I don’t know if its 2016 PTSD or simply a recognition that almost half the country is still in thrall to a con man but it’s obvious that the Democrats. as giddy as they are after a successful convention, are not going to take anything for granted this time.
Brian Beutler has a good piece on this in his excellent substack newsletter Off Message today. An Excerpt:
In his speech to the convention Wednesday night, Bill Clinton alluded to two elections it must have killed him to see Dems lose: his vice president’s and his wife’s. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen,” he warned, “when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.”
Overconfidence and phony issues alike derailed Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Bill Clinton was not alone worrying they could overtake Harris’s too. Michelle Obama articulated more precisely how the early Harris momentum might slip.
“No matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle,” she said. “We cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
This, too, was about 2016—about the likelihood that Republicans will stumble upon a line of attack that turns out to be sticky, or that Harris takes a position that some of her natural allies view as too extreme or too conservative. Beating Trump is more important than that everything is just so.
Against the backdrop of a four day party, this was the flipside of mobilization: insurance against demobilization.
Barack Obama’s role, by contrast, was persuasion—to widen the party’s appeal by depicting it as an organization that will generously welcome all people of good faith. “We’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices,” he said. “If we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process. After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”
In past elections, particularly in 2016, progressive Democrats would grouse about the party’s willingness to share the stage with Republicans. This year, there was much less complaining. For one thing, progressives are now among the leaders in the party, and can expect prominent speaking roles without having to fight for them. But Democrats understand the assignment better now.
As Brian Schatz noted Wednesday, “Our message is simple. We can fight about the rest of it later. We can fight about the size and the scope of government later. We can fight about libertarian issues or social issues later. We have freedom and democracy to preserve together, and there are certain principles that are bigger than party politics.”
He also noted that, to be truly effective, the proposition has to come from Republicans, like when Adam Kinzinger spoke Thursday and said of Harris, “whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency, and of fidelity to this nation… to my fellow Republicans, if you still pledge allegiance to those principles, I suspect you belong here too.”
(Consider subscribing to read the whole thing. It’s very good as are all of his writings. )
He’s right about this. There are many things that could happen to derail us. If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way over these past few years (decades, actually) it’s to never assume you have it in the bag. Too many times I’ve sat up on election night staring blankly at the returns, feeling like I’ve been hit over the head with a 2×4. Elections are almost always close these days and you just can’t assume anything.
The Democrats have been given a second chance in this election and they know it. Let’s hope everyone can just keep their heads down, get out the vote and be prepared for what the GOP has in store for election day and beyond.