Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications V
Cont from previous page
Suffragists recognized that action at the federal level would be more effective than a state-by-state strategy. The day before Democratic president Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913, they organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that grabbed media attention. They continued civil disobedience to pressure Wilson into supporting their movement.
Still, it took another war effort, that of World War I, which the U.S. entered in 1917, to light a fire under the lawmakers whose votes would be necessary to get a suffrage amendment through Congress and send it off to the states for ratification. Wilson, finally on board as he faced a difficult midterm election in 1918, backed a constitutional amendment, asking congressmen: “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”
Congress passed the measure in a special session on June 4, 1919, and Tennessee’s ratification on August 18, 1920, made it the law of the land as soon as the official notice was in the hands of the secretary of state. Twenty-six million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election.
Crucially, as the Black suffragists had known all too well when they found themselves caught between the drives for Black male voting and women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws meant that most Black women and women of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years. And yet they never stopped fighting for that right. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Amelia Boynton, Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Constance Baker Motley were key organizers of voting rights initiatives, spreading information, arranging marches, sparking key protests, and preparing legal cases.
In 1980, women began to shift their votes to the Democrats, and in 1984 the Democrats nominated Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York to run for vice president alongside presidential candidate Walter Mondale. Republicans followed suit in 2008 when they nominated Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run with Arizona senator John McCain. Still, it was not until 2016 that a major political party nominated a woman, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, for president. In 2020 the Democrats nominated California senator Kamala Harris for vice president, and when voters elected her and President Joe Biden, they made her the first female vice president of the United States.
Tonight, on the 104th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, delegates are gathered in Chicago, Illinois, for the Democratic National Convention, where they will celebrate Harris’s nomination for the presidency.
It’s been a long time coming.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-18-2024
Suffragists recognized that action at the federal level would be more effective than a state-by-state strategy. The day before Democratic president Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913, they organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that grabbed media attention. They continued civil disobedience to pressure Wilson into supporting their movement.
Still, it took another war effort, that of World War I, which the U.S. entered in 1917, to light a fire under the lawmakers whose votes would be necessary to get a suffrage amendment through Congress and send it off to the states for ratification. Wilson, finally on board as he faced a difficult midterm election in 1918, backed a constitutional amendment, asking congressmen: “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”
Congress passed the measure in a special session on June 4, 1919, and Tennessee’s ratification on August 18, 1920, made it the law of the land as soon as the official notice was in the hands of the secretary of state. Twenty-six million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election.
Crucially, as the Black suffragists had known all too well when they found themselves caught between the drives for Black male voting and women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws meant that most Black women and women of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years. And yet they never stopped fighting for that right. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Amelia Boynton, Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Constance Baker Motley were key organizers of voting rights initiatives, spreading information, arranging marches, sparking key protests, and preparing legal cases.
In 1980, women began to shift their votes to the Democrats, and in 1984 the Democrats nominated Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York to run for vice president alongside presidential candidate Walter Mondale. Republicans followed suit in 2008 when they nominated Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run with Arizona senator John McCain. Still, it was not until 2016 that a major political party nominated a woman, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, for president. In 2020 the Democrats nominated California senator Kamala Harris for vice president, and when voters elected her and President Joe Biden, they made her the first female vice president of the United States.
Tonight, on the 104th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, delegates are gathered in Chicago, Illinois, for the Democratic National Convention, where they will celebrate Harris’s nomination for the presidency.
It’s been a long time coming.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-18-2024
Great opening night to the DNC.
August 19, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 20, 2024
The Democratic National Committee today released a platform that lays out the history of the last four years and explains how and why the Biden-Harris administration has oriented the United States government toward ordinary Americans. It is in many ways a snapshot of the United States of America in this moment. At the most basic level, it shows how rapidly the political world is changing. Approved on July 16, five days before President Joe Biden announced he would not accept the nomination, it refers to Biden, and not to Vice President Kamala Harris, as the party’s nominee.
At a grander scale, though, the platform suggests the country is entering a new political alignment. In its length and scope it recalls the 1980 Republican platform that launched the Reagan Revolution and the modern Republican Party. Unlike that platform, which laid out what the Republicans hoped to accomplish if voters put them into power, today’s Democratic platform recounts almost four years of work on which to base the Democrats’ future plans.
As the Republican Party that coalesced under Reagan has crumbled into a Christian nationalist authoritarianism, the Democrats have come together into a pro-democracy coalition. That coalition includes Republicans eager to stop Trump and his allies. They have signed on to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in order to preserve democracy, but are clear they are not embracing the Democratic Party’s policies. The Harris-Walz campaign has welcomed them.
The Republicans’ platform is heavy on slogans—many of which are in all caps—saying things like “We will defeat Inflation, tackle the cost-of-living crisis, improve fiscal sanity, restore price stability, and quickly bring down prices,” without any suggestion of how they will bring about such sweeping changes. In contrast, the Democrats laid out their policies today in a detailed 90-page platform that places the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration in a larger framework of protecting American democracy.
The platform lists the landmark legislation the Democrats have passed since 2021 and explains how they designed those measures to address both economic inequality and the historic racial and gender discrimination that has held back women as well as racial and gender minorities. The central theme of the platform is fairness: some version of that word appears in the document 58 times. The nation’s government, and the globe, have been skewed toward a few rich people. The Democratic platform says that they should pay their fair share and that those Americans who have been held back by systemic discrimination should have a fair shot at success.
“Our nation is at an inflection point,” the platform’s preamble reads. “What kind of America will we be? A land of more freedom, or less freedom? More rights or fewer? An economy rigged for the rich and powerful, or where everyone has a fair shot at getting ahead?” Taking office in the midst of a crisis, “Democrats proved once again that democracy can deliver, and made tremendous progress turning the country around,” but Trump will destroy those victories, focusing “not on opportunity and optimism, but on revenge and retribution…. He and his extreme MAGA allies are ripping away our bedrock personal freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. They’re rigging our economy for their rich friends and big corporations, pushing more trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful…. They are eroding our democracy with lies and threats, have refused to denounce political violence, and are making it harder to vote. And given the chance, they’ll keep stacking our courts, locking in their extreme agenda for decades.”
“History has shown that nothing about democracy is guaranteed,” the platform reads. “Every generation has to protect it, preserve it, choose it. We must stand together to choose what we want America to be.”
The Democratic platform was the backdrop today for the opening of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. Today’s theme was “For the People,” and today's speakers hit that goal, aiming directly at voters by telling two compelling stories of America. While the evening was designed to honor President Joe Biden, it did that not so much by focusing on his administration’s achievements—although they were there—as by emphasizing how his qualities, his initiatives, and his faith in America have restored the nation’s better qualities, setting it on a positive path.
Speakers told a wide range of stories about the many kindnesses of Biden, Harris, and Walz. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) teared up when she recounted Harris’s kindness to her as a new lawmaker. Golden State Warriors and U.S. national basketball team coach Steve Kerr noted that Harris and Walz have spent their careers “serving other people.” Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan talked of how as Walz does the work for Minnesota, he brings along a "bottomless bag of snacks -- Nutter Butters, cheese curds, and Diet Dew."
Speakers talked about how the Democrats are getting things done: Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH) said that "J.D. and Trump like to talk about states like Ohio, but Kamala and Joe actually get stuff done for us." United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY) emphasized the support of Biden, Harris, and Walz for unions and other working Americans, noting that they come from a middle-class background themselves.
And they talked about what patriotism means. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) said: "My mom taught me to love this country. She taught me that real American patriotism is not about screaming and yelling, ‘America first.’ Real American patriotism is loving your country so much that you want to help the people in your country. THAT is American patriotism."
Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) brought the crowd to its feet when he offered the Democrats’ underlying moral doctrine: “I need my neighbor's children to be okay so that my children will be okay,” he said. “I need all of my neighbor’s children to be okay, poor inner city children in Atlanta and poor children of Appalachia, I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, I need Israelis and Palestinians, I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need American children on both sides of the track to be okay. Because we are all God’s children. And so let’s stand together. Let’s work together. Let’s organize together. Let’s pray together. Let’s stand together. Let’s heal the land.”
In contrast to this forward looking community vision, the speakers made clear—often with memorable humor—that the future Trump offers is as dark as his own vows of retribution and revenge. They spoke of how he cares only about himself and how Trump has vowed to be a dictator. Several people mentioned Project 2025, which South Carolina representative James Clyburn called “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Flanagan told the crowd that her brother was the second person in Tennessee to die of Covid; Garcia said his mother and stepfather both died of it. The DNC showed a video of Trump downplaying the disease. Individuals affected by the abortion bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion care told their heart wrenching stories.
Cont below
August 19, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 20, 2024
The Democratic National Committee today released a platform that lays out the history of the last four years and explains how and why the Biden-Harris administration has oriented the United States government toward ordinary Americans. It is in many ways a snapshot of the United States of America in this moment. At the most basic level, it shows how rapidly the political world is changing. Approved on July 16, five days before President Joe Biden announced he would not accept the nomination, it refers to Biden, and not to Vice President Kamala Harris, as the party’s nominee.
At a grander scale, though, the platform suggests the country is entering a new political alignment. In its length and scope it recalls the 1980 Republican platform that launched the Reagan Revolution and the modern Republican Party. Unlike that platform, which laid out what the Republicans hoped to accomplish if voters put them into power, today’s Democratic platform recounts almost four years of work on which to base the Democrats’ future plans.
As the Republican Party that coalesced under Reagan has crumbled into a Christian nationalist authoritarianism, the Democrats have come together into a pro-democracy coalition. That coalition includes Republicans eager to stop Trump and his allies. They have signed on to elect Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in order to preserve democracy, but are clear they are not embracing the Democratic Party’s policies. The Harris-Walz campaign has welcomed them.
The Republicans’ platform is heavy on slogans—many of which are in all caps—saying things like “We will defeat Inflation, tackle the cost-of-living crisis, improve fiscal sanity, restore price stability, and quickly bring down prices,” without any suggestion of how they will bring about such sweeping changes. In contrast, the Democrats laid out their policies today in a detailed 90-page platform that places the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration in a larger framework of protecting American democracy.
The platform lists the landmark legislation the Democrats have passed since 2021 and explains how they designed those measures to address both economic inequality and the historic racial and gender discrimination that has held back women as well as racial and gender minorities. The central theme of the platform is fairness: some version of that word appears in the document 58 times. The nation’s government, and the globe, have been skewed toward a few rich people. The Democratic platform says that they should pay their fair share and that those Americans who have been held back by systemic discrimination should have a fair shot at success.
“Our nation is at an inflection point,” the platform’s preamble reads. “What kind of America will we be? A land of more freedom, or less freedom? More rights or fewer? An economy rigged for the rich and powerful, or where everyone has a fair shot at getting ahead?” Taking office in the midst of a crisis, “Democrats proved once again that democracy can deliver, and made tremendous progress turning the country around,” but Trump will destroy those victories, focusing “not on opportunity and optimism, but on revenge and retribution…. He and his extreme MAGA allies are ripping away our bedrock personal freedoms, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. They’re rigging our economy for their rich friends and big corporations, pushing more trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful…. They are eroding our democracy with lies and threats, have refused to denounce political violence, and are making it harder to vote. And given the chance, they’ll keep stacking our courts, locking in their extreme agenda for decades.”
“History has shown that nothing about democracy is guaranteed,” the platform reads. “Every generation has to protect it, preserve it, choose it. We must stand together to choose what we want America to be.”
The Democratic platform was the backdrop today for the opening of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. Today’s theme was “For the People,” and today's speakers hit that goal, aiming directly at voters by telling two compelling stories of America. While the evening was designed to honor President Joe Biden, it did that not so much by focusing on his administration’s achievements—although they were there—as by emphasizing how his qualities, his initiatives, and his faith in America have restored the nation’s better qualities, setting it on a positive path.
Speakers told a wide range of stories about the many kindnesses of Biden, Harris, and Walz. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) teared up when she recounted Harris’s kindness to her as a new lawmaker. Golden State Warriors and U.S. national basketball team coach Steve Kerr noted that Harris and Walz have spent their careers “serving other people.” Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan talked of how as Walz does the work for Minnesota, he brings along a "bottomless bag of snacks -- Nutter Butters, cheese curds, and Diet Dew."
Speakers talked about how the Democrats are getting things done: Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH) said that "J.D. and Trump like to talk about states like Ohio, but Kamala and Joe actually get stuff done for us." United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY) emphasized the support of Biden, Harris, and Walz for unions and other working Americans, noting that they come from a middle-class background themselves.
And they talked about what patriotism means. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) said: "My mom taught me to love this country. She taught me that real American patriotism is not about screaming and yelling, ‘America first.’ Real American patriotism is loving your country so much that you want to help the people in your country. THAT is American patriotism."
Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) brought the crowd to its feet when he offered the Democrats’ underlying moral doctrine: “I need my neighbor's children to be okay so that my children will be okay,” he said. “I need all of my neighbor’s children to be okay, poor inner city children in Atlanta and poor children of Appalachia, I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, I need Israelis and Palestinians, I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need American children on both sides of the track to be okay. Because we are all God’s children. And so let’s stand together. Let’s work together. Let’s organize together. Let’s pray together. Let’s stand together. Let’s heal the land.”
In contrast to this forward looking community vision, the speakers made clear—often with memorable humor—that the future Trump offers is as dark as his own vows of retribution and revenge. They spoke of how he cares only about himself and how Trump has vowed to be a dictator. Several people mentioned Project 2025, which South Carolina representative James Clyburn called “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Flanagan told the crowd that her brother was the second person in Tennessee to die of Covid; Garcia said his mother and stepfather both died of it. The DNC showed a video of Trump downplaying the disease. Individuals affected by the abortion bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion care told their heart wrenching stories.
Cont below
Cont from above
And they talked about Trump’s crimes. Representative Crockett asked voters which of the two candidates they would hire. “Kamala Harris has a résumé,” she said. “Donald Trump has a rap sheet.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that Trump’s vice president Mike Pence is the first vice president in more than 200 years “not to support the president he served with in a general election.” “Someone should’ve told Donald Trump that the president’s job under Article 2 of the Constitution is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not that the vice president is executed…. J.D. Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the [Republican] ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor!” Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA) told the crowd: “We deserve a president…who shatters the boundaries of what’s possible, not the boundaries of what’s legal.”
The Democrats tonight wove the past into their story of the future, creating a new history in which the present moment is part of a longer trajectory. Civil rights leader Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who worked alongside the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., received a standing ovation tonight. And when former secretary of state Hillary Clinton took the stage, the crowd roared.
“Something is happening in America,” she said. “You can feel it. Something we’ve worked for and dreamed of for a long time.” She recalled the history of women’s suffrage in the United States, noting that her mother was born before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and she remembered the pathbreaking leadership of New York representative Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, and Representative Geraldine Ferraro, also of New York, who ran for vice president in 1984. Then she spoke of her own nomination for president in 2016: “Nearly 66 million Americans voted for a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams. And afterwards we refused to give up on America. Millions marched, many ran for office. We kept our eyes on the future.”
“Well, my friends,” she said, “the future is here!” She urged everyone to “keep going…. Kamala has the character, experience, and vision to lead us forward.”
When Biden took the stage at the end of the night, he was greeted with a long standing ovation and chants of “We love Joe!” He reiterated the deep importance of family and thanked his own before recounting the accomplishments of his administration in rebuilding the damaged country that he inherited in January 2021. And then he turned to democracy.
“The vote each of us casts this year will determine whether democracy and freedom will prevail. It’s that simple. It’s that serious,” he said. “And the power is literally in your hands. History is in your hands…. America’s future is in your hands.”
“Nowhere else in the world could a kid with a stutter and modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, grow up to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. That’s because America is and always has been a nation of possibilities. And we must never lose that.”
“Each of us has a part in the American story. For me and my family there’s a song that means a lot to us that captures the best of who we are as a nation. The song is called ‘American Anthem.’ There’s one verse that stands out….
“‘The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day.
What shall our legacy be? What will our children say?
Let me know in my heart when my days are through
America, America, I gave my best to you.’
“For 50 years…I have given my heart and soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the support of the American people…. I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you…. I can honestly say I’m more optimistic about the future than I was when I was elected as a 29-year-old United States senator.
“We just need to remember who we are.
“We’re the United States of America.
“And there is NOTHING we cannot do when we do it together.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2024
And they talked about Trump’s crimes. Representative Crockett asked voters which of the two candidates they would hire. “Kamala Harris has a résumé,” she said. “Donald Trump has a rap sheet.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that Trump’s vice president Mike Pence is the first vice president in more than 200 years “not to support the president he served with in a general election.” “Someone should’ve told Donald Trump that the president’s job under Article 2 of the Constitution is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not that the vice president is executed…. J.D. Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the [Republican] ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor!” Senator Laphonza Butler (D-CA) told the crowd: “We deserve a president…who shatters the boundaries of what’s possible, not the boundaries of what’s legal.”
The Democrats tonight wove the past into their story of the future, creating a new history in which the present moment is part of a longer trajectory. Civil rights leader Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who worked alongside the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., received a standing ovation tonight. And when former secretary of state Hillary Clinton took the stage, the crowd roared.
“Something is happening in America,” she said. “You can feel it. Something we’ve worked for and dreamed of for a long time.” She recalled the history of women’s suffrage in the United States, noting that her mother was born before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and she remembered the pathbreaking leadership of New York representative Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, and Representative Geraldine Ferraro, also of New York, who ran for vice president in 1984. Then she spoke of her own nomination for president in 2016: “Nearly 66 million Americans voted for a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams. And afterwards we refused to give up on America. Millions marched, many ran for office. We kept our eyes on the future.”
“Well, my friends,” she said, “the future is here!” She urged everyone to “keep going…. Kamala has the character, experience, and vision to lead us forward.”
When Biden took the stage at the end of the night, he was greeted with a long standing ovation and chants of “We love Joe!” He reiterated the deep importance of family and thanked his own before recounting the accomplishments of his administration in rebuilding the damaged country that he inherited in January 2021. And then he turned to democracy.
“The vote each of us casts this year will determine whether democracy and freedom will prevail. It’s that simple. It’s that serious,” he said. “And the power is literally in your hands. History is in your hands…. America’s future is in your hands.”
“Nowhere else in the world could a kid with a stutter and modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, grow up to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. That’s because America is and always has been a nation of possibilities. And we must never lose that.”
“Each of us has a part in the American story. For me and my family there’s a song that means a lot to us that captures the best of who we are as a nation. The song is called ‘American Anthem.’ There’s one verse that stands out….
“‘The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day.
What shall our legacy be? What will our children say?
Let me know in my heart when my days are through
America, America, I gave my best to you.’
“For 50 years…I have given my heart and soul to our nation. And I have been blessed a million times in return with the support of the American people…. I hope you know how grateful I am to all of you…. I can honestly say I’m more optimistic about the future than I was when I was elected as a 29-year-old United States senator.
“We just need to remember who we are.
“We’re the United States of America.
“And there is NOTHING we cannot do when we do it together.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2024
I am amazed at the Republicans coming forward to speak at the DNC and shed truth on Trump's behind-the-scenes tactics.
August 20, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 21, 2024
At Chicago’s United Center today, the delegates at the Democratic National Convention reaffirmed last week’s online nomination of Kamala Harris for president. The ceremonial roll-call vote featured all the usual good natured boasting from the delegates about their own state’s virtues, a process that reinforces the incredible diversity and history of both this land and its people. The managers reserved the final slots for Minnesota and California—the home states of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, respectively—to put the ticket over the top.
When the votes had been counted, Harris joined the crowd virtually from a rally she and Walz were holding at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Last month the Republicans held their own national convention in that venue, and for Harris to accept her nomination in the same place was an acknowledgement of how important Wisconsin will be in this election. But it also meant that Trump, who is obsessed with crowd sizes, would have to see not one but two packed sports arenas of supporters cheer wildly for her nomination.
He also had to contend with former loyalists and supporters joining the Democratic convention. His former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told the Democratic convention tonight that when the cameras are off, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers.” Grisham endorsed Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”
Trump spoke glumly to a small crowd today at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan.
It was almost exactly twenty years ago, on July 27, 2004, that 43-year-old Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who was, at the time, running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, gave the keynote address to that year’s Democratic National Convention. It was the speech that began his rise to the presidency.
Like the Democrats who spoke last night, Obama talked in 2004 of his childhood and recalled how his parents had “faith in the possibilities of this nation.” And like Biden last night, Obama said that “in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.” The nation’s promise, he said, came from the human equality promised in the Declaration of Independence.
“That is the true genius of America,” Obama said, “a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles.” He called for an America “where hard work is rewarded.” “[I]t's not enough for just some of us to prosper,” he said, “[f]or alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.”
He described that ingredient as “[a]belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief—I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper—that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.”
Obama emphasized Americans’ shared values and pushed back against “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.” He reached back into history to prove that “the bedrock of this nation” is “the belief that there are better days ahead.” He called that belief “[t]he audacity of hope.”
Almost exactly twenty years after his 2004 speech, the same man, now a former president who served for eight years, spoke at tonight’s Democratic National Convention. But the past two decades have challenged his vision.
When voters put Obama into the White House in 2008, Republicans set out to make sure they couldn’t govern. Mitch McConnell (R–KY) became Senate minority leader in 2007 and, using the filibuster, stopped most Democratic measures by requiring 60 votes to move anything to a vote.
In 2010 the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, declaring that corporations and other outside groups could spend as much money as they wanted on elections. Citizens United increased Republican seats in legislative bodies, and in the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans packed state legislatures with their own candidates in time to be in charge of redistricting their states after the 2010 census. Republicans controlled the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and after the election, they used precise computer models to win previously Democratic House seats.
In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and
a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. Yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. And then, with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to protect Democratic voters.
As the Republicans skewed the mechanics of government to favor themselves, their candidates no longer had to worry they would lose general elections but did have to worry about losing primaries to more extreme challengers. So they swung farther and farther to the right, demonizing the Democrats until finally those who remain Republicans have given up on democracy altogether.
Cont below
August 20, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 21, 2024
At Chicago’s United Center today, the delegates at the Democratic National Convention reaffirmed last week’s online nomination of Kamala Harris for president. The ceremonial roll-call vote featured all the usual good natured boasting from the delegates about their own state’s virtues, a process that reinforces the incredible diversity and history of both this land and its people. The managers reserved the final slots for Minnesota and California—the home states of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, respectively—to put the ticket over the top.
When the votes had been counted, Harris joined the crowd virtually from a rally she and Walz were holding at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Last month the Republicans held their own national convention in that venue, and for Harris to accept her nomination in the same place was an acknowledgement of how important Wisconsin will be in this election. But it also meant that Trump, who is obsessed with crowd sizes, would have to see not one but two packed sports arenas of supporters cheer wildly for her nomination.
He also had to contend with former loyalists and supporters joining the Democratic convention. His former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, told the Democratic convention tonight that when the cameras are off, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers.” Grisham endorsed Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”
Trump spoke glumly to a small crowd today at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Michigan.
It was almost exactly twenty years ago, on July 27, 2004, that 43-year-old Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who was, at the time, running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, gave the keynote address to that year’s Democratic National Convention. It was the speech that began his rise to the presidency.
Like the Democrats who spoke last night, Obama talked in 2004 of his childhood and recalled how his parents had “faith in the possibilities of this nation.” And like Biden last night, Obama said that “in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.” The nation’s promise, he said, came from the human equality promised in the Declaration of Independence.
“That is the true genius of America,” Obama said, “a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles.” He called for an America “where hard work is rewarded.” “[I]t's not enough for just some of us to prosper,” he said, “[f]or alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.”
He described that ingredient as “[a]belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief—I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper—that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.”
Obama emphasized Americans’ shared values and pushed back against “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.” He reached back into history to prove that “the bedrock of this nation” is “the belief that there are better days ahead.” He called that belief “[t]he audacity of hope.”
Almost exactly twenty years after his 2004 speech, the same man, now a former president who served for eight years, spoke at tonight’s Democratic National Convention. But the past two decades have challenged his vision.
When voters put Obama into the White House in 2008, Republicans set out to make sure they couldn’t govern. Mitch McConnell (R–KY) became Senate minority leader in 2007 and, using the filibuster, stopped most Democratic measures by requiring 60 votes to move anything to a vote.
In 2010 the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, declaring that corporations and other outside groups could spend as much money as they wanted on elections. Citizens United increased Republican seats in legislative bodies, and in the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans packed state legislatures with their own candidates in time to be in charge of redistricting their states after the 2010 census. Republicans controlled the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and after the election, they used precise computer models to win previously Democratic House seats.
In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and
a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. Yet Republicans came away with a thirty-three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. And then, with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to protect Democratic voters.
As the Republicans skewed the mechanics of government to favor themselves, their candidates no longer had to worry they would lose general elections but did have to worry about losing primaries to more extreme challengers. So they swung farther and farther to the right, demonizing the Democrats until finally those who remain Republicans have given up on democracy altogether.
Cont below
Cont from above
Tonight’s speech echoed that of 2004 by saying that America’s “central story” is that “we are all created equal,” and describing Harris and Walz as hardworking people who would use the government to create a fair system. He sounded more concerned today than in 2004 about political divisions, and reminded the crowd: “The vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided,” he said. “We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone,” he said.
And then, in his praise for his grandmother, “a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas,” and his mother-in-law, Marion Robinson, a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago, he brought a new emphasis on ordinary Americans, especially women, who work hard, sacrifice for their children, and value honesty, integrity, kindness, helping others, and hard work.
They wanted their children to “do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.” “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between,” he said, “we have all had people like that in our lives:... good hardworking people who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.”
If President Obama emphasized tonight that the nation depends on the good will of ordinary people, it was his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, who spoke with the voice of those people and made it clear that only the American people can preserve democracy.
In a truly extraordinary speech, perfectly delivered, Mrs. Obama described her mother as someone who lived out the idea of hope for a better future, working for children and the community. “She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation,” Mrs. Obama said, “the belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor, if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.”
Unlike her husband, though, Mrs. Obama called out Trump and his allies, who are trying to destroy that worldview. “No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” she said. “No one.” “[M]ost of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” she said. “We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business…or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead…we don't get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No, we put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something."
And then Mrs. Obama took up the mantle of her mother, warning that demonizing others and taking away their rights, “only makes us small.” It “demeans and cheapens our politics. It only serves to further discourage good, big-hearted people from wanting to get involved at all. America, our parents taught us better than that.”
It is “up to us to be the solution that we seek.” she said. She urged people to “be the antidote to the darkness and division.” “[W]hether you’re Democrat, Republican, Independent, or none of the above,” she said, “this is our time to stand up for what we know. In our hearts is right. Not just for our basic freedoms, but for decency and humanity, for basic respect. Dignity and empathy. For the values at the very foundation of this democracy.”
“Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.”
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-20-2024
Tonight’s speech echoed that of 2004 by saying that America’s “central story” is that “we are all created equal,” and describing Harris and Walz as hardworking people who would use the government to create a fair system. He sounded more concerned today than in 2004 about political divisions, and reminded the crowd: “The vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided,” he said. “We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone,” he said.
And then, in his praise for his grandmother, “a little old white lady born in a tiny town called Peru, Kansas,” and his mother-in-law, Marion Robinson, a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago, he brought a new emphasis on ordinary Americans, especially women, who work hard, sacrifice for their children, and value honesty, integrity, kindness, helping others, and hard work.
They wanted their children to “do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.” “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or somewhere in between,” he said, “we have all had people like that in our lives:... good hardworking people who weren’t famous or powerful but who managed in countless ways to leave this country just a little bit better than they found it.”
If President Obama emphasized tonight that the nation depends on the good will of ordinary people, it was his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, who spoke with the voice of those people and made it clear that only the American people can preserve democracy.
In a truly extraordinary speech, perfectly delivered, Mrs. Obama described her mother as someone who lived out the idea of hope for a better future, working for children and the community. “She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation,” Mrs. Obama said, “the belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor, if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.”
Unlike her husband, though, Mrs. Obama called out Trump and his allies, who are trying to destroy that worldview. “No one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” she said. “No one.” “[M]ost of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” she said. “We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business…or choke in a crisis, we don't get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don't go our way, we don't have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead…we don't get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No, we put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something."
And then Mrs. Obama took up the mantle of her mother, warning that demonizing others and taking away their rights, “only makes us small.” It “demeans and cheapens our politics. It only serves to further discourage good, big-hearted people from wanting to get involved at all. America, our parents taught us better than that.”
It is “up to us to be the solution that we seek.” she said. She urged people to “be the antidote to the darkness and division.” “[W]hether you’re Democrat, Republican, Independent, or none of the above,” she said, “this is our time to stand up for what we know. In our hearts is right. Not just for our basic freedoms, but for decency and humanity, for basic respect. Dignity and empathy. For the values at the very foundation of this democracy.”
“Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.”
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-20-2024
I STILL cannot get over the Republicans that are coming forward to denounce Trump at the DNC! They're not leaving their party. On the contrary, they're fighting for it while condemning the extremism of MAGA that has taken it over and Project 2025.
August 21, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 22, 2024
In 1974, music writer Jon Landau saw a relatively unknown musician in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wrote for an alternative paper: "Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theater, I saw rock'n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time." The review helped to catapult Springsteen to stardom.
After three days at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, I feel like I have seen the political future, and its name is the Democratic Party. But rather than feeling like I’m hearing politics for the first time, I am hearing the echo of political themes embraced in the best moments of America’s past.
The theme of the third day of the Democratic National Convention, held in the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, was “A Fight for Our Freedoms.” But the speeches were less about fighting than they were about recovering the roots of American democracy.
The Democrats have not lost their conviction that the reelection of Donald Trump and the enactment of Project 2025 are an existential threat both to democracy and to Americans themselves. Speakers throughout the convention have condemned Trump and highlighted Project 2025, a blueprint written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing organizations for a second Trump term. Although Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was a high school football coach, notes that no one bothers to write a playbook if they’re not going to use it.
Tonight, comedian and actor Kenan Thompson illustrated the dangers of Project 2025 with humor, bringing home the horror of it as only humor can do. With a giant copy of the plan as a prop, he gave a woman married for eight years to her wife the bad news that Project 2025 would end protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, informed a woman who pays $35 a month for her insulin that the plan would overturn the law that makes drugs more affordable, notified an OBGYN that the plan would ban abortion nationwide and throw abortion providers into jail, and put a woman who called herself a proud civil servant on notice that Project 2025 would guarantee she would be fired unless she is a MAGA loyalist.
But the dark dangers of the assault of Trump and the MAGA Republicans on the country have finally pushed the party to move away from its customary caution and focus on policy to embrace the possibilities of a new future. The convention is electric, packed with young people who push jokey memes and poke fun at themselves, much as Walz and presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris are doing to deflect criticism, and who are sharing homemade politically-themed friendship bracelets that echo the homemade paraphernalia of singer Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
And, after decades in which Republicans claimed the mantle of patriotism, now that the fate of democracy itself is on the line, Democrats are joyfully claiming the symbols and the principles of American democracy for their own.
During the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, many Democrats shied away from symbols of patriotism because they seemed to support imperialism. Then, in the 1980s, Reagan and his supporters wrapped themselves in the flag and claimed it for their own. That impulse to define “Americans” as those who vote for Republicans has led us to a place where a small minority claims the right to rule over the rest of us.
The Democratic National Convention has powerfully illustrated that the rest of us are finally reclaiming the country and its symbols. The convention has been full of references to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the American Revolution, the national anthem, and the pledge of allegiance. Tonight, attendees chanting “USA” waved signs emblazoned with the letters. Speakers, many of whom are military veterans, have testified that they are proud to be Americans. The theme of patriotism was even in one of tonight’s afterparties: Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean played The Star Spangled Banner with an interpretation that recalled Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. “America is the best place to be,” he said. “I’m the best of the American dream. Welcome to America…. You know what makes America great? We’re a bunch of immigrants.”
As Jean indicated, that embrace of our history does not come with the exceptionalism of MAGA Republicans, who maintain that the U.S. has a perfect past that it must reclaim to become great again. Indeed, speakers have emphasized that honoring our history means remembering the nation’s failures as well as its triumphs. The Democrats’ patriotism means recognizing that despite the fact that the U.S. has never fully realized the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence, it has never abandoned them either—a statement paraphrased from President Joe Biden, who has said it repeatedly.
Speakers have highlighted that the imperfect version of those principles has enabled their personal success stories. Speaker after speaker, from Harris and Walz, of course, to tonight’s speakers Maryland governor Wes Moore, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and journalist and television personality Oprah Winfrey, have recounted their own process of rising from humble beginnings to their current prominence,
Winfrey is an Independent who generally stays out of politics, but tonight she spoke passionately during prime time about electing Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz. When a reporter asked her why she was willing to make a political statement, she said: "Because I really care about this country. And there couldn't have been a life like mine, a career like mine, a success like mine, without a country like America. Only in America could there be a me."
The many stories in which ordinary Americans rise from adversity through hard work, decency, and service to others implicitly conflates those individual struggles with the struggles of the United States itself. Running through the stories told at the convention is the theme of working hard through a time of darkness to come out into the light. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning,” speakers have quoted the Biblical psalm, and they have referred to the vision of the American flag still flying after a night of bombardment during the War of 1812, captured by Francis Scott Key in the national anthem, promising that after our time of national darkness, there will be light.
The DNC has called not just for reasserting patriotism, but for reclaiming America with joy. It has showcased a deep bench of politicians, some of whom are great orators, repeatedly calling for joy in the work of saving democracy, and it has shown poets like Amanda Gorman and a wide range of musicians, from Stevie Wonder to Lil Jon to D.J. Cassidy to John Legend. The convention is designed to appeal to different generations—tonight actress Mindy Kaling helpfully explained to older attendees who she is—and younger attendees have handed out friendship bracelets saying things like “Madam Prez” to older people in an echo of the exchange of bracelets among Taylor Swift’s fans.
Cont below
August 21, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 22, 2024
In 1974, music writer Jon Landau saw a relatively unknown musician in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and wrote for an alternative paper: "Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theater, I saw rock'n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time." The review helped to catapult Springsteen to stardom.
After three days at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, I feel like I have seen the political future, and its name is the Democratic Party. But rather than feeling like I’m hearing politics for the first time, I am hearing the echo of political themes embraced in the best moments of America’s past.
The theme of the third day of the Democratic National Convention, held in the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, was “A Fight for Our Freedoms.” But the speeches were less about fighting than they were about recovering the roots of American democracy.
The Democrats have not lost their conviction that the reelection of Donald Trump and the enactment of Project 2025 are an existential threat both to democracy and to Americans themselves. Speakers throughout the convention have condemned Trump and highlighted Project 2025, a blueprint written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing organizations for a second Trump term. Although Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was a high school football coach, notes that no one bothers to write a playbook if they’re not going to use it.
Tonight, comedian and actor Kenan Thompson illustrated the dangers of Project 2025 with humor, bringing home the horror of it as only humor can do. With a giant copy of the plan as a prop, he gave a woman married for eight years to her wife the bad news that Project 2025 would end protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, informed a woman who pays $35 a month for her insulin that the plan would overturn the law that makes drugs more affordable, notified an OBGYN that the plan would ban abortion nationwide and throw abortion providers into jail, and put a woman who called herself a proud civil servant on notice that Project 2025 would guarantee she would be fired unless she is a MAGA loyalist.
But the dark dangers of the assault of Trump and the MAGA Republicans on the country have finally pushed the party to move away from its customary caution and focus on policy to embrace the possibilities of a new future. The convention is electric, packed with young people who push jokey memes and poke fun at themselves, much as Walz and presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris are doing to deflect criticism, and who are sharing homemade politically-themed friendship bracelets that echo the homemade paraphernalia of singer Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
And, after decades in which Republicans claimed the mantle of patriotism, now that the fate of democracy itself is on the line, Democrats are joyfully claiming the symbols and the principles of American democracy for their own.
During the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, many Democrats shied away from symbols of patriotism because they seemed to support imperialism. Then, in the 1980s, Reagan and his supporters wrapped themselves in the flag and claimed it for their own. That impulse to define “Americans” as those who vote for Republicans has led us to a place where a small minority claims the right to rule over the rest of us.
The Democratic National Convention has powerfully illustrated that the rest of us are finally reclaiming the country and its symbols. The convention has been full of references to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the American Revolution, the national anthem, and the pledge of allegiance. Tonight, attendees chanting “USA” waved signs emblazoned with the letters. Speakers, many of whom are military veterans, have testified that they are proud to be Americans. The theme of patriotism was even in one of tonight’s afterparties: Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean played The Star Spangled Banner with an interpretation that recalled Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. “America is the best place to be,” he said. “I’m the best of the American dream. Welcome to America…. You know what makes America great? We’re a bunch of immigrants.”
As Jean indicated, that embrace of our history does not come with the exceptionalism of MAGA Republicans, who maintain that the U.S. has a perfect past that it must reclaim to become great again. Indeed, speakers have emphasized that honoring our history means remembering the nation’s failures as well as its triumphs. The Democrats’ patriotism means recognizing that despite the fact that the U.S. has never fully realized the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence, it has never abandoned them either—a statement paraphrased from President Joe Biden, who has said it repeatedly.
Speakers have highlighted that the imperfect version of those principles has enabled their personal success stories. Speaker after speaker, from Harris and Walz, of course, to tonight’s speakers Maryland governor Wes Moore, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and journalist and television personality Oprah Winfrey, have recounted their own process of rising from humble beginnings to their current prominence,
Winfrey is an Independent who generally stays out of politics, but tonight she spoke passionately during prime time about electing Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Walz. When a reporter asked her why she was willing to make a political statement, she said: "Because I really care about this country. And there couldn't have been a life like mine, a career like mine, a success like mine, without a country like America. Only in America could there be a me."
The many stories in which ordinary Americans rise from adversity through hard work, decency, and service to others implicitly conflates those individual struggles with the struggles of the United States itself. Running through the stories told at the convention is the theme of working hard through a time of darkness to come out into the light. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning,” speakers have quoted the Biblical psalm, and they have referred to the vision of the American flag still flying after a night of bombardment during the War of 1812, captured by Francis Scott Key in the national anthem, promising that after our time of national darkness, there will be light.
The DNC has called not just for reasserting patriotism, but for reclaiming America with joy. It has showcased a deep bench of politicians, some of whom are great orators, repeatedly calling for joy in the work of saving democracy, and it has shown poets like Amanda Gorman and a wide range of musicians, from Stevie Wonder to Lil Jon to D.J. Cassidy to John Legend. The convention is designed to appeal to different generations—tonight actress Mindy Kaling helpfully explained to older attendees who she is—and younger attendees have handed out friendship bracelets saying things like “Madam Prez” to older people in an echo of the exchange of bracelets among Taylor Swift’s fans.
Cont below
Cont from above
After an era in which politicians have seemed to lie to the American people, the convention has emphasized authenticity. It has featured testimonials about the candidates with speakers ranging from the candidates’ children to extended family and, tonight, to members of the football team Walz coached. There have been stories of Harris’s cooking and how Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff awkwardly called her for a date, and fond memories of Walz pulling a student out of a snowbank, hunting, and caring for his children. The convention has emphasized that the American government is made up of individuals and that the character of the people we put into leadership will determine what that government does.
Further, the Democrats have made their points with the stories of individual Americans who have overcome dark hours in order to move forward. In that storytelling, individuals represent the nation itself.
The message of joy as we protect democracy, backed as that message is with four years of extraordinary accomplishments that have bolstered the middle class and spread opportunity among poorer Americans, has taken off. The convention has heard from three Democratic presidents and a range of other speakers, including a number of Republicans who have turned against Trump and are backing Harris and Walz. In July, Harris raised four times the money Trump did: $204 million to $48 million, much of it from small donors.
The palpable energy and enthusiasm in Chicago, based as it is in a celebration of American values—especially in the idea of American freedom—reminds me of the enthusiasm of 1860 or 1932. It is about ending the darkness, not indulging in it, and it requires the hard work of everyone who believes that we deserve the freedom to determine our own lives.
Tonight, after his acceptance speech, Walz walked off stage to a favorite song of his: Neil Young’s “Rockin‘ in the Free World.” Neil Young personally allowed the campaign to use the song. When the Trump campaign used it, Young sued to make them stop.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-21-2024
After an era in which politicians have seemed to lie to the American people, the convention has emphasized authenticity. It has featured testimonials about the candidates with speakers ranging from the candidates’ children to extended family and, tonight, to members of the football team Walz coached. There have been stories of Harris’s cooking and how Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff awkwardly called her for a date, and fond memories of Walz pulling a student out of a snowbank, hunting, and caring for his children. The convention has emphasized that the American government is made up of individuals and that the character of the people we put into leadership will determine what that government does.
Further, the Democrats have made their points with the stories of individual Americans who have overcome dark hours in order to move forward. In that storytelling, individuals represent the nation itself.
The message of joy as we protect democracy, backed as that message is with four years of extraordinary accomplishments that have bolstered the middle class and spread opportunity among poorer Americans, has taken off. The convention has heard from three Democratic presidents and a range of other speakers, including a number of Republicans who have turned against Trump and are backing Harris and Walz. In July, Harris raised four times the money Trump did: $204 million to $48 million, much of it from small donors.
The palpable energy and enthusiasm in Chicago, based as it is in a celebration of American values—especially in the idea of American freedom—reminds me of the enthusiasm of 1860 or 1932. It is about ending the darkness, not indulging in it, and it requires the hard work of everyone who believes that we deserve the freedom to determine our own lives.
Tonight, after his acceptance speech, Walz walked off stage to a favorite song of his: Neil Young’s “Rockin‘ in the Free World.” Neil Young personally allowed the campaign to use the song. When the Trump campaign used it, Young sued to make them stop.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-21-2024
August 22, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 23, 2024
The streets of Chicago have been bustling with visitors, law enforcement officers, and a few protesters for the Democratic National Convention. This is the twenty-sixth convention that’s been held in Chicago, first because the Republican Party was centered here in its early days and because Chicago was a major railroad hub, and then because Democrats had a power base here in the twentieth century. Baltimore, Maryland, is second on the list of host cities, with thirteen conventions under its belt.
While we are now so accustomed to political conventions that they seem to be part of the landscape, they were not part of the original framework of American democracy. They grew out of the expansion of the suffrage in the early 1800s, and their development was an important part of the evolution of our democratic system.
In the early years of the American Republic, political leaders were faced with the practical problem of how, exactly, to create a democratic government. The Constitution provided a framework for how such a government should work, but it didn’t lay out how voters would interact with that framework. At first, that gap between voters and the machinery of politics didn’t seem to be much of a problem, since George Washington was so popular he essentially ran unopposed and the presidential electors voted for him unanimously. But then President Washington announced he would not run for a third term, and there was no consensus on who should take his place.
The men who framed the Constitution opposed political parties, but partisanship had sprung up during Washington’s administration nonetheless as voters divided into the Federalist Party, which generally supported the Washington administration, and the Democratic-Republicans, who worried that Washington’s supporters were leading the country toward aristocracy. (Despite their name, the Democratic-Republicans were not analogous to today’s Democrats or Republicans.)
In 1796 the congressional delegations of each party met informally to figure out which candidate they would support. The rule of “King Caucus,” as its detractors would call this system, was short lived. The Federalists flirted with secession in 1815 and never recovered. By 1820, they didn’t even nominate a candidate, permitting incumbent president James Monroe, a Democratic-Republican, to run virtually unopposed.
Many political observers believed that the triumph of the Democratic-Republicans would mean that the nation had finally outgrown partisanship, and they boasted of Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings.” With politics seemingly in harmony, states extended the vote far more widely than they had done before, dumping the property qualifications that had previously excluded significant numbers of white men. By the 1840s, virtually all white men could vote. (By 1858, free Black men could vote only in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and women could not vote.)
Universal white male suffrage changed the American political scene. Early political leaders had assumed that elites like them would always run the government, but that idea exploded in 1824 when the dominant Democratic-Republican party split into factions. Only a quarter of the party’s congressmen showed up at that year’s caucus, and four different candidates ran for office.
Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the electoral vote—although not enough to win—and yet lost the election when it went to the House of Representatives. Americans watched as established politicians overrode their votes in order to put John Quincy Adams, the son of former president John Adams, into the presidency. For all politicians talked of equality, it seemed a wealthy elite was taking over the country.
When Jackson handily won the 1828 election, he declared that the president is the direct representative of the people.
Voters approved that sentiment and began to demand more of a voice in the choosing of their presidential candidates. In 1831, using a convention model that men used at the state and local level for choosing political candidates, the Anti-Masonic Party called supporters together to choose a presidential and vice presidential candidate. Jackson’s new political party, the Democrats, and the party that rose to oppose the Democrats, known as the Whigs, followed suit.
Conventions did more than give voters a say in their presidential and vice presidential candidates, though. They created a national party structure that whipped up enthusiasm for candidates, so that all those new voters would work to get their candidates into office. That structure and enthusiasm, in turn, brought ordinary voters into the previously bloodless machinery of democracy the Framers engineered.
Campaigns ceased to be dignified affairs in which elite politicians allowed themselves to be drafted to serve. While until the end of the nineteenth century it would be considered unseemly for a candidate to campaign personally, other political leaders barnstormed the country on behalf of their candidates, and voters held parades and barbecues and vocally demonstrated their support for candidates who worked to show that they were men of the people. The patrician William Henry Harrison set the standard for such a show when he won the White House by adopting the symbols of hard cider and a log cabin.
But for all the growing reputation of political conventions as the place where voters made their will heard, professional politicians still carefully managed delegations to jockey their candidates into the best possible positions for nomination. Famously, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln began plotting his own elevation at least by early 1860. In his insightful and thorough examination of the 1860 convention, political historian Michael S. Green laid out how Lincoln outmaneuvered the many more popular candidates contending for the Republican presidential nomination that year:
In 1859, Lincoln worked with a colleague, Norman B. Judd, to get the Republican convention of the next year held in Chicago, where Lincoln would have a home court advantage. Then his friends helped push the Illinois Republicans to support him unanimously and, in keeping with the idea that he was a man of the people, dubbed him “The Railsplitter.” Still, Lincoln knew he was not a leading candidate. “My name is new in the field; and I suppose I am not the first choice of a great many,” he wrote to a political operative in spring 1860. “Our policy, then, is to give no offence to others—leave them in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.”
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 23, 2024
The streets of Chicago have been bustling with visitors, law enforcement officers, and a few protesters for the Democratic National Convention. This is the twenty-sixth convention that’s been held in Chicago, first because the Republican Party was centered here in its early days and because Chicago was a major railroad hub, and then because Democrats had a power base here in the twentieth century. Baltimore, Maryland, is second on the list of host cities, with thirteen conventions under its belt.
While we are now so accustomed to political conventions that they seem to be part of the landscape, they were not part of the original framework of American democracy. They grew out of the expansion of the suffrage in the early 1800s, and their development was an important part of the evolution of our democratic system.
In the early years of the American Republic, political leaders were faced with the practical problem of how, exactly, to create a democratic government. The Constitution provided a framework for how such a government should work, but it didn’t lay out how voters would interact with that framework. At first, that gap between voters and the machinery of politics didn’t seem to be much of a problem, since George Washington was so popular he essentially ran unopposed and the presidential electors voted for him unanimously. But then President Washington announced he would not run for a third term, and there was no consensus on who should take his place.
The men who framed the Constitution opposed political parties, but partisanship had sprung up during Washington’s administration nonetheless as voters divided into the Federalist Party, which generally supported the Washington administration, and the Democratic-Republicans, who worried that Washington’s supporters were leading the country toward aristocracy. (Despite their name, the Democratic-Republicans were not analogous to today’s Democrats or Republicans.)
In 1796 the congressional delegations of each party met informally to figure out which candidate they would support. The rule of “King Caucus,” as its detractors would call this system, was short lived. The Federalists flirted with secession in 1815 and never recovered. By 1820, they didn’t even nominate a candidate, permitting incumbent president James Monroe, a Democratic-Republican, to run virtually unopposed.
Many political observers believed that the triumph of the Democratic-Republicans would mean that the nation had finally outgrown partisanship, and they boasted of Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings.” With politics seemingly in harmony, states extended the vote far more widely than they had done before, dumping the property qualifications that had previously excluded significant numbers of white men. By the 1840s, virtually all white men could vote. (By 1858, free Black men could vote only in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and women could not vote.)
Universal white male suffrage changed the American political scene. Early political leaders had assumed that elites like them would always run the government, but that idea exploded in 1824 when the dominant Democratic-Republican party split into factions. Only a quarter of the party’s congressmen showed up at that year’s caucus, and four different candidates ran for office.
Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the electoral vote—although not enough to win—and yet lost the election when it went to the House of Representatives. Americans watched as established politicians overrode their votes in order to put John Quincy Adams, the son of former president John Adams, into the presidency. For all politicians talked of equality, it seemed a wealthy elite was taking over the country.
When Jackson handily won the 1828 election, he declared that the president is the direct representative of the people.
Voters approved that sentiment and began to demand more of a voice in the choosing of their presidential candidates. In 1831, using a convention model that men used at the state and local level for choosing political candidates, the Anti-Masonic Party called supporters together to choose a presidential and vice presidential candidate. Jackson’s new political party, the Democrats, and the party that rose to oppose the Democrats, known as the Whigs, followed suit.
Conventions did more than give voters a say in their presidential and vice presidential candidates, though. They created a national party structure that whipped up enthusiasm for candidates, so that all those new voters would work to get their candidates into office. That structure and enthusiasm, in turn, brought ordinary voters into the previously bloodless machinery of democracy the Framers engineered.
Campaigns ceased to be dignified affairs in which elite politicians allowed themselves to be drafted to serve. While until the end of the nineteenth century it would be considered unseemly for a candidate to campaign personally, other political leaders barnstormed the country on behalf of their candidates, and voters held parades and barbecues and vocally demonstrated their support for candidates who worked to show that they were men of the people. The patrician William Henry Harrison set the standard for such a show when he won the White House by adopting the symbols of hard cider and a log cabin.
But for all the growing reputation of political conventions as the place where voters made their will heard, professional politicians still carefully managed delegations to jockey their candidates into the best possible positions for nomination. Famously, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln began plotting his own elevation at least by early 1860. In his insightful and thorough examination of the 1860 convention, political historian Michael S. Green laid out how Lincoln outmaneuvered the many more popular candidates contending for the Republican presidential nomination that year:
In 1859, Lincoln worked with a colleague, Norman B. Judd, to get the Republican convention of the next year held in Chicago, where Lincoln would have a home court advantage. Then his friends helped push the Illinois Republicans to support him unanimously and, in keeping with the idea that he was a man of the people, dubbed him “The Railsplitter.” Still, Lincoln knew he was not a leading candidate. “My name is new in the field; and I suppose I am not the first choice of a great many,” he wrote to a political operative in spring 1860. “Our policy, then, is to give no offence to others—leave them in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.”
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Cont from above
When Republican delegates met at the hastily constructed hall at the intersection of Lake Street and Market Street in Chicago that held about 10,000 people, Lincoln’s allies sang his praises and negotiated. Perhaps as important, as Green explains, one of Lincoln’s key men got the right to seat the delegations. He isolated New York’s, whose members were strong for their own William Henry Seward, keeping it apart from the state delegations that might be persuaded to climb on board the Seward bandwagon. Those undecided delegations Lincoln’s ally kept close to the Lincoln supporters.
As the balloting got underway, the first ballot had Seward ahead with 173.5 votes but without enough to get the nomination, and Lincoln second with 102. On the second ballot, Lincoln’s numbers climbed until they were almost equal to Seward’s, and midway through the counting of the third ballot, it was clear Lincoln would be the 1860 Republican nominee.
The minutiae of politics had given the country a candidate who would change the course of history.
Green quotes journalist Murat Halstead, who was at the convention: “There was a moment’s silence,” Halstead wrote. “The nerves of the thousands, which through the hours of suspense had been subjected to terrible tension, relaxed, and as deep breaths of relief were taken, there was a noise in the wigwam like the rush of a great wind, in the van of a storm—and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-22-2024
When Republican delegates met at the hastily constructed hall at the intersection of Lake Street and Market Street in Chicago that held about 10,000 people, Lincoln’s allies sang his praises and negotiated. Perhaps as important, as Green explains, one of Lincoln’s key men got the right to seat the delegations. He isolated New York’s, whose members were strong for their own William Henry Seward, keeping it apart from the state delegations that might be persuaded to climb on board the Seward bandwagon. Those undecided delegations Lincoln’s ally kept close to the Lincoln supporters.
As the balloting got underway, the first ballot had Seward ahead with 173.5 votes but without enough to get the nomination, and Lincoln second with 102. On the second ballot, Lincoln’s numbers climbed until they were almost equal to Seward’s, and midway through the counting of the third ballot, it was clear Lincoln would be the 1860 Republican nominee.
The minutiae of politics had given the country a candidate who would change the course of history.
Green quotes journalist Murat Halstead, who was at the convention: “There was a moment’s silence,” Halstead wrote. “The nerves of the thousands, which through the hours of suspense had been subjected to terrible tension, relaxed, and as deep breaths of relief were taken, there was a noise in the wigwam like the rush of a great wind, in the van of a storm—and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-22-2024
I am not voting for Harris because she is a woman. I am voting for her because I am a woman and I am SICK of this patriARCHAIC attitude of the "Republican" party making fun of someone with a learning disability who shows outward love and pride for his father.
"Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home. If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you're not a Democrat. You're a patriot." - Former Republican Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan was just ONE of the Republicans who gave the most powerful speech at the DNC.
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1826418712750010763
He understands the assignment of the Constitution.
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1826418712750010763
He understands the assignment of the Constitution.
August 24, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 25
The raucous roll call of states at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, as everybody danced to DJ Cassidy’s state-themed music, Lil Jon strode down the aisle to cheers for Georgia, and different delegations boasted about their states and good-naturedly teased other delegations, brought home the real-life meaning of E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” From then until Thursday, as a sea of American flags waved and attendees joyfully chanted “USA, USA, USA,” the convention welcomed a new vision for the Democratic Party, deeply rooted in the best of traditional America.
Under the direction of President Joe Biden, over the past three and a half years the Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. This week’s convention showed that it has now gone further, recentering the vision of government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, called upon to make it serve the interests of communities.
When the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, the United States was facing a deadly pandemic and the economic crash it had caused. The country also had to deal with the aftermath of the attempt of former president Donald Trump to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and seize the presidency. It appeared that many people in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, had given up on democracy.
Biden set out to prove that democracy could work for ordinary people by ditching the neoliberalism that had been in place for forty years. That system, begun in the 1980s, called for the government to allow unfettered markets to organize the economy. Neoliberalism’s proponents promised it would create widespread prosperity, but instead, it transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. As the middle class hollowed out, those slipping behind lined up behind an authoritarian figure who promised to restore their former centrality by attacking those he told them were their enemies.
When he took office, Biden vowed to prove that democracy worked. With laws like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats directed investment toward ordinary Americans. The dramatic success of their economic program proved that it worked. On Wednesday, former president Bill Clinton noted that since 1989, the U.S. has created 51 million new jobs. Fifty million of those jobs were created under Democratic presidents, while only 1 million were added under Republicans—a striking statistic that perhaps will put neoliberalism, or at least the tired trope that Democrats are worse for the economy than Republicans, to bed.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination convention suggested a more thorough reworking of the federal government, one that also recalls the 1930s but suggests a transformation that goes beyond markets and jobs.
Before Labor Secretary Perkins’s 1935 Social Security Act, the government served largely to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. But Perkins recognized that the purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the community. She recognized that children, women, and elderly and disabled Americans were as valuable to the community as young male workers and the wealthy men who employed them.
With a law that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services, Perkins began the process of molding the government to reflect that truth.
Perkins’s understanding of the United States as a community reflected both her time in a small town in Maine and in her experience as a social worker in inner-city Philadelphia and Chicago before the law provided any protections for the workers, including children, who made the new factories profitable. She understood that while lawmakers focused on male workers, the American economy was, and always has been, utterly dependent on the unrecognized contributions of women and marginalized people in the form of childcare, sharing food and housing, and the many forms of unpaid work that keep communities functioning.
This reworking of the American government to reflect community rather than economic
relationships changed the entire fabric of the country, and opponents have worked to destroy it ever since FDR began to put it in place.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Aug 25
The raucous roll call of states at the 2024 Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, as everybody danced to DJ Cassidy’s state-themed music, Lil Jon strode down the aisle to cheers for Georgia, and different delegations boasted about their states and good-naturedly teased other delegations, brought home the real-life meaning of E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one.” From then until Thursday, as a sea of American flags waved and attendees joyfully chanted “USA, USA, USA,” the convention welcomed a new vision for the Democratic Party, deeply rooted in the best of traditional America.
Under the direction of President Joe Biden, over the past three and a half years the Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s. This week’s convention showed that it has now gone further, recentering the vision of government that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, called upon to make it serve the interests of communities.
When the Biden-Harris administration took office in 2021, the United States was facing a deadly pandemic and the economic crash it had caused. The country also had to deal with the aftermath of the attempt of former president Donald Trump to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and seize the presidency. It appeared that many people in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, had given up on democracy.
Biden set out to prove that democracy could work for ordinary people by ditching the neoliberalism that had been in place for forty years. That system, begun in the 1980s, called for the government to allow unfettered markets to organize the economy. Neoliberalism’s proponents promised it would create widespread prosperity, but instead, it transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. As the middle class hollowed out, those slipping behind lined up behind an authoritarian figure who promised to restore their former centrality by attacking those he told them were their enemies.
When he took office, Biden vowed to prove that democracy worked. With laws like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats directed investment toward ordinary Americans. The dramatic success of their economic program proved that it worked. On Wednesday, former president Bill Clinton noted that since 1989, the U.S. has created 51 million new jobs. Fifty million of those jobs were created under Democratic presidents, while only 1 million were added under Republicans—a striking statistic that perhaps will put neoliberalism, or at least the tired trope that Democrats are worse for the economy than Republicans, to bed.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination convention suggested a more thorough reworking of the federal government, one that also recalls the 1930s but suggests a transformation that goes beyond markets and jobs.
Before Labor Secretary Perkins’s 1935 Social Security Act, the government served largely to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. But Perkins recognized that the purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the community. She recognized that children, women, and elderly and disabled Americans were as valuable to the community as young male workers and the wealthy men who employed them.
With a law that established a federal system of old-age benefits; unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services, Perkins began the process of molding the government to reflect that truth.
Perkins’s understanding of the United States as a community reflected both her time in a small town in Maine and in her experience as a social worker in inner-city Philadelphia and Chicago before the law provided any protections for the workers, including children, who made the new factories profitable. She understood that while lawmakers focused on male workers, the American economy was, and always has been, utterly dependent on the unrecognized contributions of women and marginalized people in the form of childcare, sharing food and housing, and the many forms of unpaid work that keep communities functioning.
This reworking of the American government to reflect community rather than economic
relationships changed the entire fabric of the country, and opponents have worked to destroy it ever since FDR began to put it in place.
Cont below
