The Democrats in the first two days of their convention manufactured news. But I think it is important to understand that it wasn’t propaganda or an infomercial, as many overly cynical academics and commentators would suggest, from Noam Chomsky to Joe Nocera. Rather, like the Republican Convention last week, it was a modern day media event, a televisual combination of demonstration and manifesto, revealing, or as my friend and colleague Daniel Dayan would put it “monstrating,” where the party stands, who stands with the party, how it accounts for the past, present and future. The first two days were particularly about the past and the present, identifying the party. Today, Obama will chart the future. This, at least, is how I understand the storyline. We will know, soon enough, if I am right.
The structure of the presentation, thus far, has been interesting and informative. There was a clear understanding on the part of the convention planners. Before 10:00 PM, without the major networks broadcasting, with a much smaller audience watching, was the demonstration slot. It was the time for showing the stand of the party and demonstrating who stands behind it. Between 10:00 and 11:00 PM, with the full prime time audience watching, the manifesto was presented by the major speakers: on Tuesday, Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio and First Lady Michelle Obama, on Wednesday, Massachusetts Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, and former President Bill Clinton.
The coherence of the Democrats’ presentation was striking. This contrasted with the Republican convention, in which candidate and platform were in tension, and the personal qualities and not the political plans of the candidate took priority, and the speeches didn’t add up. The worst of it was Eastwood’s performance piece. It represented accurately the state of the party, with its pure ideological commitments and tensions, as I have already discussed here earlier during the primary season.
The Democrats revealed some differences of opinion, in symbolic floor scuffle on God and Jerusalem (pandering nonsense it seems to me), and also as the more left of center Warren gave a full throated critique of Wall Street, while Clinton more explicitly and softly appealed to the center (see video below). Yet the party was clearly united in its support of Obama and its recognition of his first term achievements, expressing its unity and diversity in the speeches in their embodied words.
Two examples, not given much attention, politically clear, elegantly presented:
Jared Polis, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Colorado –
My name is Jared Polis. My great-grandparents were immigrants. I am Jewish. I am gay. I am a father. I am a son. I am an entrepreneur. I am a congressman from Colorado. I am always an optimist. But first and foremost, I am an American.
And the America I believe in is the America Barack Obama believes in.
A severely wounded Iraq veteran, “one of the first Army women to fly combat missions in Iraq,” Tammy Duckworth, candidate for the US House of Representatives, Illinois, walked up to the podium on two prosthetic legs. She described how she grew up in the family of an impoverished Vietnam veteran, and explained how her family managed and she advanced herself through food stamps, public education and Pell grants. This enabled her to finish high school and college, going on to earn her command of a Blackhawk helicopter company. She testified to her work with President Obama.
President Obama asked me to help keep our sacred trust with veterans of all eras at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. We worked to end the outrage of vets having to sleep on the same streets they once defended. We improved services for female veterans. I reached out to young vets by creating the Office for Online Communications.
Barack Obama has also lived up to his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, ending the war in Iraq, refocusing on Afghanistan and eradicating terrorist leaders including bin Laden. President Obama pushed for fairness in the military, listening to commanders as we ended “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and on how to allow women to officially serve in more combat jobs—because America’s daughters are just as capable of defending liberty as her sons.
And there were many more speeches that fit a pattern which I think is of crucial importance. Each testified not only to their political support of the President, but also to the crucial difference between the major themes of the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican: Government can and has been a part of the solution, not the primary problem.
On women’s rights this was expressed most directly by Cecile Richards, Lilly Ledbetter, and Sandra Fluke. Each spoke about their specific experience, highlighted the principles they drew from the experience and indicated how this points in the direction of appreciating the achievement and promise of President Obama. Experience, not abstract ideological commitment, illuminated the political approach.
Thus, the remarkable elegance of Michelle Obama’s speech. It had an apparently traditional approach, too traditional for some of my friends. The wife of the President spoke to his human side, about her concerns for their family as he decided to run, and about her conviction that their decision to proceed on this course was good for them and good for the nation. She testified to the quality of his character, as Ann Romney testified to the quality of her husband. But Mrs. Obama went further. His political project, and her support of it, emerges from their experience and what they have in common with their fellow citizens. The First Lady, and many of the other speakers at the convention, gave substance to the classic feminist slogan: the personal is political.
This was beautifully revealed as well the keynote address by Julián Castro. He poignantly expressed his version of the Barack Obama rendering of the American dream and the American experience (the high note of Obama’s keynote address), in Castro’s case as experienced by a Mexican American: hard work, support of family, government help, including support for education, with aid from and given to community, and, thus, out of many, the singular American success story. Benita Veliz testified to this Latin American variation on the American dream, by illuminating how it is experienced by those who for no fault of their own came to the country undocumented. Congressman Luis Gutierrez applauded the President for his approach to immigration in stark contrast to Mitt Romney and his policy of “self deportation.”
President Clinton brought these strands and others together in a remarkable speech last night. If you haven’t yet, it is worth viewing in full. In form and content, it is a masterpiece. His focus mirrored the deep concerns of the American public about the state of the economy, as he argued that President Obama has been successful in addressing the crisis and also succeeded in foreign policy and addressing many other issues (the speech was long). Clinton’s criticism of Romney – Ryan and the Republicans was forceful but presented with humor. He considered the contrast. He combined analysis of policy detail, with warm humorous affect and passionate commitment.
This afternoon the media chatter is that the President is going to have a hard time distinguishing himself, as he speaks this evening in the shadows of the former President and his wife, both of whom have higher approval ratings than he. My guess is that the President Obama will conclude the convention with a passionate statement concerning his plans and expectations for the second term, drawing on the power of the previous speakers, Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama, but also the many others. If he does, he will not only have greatly strengthened his chances for his re-election, but conclude a convention that in sum has communicated where the Democrats stand, who they are and what they plan to do. The news from Charlotte was manufactured, but it still was important.
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