CHICAGO —
Former President Clinton had trouble recalling the year of his first Democratic convention — either 1972 or 1976 — but wondered how many more he’d be around for.
“All these young leaders coming up after me,” he said in a wistful prime-time address Wednesday night. “They look better. They sound better. And they’ll be exciting.”
This week’s Democratic National Convention was about generational change for a party whose leaders are in their 70s and 80s, including an 81-year-old president who was nudged out of the race last month by an 84-year-old former House speaker. The Beyoncé music, the coconut social media influencer booths and the roster of new convention speakers all contributed to the fresh, upbeat tone.
But in other ways, it felt like a return to the Clinton era — with big and bold ideas for structural change that have energized the party in recent years replaced by incremental appeals to middle-class anxiety.
There was no Green New Deal, no Medicare for All or comprehensive vision for immigration reform that have motivated Democrats in recent years. Calls to expand or restructure the Supreme Court were kept at bay.
Instead, Democrats, when they discussed policy at all, talked about providing stipends for first-time home buyers, expanding child tax credits, protecting the Affordable Care Act, passing a bipartisan border security bill that was killed by former President Trump, and adding more price caps on prescription drugs, a project started under President Biden. The most prominent item on the agenda, a national right to abortion, may be the least likely to pass a Congress where neither party is expected to hold a wide margin.
Vice President Kamala Harris capped it off with a Thursday night promise to be “a president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical and has common sense.”
Not exactly a moon shot.
The spending plans are more liberal than they were under Clinton, a reflection of the country’s diminished concern for budget deficits and increased skepticism of corporations. But the combination of centrist and aspirational rhetoric with kitchen table economics sounds about as familiar as Clinton’s Fleetwood Mac walk-on music.
The real glue that now binds the party together, and arouses the most passion, has been around for nearly a decade: a deep loathing of Trump.
“Ever since Donald Trump rode down that ridiculous escalator, we as a nation have felt trapped,” Maryland Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks said Wednesday night. “Every national decision has been made in reaction to this one man and his extremist MAGA movement.”
Speakers used giant props to trash his ideas. Activists wore T-shirts highlighting his felonies. And Republicans who denounced the former president got as much applause as progressive heroes.
“Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching: If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot,” Geoff Duncan, a Republican former Georgia lieutenant governor, said in prime time Wednesday, prompting loud “U-S-A” cheers from the arena full of Democrats.
The cheers were an outgrowth of the party’s efforts to reclaim the rhetoric of patriotism, couching its mix of economic and reproductive rights promises as a “freedom” agenda.
“We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, adopting former President Reagan’s libertarian language, if not his stance, on abortion rights.
The elixir of abortion access sprinkled with jokes about the “weird” opposition has proved potent, helping Harris draw even with Trump in polls after Biden dropped out of the race.
Chicago resident Sherrie Travis, a 77-year-old retired attorney, was so fearful of a second Trump term in 2020 that she volunteered as a poll watcher in nearby Milwaukee. Her anxiety returned as Biden began campaigning for a second term.
“But since Harris has come on, the vibe is so much different,” said Travis, who carried a “Cat ladies for Kamala” tote bag as she walked out of the convention center. “It really does my heart good to see so many young people very engaged and working hard.”
The desire to win has helped the party conceal ideological differences that have consumed prior conventions and flummoxed Harris when she ran for president four years ago. Times were decidedly different in 2020’s primary season, with more than two dozen candidates hawking plans on healthcare, taxes, court reform, immigration and policing — each trying to capture slices of moderate voters or progressive activists who were often at odds with one another.
Harris, whose ideology has never been clear, appeared to shift her positions to win them over but wound up looking unsure of herself.
That set Harris’ reputation back, prompting many party leaders to call for an open process to select a nominee once Biden dropped out last month. But Harris acted quickly to show her strength once Biden endorsed her, making a rapid round of calls to consolidate support from party grandees.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who is the face of young progressives, gave Harris a hearty endorsement during her convention speech in which she recounted her own struggles to pay bills and acquire healthcare coverage when she worked as a waitress.
She made no mention of her sharp criticism of comments Harris made three years ago telling migrants in Guatemala to go home. Nor did she knock her on the war between Israel and Hamas that prompted thousands of protesters outside the United Center who were angry at the Biden administration’s support for Israel. Instead, she praised Harris for working on a cease-fire.
“I am here tonight because America lies before us a rare and precious opportunity in Kamala Harris,” she said Monday. “We have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class, because she is from the middle class.”
Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), credits Biden with building consensus over the party’s direction, taking it about as far left as he could to balance competing factions. Harris is the beneficiary.
“It’s just the presentation and the way she’s going to say it,” he said. “It’s new. It’s fresh.”
But the party has changed in the Trump years. It is now more educated, more female and more dependent on winning big margins with young people and people of color, some of whom have been defecting to Trump or threatening to stay home. The pressure to hold it together could become even more difficult once Trump leaves the scene.
Seeds of ideological division were even visible during the convention, with the protests and when former American Express Chief Executive Kenneth Chennault appeared to challenge the party’s populist wing in a speech praising Harris for understanding it’s “necessary for a president to be both pro business and pro worker.”
The array of competing interests was evident inside the convention center’s DemPalooza expo, where booths pushing voting rights, gun control and infrastructure investment sat alongside Catholic Democrats and Atheists & Humanists in Elected Office, while a youth climate group funded by California billionaire Tom Steyer helped people craft friendship bracelets and a pair of pioneering transgender lawmakers held court on gray couches in “The Power Lounge.”
Roslyn Bacon, a retired teacher who traveled to the convention from Memphis, said outside the convention hall that she expects fellow activists to settle their differences later, after Trump is defeated.
“You know, there’s a saying: No permanent friends, no permanent enemies, permanent interests. Right now, we all have the same interest,” said Bacon, who wore a Harris shirt and a set of white pearls in homage to the nominee. “When the dust settles, it’s OK for people to go back into their respective corners and — metaphorically — slug it out.”
