality, however, it had a different energy: expansive and effusive rather than brassy and bold. Beaming and waving to the crowd in a camel-colored suit, she reflected the room’s energy back to it rather than basking in it and soaking it up.
This was a big change from the convention Democrats anticipated having just weeks ago, under the tentative, 81-year-old Mr. Biden. The slogans onstage — “For the People, For the Future” — emphasized the message of newness.
The night had the feeling of a high-profile new brand launch: We’ve listened to your feedback, America, and we’ve updated our product for the tastes of today! The networks’ coverage seemed to pick up the theme of energy and rejuvenation; we saw multiple interviews with a group of young delegates from Washington dressed in “Cowboy Kamala” outfits.
The City of Big Shoulders was, for the night, the City of Big Vibes.
The speaker lineup, too, put heavy emphasis on the party’s newer talents, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive superstar representative from New York; Jasmine Crockett, a freshman representative from Texas; and Raphael Warnock, elected senator from Georgia in 2021. Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan state senator who gave a viral speech on L.G.B.T.Q. rights in 2022, got the prop of the night, brandishing a comically oversized copy of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s book “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” to warn about the presidential blueprint Project 2025.
There was, however, was still some old business yet to attend to. Ms. Harris’s convention, to borrow a meme, still exists in the context of all that came before it — in this case, the two previous Democrats to run against Mr. Trump.
Hillary Clinton, whose convention in 2016 featured the special effect of her image smashing a virtual glass ceiling, made the case for electing the first woman president, an angle that Ms. Harris has resisted emphasizing. Mrs. Clinton placed Ms. Harris in a line of political women that included Shirley Chisholm and the suffragists. (She referenced the dramatic passage of the 19th Amendment, a scene dramatized in the musical “Suffs,” which she produced.) She also wryly drew a parallel to herself. Mr. Trump, she said of Ms. Harris, was “mocking her name and her laugh. Sounds familiar.”
But the most challenging piece of political staging came last: having President Biden give a valediction and an endorsement of his vice president in a race that he had been pressured to leave. The night’s climax had to convey both celebration of Mr. Biden’s first term and excitement at the fact that he wasn’t seeking a second; it needed to be the kind of sad that leaves you with a smile on your face, not a pit in your stomach.
Mr. Biden took the stage after a warm introduction by his daughter Ashley Biden, pulling out a handkerchief to dab away a tear. His address was in the shouty, fierce style of his more effective recent speeches, a marked contrast to the happy-warrior style that Ms. Harris has already made her campaign’s hallmark. But there were moments of emotion too, as he faced the sudden end of a long career: “America, I gave my best to you.”
In the room, at least, the speech seemed to go over, if not without some dissonance. Nancy Pelosi, a key figure in pressuring Mr. Biden to leave the race, was on camera hoisting a “We [Heart] Joe” sign. Meanwhile, Fox News commentators became Mr. Biden’s most ardent sympathizers. “Poor Joe unfortunately was kicked to the curb in a political coup,” said Sean Hannity.
Cramming together past and future, anticipation and commemoration, takes a lot of time, however. The program, stuffed with speakers and behind schedule, ran so late that Mr. Biden didn’t take the stage until well after prime-time in the Eastern time zone. Not that he seemed in a rush to leave.
But with Ms. Harris embracing him at the end of his farewell, the cast change was complete. She has three more nights to make the show her own.
James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics“
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