If elections were decided by the party conventions, the race for the White House could have been over already.
Democrats in Chicago are mounting a more compelling, energetic and diverse spectacle than Republicans in Milwaukee a month ago and drawing a bigger TV audience.
On Tuesday Democrats’ joyful state-by-state roll call, with thousands of delegates’ glowing wristbands lighting up the arena, had online Republicans seething with envy. To rub salt in the wound, jumbotrons then showed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz holding a rally in Milwaukee – in the very arena where Republicans held their own convention.
Long the party of Hollywood, Democrats also delivered star power. During that roll call, DJ Cassidy played background music, Lil Jon performed for Georgia and the film director Spike Lee was in the New York delegation.
On Wednesday, the actor Mindy Kaling joked about cooking with her friend Kamala. There were performances by the singers Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Sheila E and Maren Morris and appearances by Kenan Thompson of Saturday Night Live and the media personality Oprah Winfrey, a longtime Democratic donor who said “decency and respect” are on the ballot in 2024.
Republicans did at least match Democrats for unity and self-belief. They swaggered in Milwaukee convinced that Donald Trump had this election in the bag. But that was when Joe Biden was still the nominee. Now it’s Democrats who are unified and feel the wind at their backs and the polls show the change: Harris is now winning and Trump is behind.
But the convention vibes are also very different. The Republican version last month was older and whiter, featured celebrity appearances from people such as musician Kid Rock and wrestler Hulk Hogan, and culminated in delegates punching the air and chanting: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Republicans’ list of diverse speakers often felt forced while the Democrats’ diversity feels effortless. The speeches have revealed a party with strength in depth. Many of the best have been by women of color, such as Michelle Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett. Wednesday also featured a reading by Black poet Amanda Gorman.
If Republicans were an amateur theatre troupe, Democrats are delivering an all-singing, all-dancing Broadway show with the final act: Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday. It is fodder for the faithful. But the crucial voters who will decide this election in a handful of swing states may not even be watching yet. So far the show has been a hit, but the vital final act with the headline star in the spotlight has not yet played out.
Here’s what you need to know
1 The biggest speech of Walz’s life
The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, accepted the Democratic nomination for vice-president on Wednesday night as his tearful 17-year-old son, Gus, stood up sobbing and yelled: “That’s my dad!”
The former school teacher, little known just a month ago, got an ideal introduction on the national stage. Ben Ingman, one of his old students, testified: “Tim Walz is the kind of guy you can count on to push you out of a snow bank. I know this because Tim Walz has pushed me out of a snow bank.”
Ingman was also joined on stage by members of the Mankato West high school American football team, which Walz once coached. Now middle-aged men, they were wearing red-and-white football jerseys.
Walz ran with the metaphorical ball as he looked forward to the campaign ahead. “It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”
Walz has an image as a folksy, midwestern teacher, football coach and dad. He has also become the target of Republican criticism over how he has portrayed his national guard service and his personal story.
On stage he set about presenting his life story and values and burnishing his reputation as both jovial and sharp-tongued. He recounted his career in Congress and as Minnesota governor and decried Republican overreach on issues such as IVF care.
“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said. “We also protected reproductive freedom, because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make, and even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: mind your own damn business, and that includes IVF and fertility treatments.”
He was done in 15 and a half minutes – making this the shortest speech of any vice-presidential nominee since at least 1984.
2 Bill Clinton takes aim at Trump and complacency
Bill Clinton rolled back the years with an elder statesperson’s speech that dubbed Harris “the president of joy” (which presumably makes Trump the president of fear). Clinton ran far longer than his prepared remarks. He had reportedly torn up his original draft after witnessing the energy of the first day and written a new one.
“After the last few days, aren’t you proud to be a Democrat?” he began. “Two days ago, I turned 78. The oldest man in my family for four generations and the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I’m still younger than Donald Trump.”
Clinton’s stock has fallen in the #MeToo era and, though his reception was warm, it was much less adulatory than for Barack Obama, the only other living Democrat to serve two terms as president.
Still, the crowd enjoyed his jabs at Trump. “Donald Trump has been a paragon of consistency. He’s still dividing. He’s still blaming. He’s still belittling other people. He creates chaos and then he sort of curates it, as if it were precious art.”
And: “The next time you hear him, don’t count the lies – count the I’s. He’s like one of those tenors ... singing ‘me, me, me, me’. When Kamala Harris is president, every day will begin with ‘you, you, you, you’.”
Clinton also offered a warning against complacency. As the husband of Hillary Clinton, who thought the election was wrapped up in 2016, he should know. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues,” he said.
3 The ghost of January 6 returns
Video and sound from the 2021 riot at the US Capitol were played in the convention hall. Delegates sat in stunned silence, a jarring contrast to their roars and applause throughout the night.
Congressman Bennie Thompson, Congressman Andy Kim and the retired Capitol police sergeant Aquilino Gonell spoke of the horror of that day – and Trump’s role in instigating it.
Olivia Troye, who quit her White House national security job under Trump after January 6, said the Republican candidate was laying the groundwork to undermine the 2024 election. Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker on that day, said: “Let us not forget who assaulted democracy on January 6: he did. But let us not forget who saved democracy that day: we did.”
The references were especially notable because the Harris-Walz campaign has, so far at least, dialed down the grim warnings about the threat that Trump poses to US democracy. This was a central theme of the Biden campaign. Harris may now be using the language of “freedom” instead. The song of that name by Beyoncé quickly became her soundtrack. Convention organisers dubbed Wednesday night “a fight for our freedoms”.
4 Uncommitted delegates ramp up the pressure
Uncommitted delegates pushing for a Palestinian American to get a speaking slot on the main stage of the convention held a sit-in outside the United Center.
The delegates Abbas Alawieh, June Rose, Rima Mohammad and Sabrene Odeh announced that they would “commit a moral act of civil disobedience” to achieve their goal in the next 24 hours. “We are waiting for a phone call from Vice-President Harris and the DNC to allow a single Palestinian American speaker from the convention stage,” they said in a joint statement.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted her support: “Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment. To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”
Earlier, Democrats recognised the hostages still being held by Hamas after its 7 October attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed.
The parents of the Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, received a standing ovation and chants of “bring them home” when they took the stage, with some delegates moved to tears. Goldberg-Polin, 23, was among more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October.
“Bringing the hostages home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” Polin said, adding: “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
The war in Gaza has split the Democratic base, with pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrating outside the United Center and several speakers this week acknowledging civilian deaths in the Israeli offensive in Gaza. More than 40,000 people have died in Gaza, according to local health authorities.
Another major demonstration is planned for Thursday. But fears of a repeat of Democrats’ 1968 convention, where anti-Vietnam war protests led to a police riot while party factions clashed inside the hall, have not come to pass.
By the book
The star stage prop of the convention is an oversized book meant to represent the Heritage Foundation thinktank’s Project 2025, a sweeping set of goals to shrink government and push it to the right.
Various speakers have brought the book on stage. On Wednesday, the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, even ripped a page from the ceremonial volume and said he was going to keep it and show it to undecided voters. The comedian Kenan Thompson also wielded the prop as he held virtual conversations about its implications for voters.
What to expect tomorrow
Kamala Harris will accept the Democratic party nomination, becoming only the second woman in history to be the standard bearer of a major party. It will be the biggest speech of her career and the likes of Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and others have set the expectations bar high. But Democrats are sure to generate as much hoopla and hype as possible. Speculation is rife that Beyoncé will pop up with a rendition of Freedom.
