The Democratic Unconventional: Opening Night

It's an unconventional format for an unhinged year.  Instead of a sweaty convention, it's a minimalist TV show.  But so far so good.

Republican John Kasich demonstrating America at
the crossroads 

The opening night theme (though the DNC didn't state it this way) was unity, as in the United States, bringing ex- and current Republicans together with America's most lovable socialist, plus a number of the Dem primary candidates, and an array of citizens--from the Dem coalition to disillusioned Trumpers--to endorse Joe Biden for President, to bring the country together and essentially save our form of government--and in a real sense, the United States itself.

George Floyd's brothers spoke in an video 

The obvious star of the evening was Michelle Obama.  She previously showed a mastery of the public speech, relating to the voters in the living room and the throngs on the conventional floor.  But pretaped weeks ago alone in a silent room, she was the absolute master of the camera connection.  In a serious but conversational tone, her eyes never wavering from the camera--from our watching eyes--except in the kind of gesture familiar to a one-on-one conversation, she made direct contact in a way I've seldom seen before.  Even Barack's eyes dart to the transparent side panels or to the page.

Her speech was at once universal and specific to Black viewers. She was both the distraught TV viewer of shootings, mask hysteria, demonstrations under attack, and (as Joy Reid commented) the Black woman on the block organizing voters to go to the polls.  She deployed familiar rhetoric--perhaps more potent this year than in 2016--but she was more direct than ever in saying why Trump must be defeated.  And she didn't spare those in her audience who stayed home in 2016--she told them they were responsible for letting this happen.  She spoke about the need for empathy, and empathy as the basis of society.  But she also said that empathy is not just a feeling, it is action.

Kristin Uruiza

There were memorable lines, which will be quoted at least until Tuesday night: the most potent pronounced by Kristin Urquiza, a young woman whose father died of covid:“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”  

But the moments that stood out for me were images and impressions.  I noted that the speakers who endorsed Biden--including the Republicans--endorsed him personally, as a decent, compassionate and able man.  They said he listens.

The montage of comments by some of his primary rivals were cheerful and affectionate.  Cory Booker spoke of his surprise, standing next to Biden on a debate stage just after Booker had taken issue with him, that during a commercial break, Biden gave him a "pep talk" and told him how important it was that he was on that stage.

Every candidate gets at least one warm and fuzzy video, but Monday's was unique: it was about Biden's relationships with the people who worked on the trains that he had taken every day between Washington and Wilmington, between his Senate workplace and his home.  He talked to them, listened to them, knew about their lives.  When one railroad employee was recovering from a heart attack, Vice President Biden called him to ask how he was doing.

That moment meshed with the images that stood out for me, in several video compilations, one of them to Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising."  The images that flashed by without comment told the story of the past few years, especially just these past several months, from the demonstrations and the attack on Lafayette Park, to the detention camps for asylum seekers,  to health care workers and others on the front lines of the covid crisis.  The most potent were such scenes as a family holding up a baby for a very old woman to see, as she stood alone at the small window of her quarantined room, and another family gathered under such an institutional window with a 100th birthday cake for the elder within.

I think of these, and the scenes of the isolated dying in hospitals, and of individuals who have died of covid (I suspect we'll see more of those), as they connect to Trump statement about covid deaths--"it is what it is"-- that Michelle Obama shaded. That was the awful difference--and the moral distance--that this opening night drew, between empathy in action, and the cold and corrupt it is what it is.