CHICAGO — The Democratic National Convention came to a euphoric close on Thursday as Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president, leaving delegates from the Inland Northwest feeling confident as they gear up for the final stretch of an election they don’t expect to be easy.
In a speech defined by positivity, Harris rallied her party while repeating the convention’s themes of personal freedom, decency and a vision for the United States that welcomes Americans of all stripes who want the country to move past her GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump.
“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past,” Harris said. “A chance to chart a new way forward, not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, said just before Harris took the stage that the convention had struck the right tone.
“People were asking about how they were going to talk about an agenda and setting forth policy, and I think they’re grounding it in the right way,” Conrad said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, but also we can have these moments where we’re celebrating.”
The convention focused less on detailed policy proposals than on values and themes that Democrats hope will appeal to independents and even some Republicans who are ready to move on from Trump.
“I don’t care if you’re Republican, independent or Democrat,” said Andrew Mark Carlos, a delegate from Spokane. “If you want to come work with us, you’re welcome. This table is huge.”
Unlike the campaign of President Joe Biden, who was the party’s candidate a mere month earlier, Harris has run a forward-looking campaign around the idea of freedom, soundtracked by Beyoncé’s song of the same name. The convention served as a passing of the torch to a new generation of Democrats, not only from Biden to Harris, but from party stalwarts like Bill and Hillary Clinton to dozens of younger politicians.
In contrast with a Republican National Convention a month earlier defined by loyalty to one man, former President Donald Trump, and grim warnings that Democrats want to “destroy” America, the Democrats emphasized their deep bench and unity across the ideological spectrum.
Progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York took the stage next to conservatives like Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who hope to return to a post-Trump GOP. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who left Congress after voting to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riot, was given a prime speaking slot Thursday night.
While Republicans treated their convention like an early victory party, confident that they were on a glide path to victory, Democrats portrayed themselves as confident underdogs.
On the gathering’s first day, Hillary Clinton, who in 2016 fell short of breaking the glass ceiling Harris now aims to shatter, said “the future is here.” Then Biden took the stage to say what seemed to be a somewhat reluctant goodbye, rehashing many of his own campaign talking points while endorsing Harris to succeed him. But an outpouring of gratitude for the outgoing president eased what has at times been an awkward transition.
On Tuesday, a raucous roll call to formally nominate Harris — soundtracked by Lil Jon performing “Turn Down for What” — energized Democrats who just a month earlier were despondent over their party’s chances against Trump. Then former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama passed their hopeful torch to Harris, casting Biden as an honorable man who held Trump at bay for four years.
On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton pointed out that even though he had just turned 78, he was still younger than Trump. Even if it went unsaid, that only served to underscore the fact that Biden — who until a month earlier was trying to run again despite the growing objections of his fellow Democrats — is three years older than Clinton, who entered the White House nearly three decades before him.
“I love seeing all these young leaders,” Bill Clinton said, before praising Biden. “They look better, they sound better and they’ll be exciting.”
Conrad said the energy and enthusiasm from Democrats is like nothing she has ever experienced. The closest parallel, she said, was Barack Obama’s first campaign.
Carlos, 35, agreed that Harris’ candidacy made him feel something he hadn’t felt since Obama was running in 2008.
“It was like I was a kid again,” Carlos said. “Just like Michelle said, hope is back. It’s the renewal of hope in our country.”
Conrad, who is the first woman of South Asian origin to lead any state’s Democratic Party, said the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy is obvious to voters. Rather than emphasizing the fact that she would be the nation’s first female president, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Conrad said Harris has run a savvy campaign based on what Americans have in common.
Another lesson Conrad said Democrats have learned from 2016 — when Michelle Obama counseled her party to turn the other cheek with the motto, “When they go low, we go high” — is that they need to respond to Trump’s accusations, even while they strive to stay civil.
“What I’m seeing now, in this switch to the Harris campaign, is like, no, you have to punch ‘em in the nose,” Conrad said. “You have to fight back.”
Democrats have also tried to shed the image of being the party of elite, highly educated city dwellers. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Harris’ running mate, had been an avatar of rural, regular-guy relatability.
“Well, we definitely can’t be hit with ‘those damn elites’ anymore, because they definitely don’t come from money,” Michaela Kelso, an Army veteran from Chattaroy who is running to represent Washington’s 6th legislative district in Spokane County, said of Harris and Walz.
For many Democrats, the prospect of a Harris presidency above all represents the continuation of some of the Biden administration’s policies, albeit with a better messenger leading the party.
Jenny Slagle, a Spokane School Board member who is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation, said the Biden administration has made important progress for tribes and Native people, including a respecting tribal sovereignty and establishing a task force — led by the nation’s first Indigenous interior secretary, Deb Haaland, who spoke Thursday — to investigate and atone for the harm done by boarding schools set up by the U.S. government.
“They’ve taken so much action and put things in place in the last four years that I just don’t want to see undone,” Slagle said. “I think we need to keep moving forward. We need to keep building on it.”
Slagle said the switch from Biden to Harris as the party’s standard bearer has been “invigorating,” even if the transition wasn’t easy.
“I was amazed and probably as surprised as everybody else that we rallied behind her,” she said. “But then I started thinking, like, of course we did, because we need to be able to cling onto something and cling onto hope.”
