What No One Said at the DNC

What stands out most from the 2024 Democratic National Convention is not what was said, but rather what was left unsaid.

Take the 2020 DNC—a year everyone wishes to forget, certainly, but one that the Democrats in particular are keen to strike as far from the history books and the minds of the American people as can reasonably be done. The first day of that convention opened with Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser discussing how she created Black Lives Matter Plaza as a place for America to work through its racial reckoning. The keynote speaker, Michelle Obama, deplored the circumstances of the nation and its leadership. 

“Here at home,” she intoned, “as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.”

The remainder of the convention was chock-full of activist grievances against American society. A litany of accusations tripped off the tongues of speakers. Americans were guilty of “COVID-19, structural racism, police violence against black bodies, violence against members of the trans community.”

A certain Kamala Harris, then candidate for vice president, took the time to explain to Americans how the course of the COVID-19 pandemic was both a punishment for and illustration of their many sins. The virus, she said, “is not an equal opportunity offender: black, Latino, and indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately.” 

The reason? You:

It is the effect of structural racism of inequities in education and technology, healthcare and housing, job security and transportation, the injustice in reproductive and maternal health care, in the excessive use of force by police and in our broader criminal justice system. This virus, it has no eyes and yet it knows exactly how we see each other and how we treat each other… We have got to do the work for George Floyd, for Brianna Taylor, for the lives of too many others to name, for our children and for all of us. We’ve got to do the work to fulfill that promise of equal justice under law. Because here’s the thing, none of us are free until all of us are free.

Thankfully for all of us, the Summer of Floyd is over, and the worst excesses of the insane politics of the COVID era have receded. Americans have largely put behind them the ludicrous demands and cult-like self-flagellation of the “anti-racist” movement. Black Lives Matter turned out to be a grift, Ibram X. Kendi, a fraud. The “defund the police” movement dissolved into incoherence as supporters couldn’t figure out what its slogan meant, and the public realized that thousands of unarmed black men weren’t being shot down in the streets every year.

After strenuously championing the harshest and most authoritarian responses to the events of 2020, the Democrats have by now realized that repeatedly hitting Americans over the head with a cast-iron pan labeled “bigotry” might not be the most effective mode of campaigning. Surprisingly, it turns out that most people are not fond of being called racist and told that their country, history, and heritage are irredeemably evil. The result is that today’s DNC has almost no resemblance to the previous.

Democrats, it seems, are making a play for the rhetorical center.

This year, the convention was festooned with American flags. Instead of beginning with a recitation of America’s historical sins, it began with a massive assembly of union leaders, praising the Biden administration’s record with the working class. Race, the central pivot around which the whole Democratic Party turned just a few years ago, was mentioned relatively little. Instead, there was a new, much more positive message: The Democratic Party is the party of freedom, joy, and protecting and maintaining American values and constitutional government.

The strategy is both fascinating and well executed. What originally seemed like a scramble to find a message for the unprepared new Harris campaign to deploy against the Trump-Vance team—labeling Republicans as “weird”— has slotted into an integrated strategy to reclaim patriotism and normality for the Democrats. Even the constant repetition of Kamala’s “joy” is working to frame a contrast: Trump and Republicans as angry, pessimistic, unpatriotic characters who think that America is losing (and therefore needs to be made great again) versus the joyful, optimistic Democrats who want to protect the American way and the peaceful transfer of power.

The real beauty of the new Democratic sales pitch: they don’t need to change a single policy to pull it off. Freedom can be reduced to the ability to dismember children in the womb, neighborliness to socialism and a racial spoils system, patriotism to infinite immigration (because, after all, if we love our country we’ll want to share it with everyone).

The selection of Tim Walz as Kamala’s running mate is a fantastic illustration of the new approach. Walz, who served in the military and taught social studies at a Minnesota High School, deliberately projects an aura of suburban normality. His campaign speech last night was a masterpiece of “hicklib” oratory, evoking his veteran status to justify his stance on gun control, selling welfare policies and DEI as “making a difference in our neighbors’ lives,” and justifying abortion-till-birth with a simulacra of redneck libertarianism—“because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make.”

It’s an interesting bet: The media will sell the vibes, and the American people have never cared much about the details of political platforms anyhow. If they pull it off, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can give the Democrats any policy they like in a red, white and blue wrapper.