Obama, Sanders highlight in unprecedented format
As a very different Democratic National Convention opened Monday night, Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders made impassioned pleas for people to put aside their differences and combine to defeat President Trump in November.
“We must come together, defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Sanders said to a virtual audience that could see him only online or on television. “My friends, the price of failure is just too great to imagine.”
Obama, who closed out the twohour opening session, said the past four years have shown that Trump “is the wrong president for our country,” unable to deal with the coronavirus, racial injustice and other problems.
“Whenever we look to this White
House for some leadership or consolation ... what we get instead is chaos, division and a total and utter lack of empathy,” the former first lady said. Biden’s life “is a testament to getting back up, and he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.”
It was a strange evening for people used to the noise, excitement and enthusiasm that national political conventions typically bring, with a cheering crowd listening to shouted speeches in a packed arena.
The coronavirus pandemic reduced the crowd at the convention headquarters in Milwaukee to just a handful of local politicians, with speakers weighing in from across the country.
The difference in the convention was shown by Sanders and Obama. The Vermont senator spoke from his hometown of Burlington, with a wall of firewood as a backdrop, while Obama gave her speech in a living room setting. But without a boisterous crowd and the need to pause for guaranteed applause lines, they both were more conversational, making their points in an intimate talk with the audience.
The format also worked for some of the less traditional speakers. While New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave a standard politicalstyle speech slamming Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, Kristin Urquiza of San Francisco made her point with a sharp, yet poignant talk about her father’s death from the disease.
“My father was a healthy 65yearold,” she told the convention audience as pictures of Mark Urquiza were displayed. “His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”
The evening was free of much of the animosity that leaked into the 2016 convention, where angry supporters of Sanders were slow to support Hillary Clinton, the nominee.
It was different this year, with the senator leading the way.
Sanders’ “allinfor Biden” message wasn’t a surprise to anyone who had been listening to him in recent weeks. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, he made his position clear.
“My message to our supporters is we have got to do everything that we can to defeat Donald Trump, who I view as the most dangerous president in American history,” Sanders said.
Sanders’ fullthroated endorsement of Biden doesn’t mean he’s pulling back on his agenda, Amar Shergill of Elk Grove (Sacramento County), a convention delegate and head of the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus, said before the senator’s speech.
“Bernie has been clear from day one that he will do everything he could to elect Biden,” Shergill said. “We need to get rid of Trump, elect Biden and then, as soon as he takes office, get to work” pushing for the progressive agenda.
Sanders talked Monday about how Biden supports many of the progressive programs the senator supports, including a $15anhour minimum wage, 12 weeks of paid family leave, universal preK for 3 and 4yearolds, and a plan that “will greatly expand health care and cut the cost of prescription drugs” — even if it isn’t the Medicare for All that Sanders backs.
Not all the senator’s supporters are so willing to get behind Biden and his programs. Marcy Winograd, a delegate from Santa Barbara who said she “has some issues” with the former vice president, wrote an open letter to convention delegates calling on Biden to hire new foreign policy advisers.
The letter, which has been signed by more than 450 convention delegates, including 144 from California, said Biden’s advisers “have demonstrated poor judgment on national security issues.” She said she was quickly banned from an online session of the Democrats’ Ethnic Council on Monday when she posted the letter while one of her targets, Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama’s United Nations ambassador and national security adviser, was on the session.
“I’ll tell my friends to vote for Joe Biden absolutely, but that doesn’t mean we give him a pass,” Winograd said.
In a pointed demonstration of the wide range of Biden’s supporters, Sanders, Obama and other Democratic leaders were joined Monday night by four wellknown Republicans: former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard and 2010 GOP candidate for California governor, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman and former New York Rep. Susan Molinari.
“I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country,” Kasich said in his prepared remarks. “I know that Joe Biden, with his experience and his wisdom and his decency, can bring us together.”
While the truncated convention schedule left plenty of bigname Democrats scrambling for a chance to say even a few words to the national audience, the party found a spot for Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones.
Jones who took office in 2018 after a stunning special election victory in one of the nation’s reddest states, is the underdog in his reelection effort against Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach. With Democrats looking to net the three seats that would flip control of the Senate, a minute or two on the convention program is an investment.
The twohour nightly show isn’t the entire convention. Throughout the week, party groups, caucuses and delegations will be meeting online to conduct business and connect with activists across the country.
During caucus meetings earlier in the day Monday, Asian American and Black delegates celebrated the historymaking candidacy of presumptive vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and were treated to guest visits from elected officials and even Hollywood stars like B.D. Wong and Daniel Dae Kim. The meetings were all virtual, and emphasized the importance of getting out the vote in November.
The new convention format will get another test on Tuesday. While many of the speeches, entertainment and other features were prerecorded Monday, convention delegates will officially nominate Biden on Tuesday, and there’s no way to tape the “roll call of the states,” where the leaders of each of the state and territorial delegations gets their moment on national TV.