Democrats Stress Positivity and Patriotism at Convention

Happy Thursday! This is apparently the space where we update readers on our food reviews, so you should check out Charles’ review of the Chicago hot dog at Portillo’s, plus Drucker and Mike’s take on the burgers at Au Cheval.

Up to Speed (Convention Edition)

• DNC programming was running significantly behind schedule on Wednesday night, and if you’re looking for a culprit, blame Bill Clinton. The 78-year-old former president, speaking in a raspy voice, ad-libbed significant chunks of his speech. From the convention floor, Dispatch Politics felt a pang of sympathy for the teleprompter operator, who seemed to struggle mightily at times to find which portions of the prepared remarks Clinton skipped over. Perhaps Clinton’s most memorable ad-lib of the night was this dig at Donald Trump: “What are they supposed to make of these endless tributes to the ‘late great Hannibal Lecter’? President Obama once gave me the great honor of saying I was the explainer-in-chief. Folks, I’ve thought and thought about it, and I don’t know what to say.”
• Delegates to the convention from the “Uncommitted” movement, whose members cast protest votes in Democratic presidential primaries to show their disapproval of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel, conducted a sit-in outside the United Center on Wednesday night. The protesters wanted the Democratic National Committee to allow a pro-Palestinian speaker to deliver an address on the convention’s main stage.
• Outside the convention, Dispatch Politics spotted a protest of Christian activists holding signs with declarations such as “Homo sex is sin.” Countering them were costumed demonstrators who stood in front of them and danced. Also present was a man carrying the flag of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization.
• Because Wednesday’s headlining speaker was Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Gopher State had plenty of moments to shine. Musician John Legend, a politically active Democrat, performed alongside Sheila E. with a rendition of “Let’s Go Crazy” by Minnesota’s own Prince. Following that, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota took the stage to tout her friend Walz’s “Midwestern common sense.” Finally, after Walz’s speech ended and most of the delegates and attendees had left the United Center, the Minnesota delegation remained on the floor, chanting “Minnesota!” over and over again.

Up to Speed (Beyond Chicago)

• Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to end his run for the White House on Friday, the New York Times reported Wednesday after RFK’s campaign announced he would give a speech “about the present historical moment and his path forward.” Although nothing is final, it is possible that Kennedy will endorse Donald Trump, per the Times. Both candidates will be in Arizona that day, and the news comes a day after Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, indicated the campaign was weighing whether to end the run and endorse the former president. Kennedy has been polling at an average of about 5 percent nationally since Biden dropped out of the race.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised its estimate of how many jobs the U.S. economy added between April 2023 and March 2024 downward by 818,000. The revision adds to concerns that more economic struggles are looming, which, no doubt, will be a serious issue in the fall elections.

Oprah and a Football Team: Convention’s Third Night Goes All-American

CHICAGO—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Wednesday evening, capping a raucous third night of a Democratic National Convention that adopted Reagan-era GOP values of American exceptionalism and love of country as its theme and featured disaffected Republicans who are supporting the Democratic White House nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“We’re all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason: We love this country,” Walz said, at the outset of an efficient, energetic address that lasted roughly 15 minutes and brought a packed crowd at the United Center arena to its feet. 

The coming out party for Harris’ 60-year-old running mate, a former teacher, was well choreographed and included some touching moments. Walz was introduced by a former student of his, Benjamin C. Ingman, who in turn welcomed to the stage some members of the Mankato West High School football team the Minnesota governor helped coach to a state championship a quarter century ago. At one point, Walz’s son, Gus—a high school student—stood, tears in his eyes, and clapped before pointing at his father and saying: “That’s my dad.”

As has quickly become the custom for this iteration of the DNC, the program ran long and went late.

Walz kicked off his remarks at nearly 11:30 p.m. ET, well after prime time for much of the country. But those late starting times for keynote speakers have at least partially been the result of the Democratic Party’s embarrassment of political and celebrity riches. A president or former president has spoken each night of the convention thus far; on Wednesday, it was Bill Clinton. Rising Democratic stars like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro both took to the stage last night, as did entertainment luminaries like Stevie Wonder and Oprah Winfrey.

“I’ve seen racism and sexism and income inequality and division. I’ve not only seen it, at times, I’ve been on the receiving end of it,” Winfrey said. She quickly added: “But more often than not, what I’ve witnessed and experienced are human beings, both conservative and liberal, who may not agree with each other, but who’d still help you in a heartbeat if you were in trouble. These are the people who make me proud to say that I am an American.”

Moore also sounded an optimistic note about American society, a notable departure from some of the blanket negativity that has emanated from the left in recent years. “The unevenness of the American journey has made some skeptical,” he said. “But I’m not asking you to give up your skepticism. I just want that skepticism to be your companion, not your captor.”

Telling the story of his own rise from a troubled, underprivileged childhood, Moore proceeded to explain that the “American journey” is that of “a man raised by a remarkable, immigrant single mom; a man who felt handcuffs on his wrists at 11 years old who now stands before you as the 63rd governor of Maryland and the first black governor in the history of our state.”

The race for the White House is neck-and-neck. Just hours before Harris is scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination for president in a speech Thursday night, she is in a statistical tie in national polling with the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Ditto in the key battleground states. 

In a strategic effort to steal vote share from Trump and build a cushion, the Harris campaign is using the convention to accelerate its outreach to disaffected Republicans who are uncomfortable with the 45th president by giving some of them prime speaking slots here in the Windy City. Earlier in the week, Stephanie Grisham, who served as a press secretary in the Trump White House, addressed convention delegates with brief remarks that both warned of the risks of reelecting the former president and vouched for Harris. On Wednesday, Republican Geoff Duncan also told the convention he was backing the vice president.

“Let’s get the hard part out of the way: I am a Republican,” the former Georgia lieutenant governor said. “But tonight, I stand here as an American—an American that cares more about the future of this country than the future of Donald Trump.” 

“Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching,” Duncan continued. “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.”  

Pro-Israel Democrats Tout Their Electoral Success

CHICAGO—Fears of the Democratic National Convention being disrupted and divided over the issue of U.S. support for Israel have turned out to have been largely unfounded.

Marches from pro-Palestinian protesters outside the convention’s security perimeter have been underwhelming sideshows, not the large, sustained demonstrations predicted by organizers. When some delegates near the rear of the United Center arena attempted to disrupt President Joe Biden’s Monday address by unveiling a large banner that read “Stop Arming Israel,” cheering delegates blocked the banner from view and Biden continued to speak uninterrupted. Even the highest-profile critic of U.S. aid to Israel to speak on the convention stage, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, avoided the subject Monday night, mentioning only that Vice President Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.”

And on Wednesday evening, as the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen and hostage taken by Hamas during the October 7 terrorist attack, began to speak to the convention, the thousands of attendees stood and cheered, chanting, “Bring them home!”

Rather than a repeat of the 1968 Democratic convention held here in this city, when anti-war protesters clashed violently with police in the streets, the split within the party over Israel and the war in Gaza has barely surfaced, leaving supporters of Israel within the Democratic Party feeling confident about their position within the coalition.

“We win elections,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, about the party’s pro-Israel wing. “The other side can’t win elections. That’s why they’re blocking traffic.”

Sherman was one of more than a dozen elected officials who spoke Wednesday at a midday reception sponsored by the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a group that works to elect pro-Israel Democrats in primaries and general elections. The consistent theme from the slate of speakers was this: Support for Israel is entirely consistent with liberal and progressive values.

The event was something of a celebration for the group, whose PAC had successfully helped topple two sitting Democratic House members in primaries this year, Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri. The group was also victorious in some open Democratic primaries, including in last month’s nominating contest for a House seat in the Phoenix area. After a mandated automatic recount, the DMFI-backed candidate, Yassamin Ansari, was declared the winner by just 39 votes over Raquel Terán, who had been noncommittal about the extent of her support for military aid to Israel.

The group’s leader, veteran Democratic operative Mark Mellman, said the defeat of what he called “anti-Israel candidates” is a boon to the entire party’s electoral chances.

“The message to candidates around the country is, being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, it’s smart politics,” Mellman told Dispatch Politics.

The speakers talking up their party’s and presidential ticket’s pro-Israel bona fides on Wednesday were diverse in background and position: retiring Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the Jewish chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Gov. Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky who touted his creation of an “antisemitism task force”; and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who referred to his city as the “Tel Aviv of America.”

Also on the program was George Latimer, the Democratic nominee for a New York City House seat who, with DMFI’s help, defeated Bowman in the primary earlier this year. The 70-year-old Latimer had run against Bowman, a progressive darling, on the issue of aid to Israel. On Wednesday, Latimer told Dispatch Politics that he doesn’t believe that “opposition to Israel is a progressive value.”

That theme—that support for Israel is entirely consistent with liberalism and progressivism—was a constant refrain at the DMFI event.

Rep. Mike Levin of California called himself a “proud pro-Israel progressive.” Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota talked about a visit to Israel she made with her wife four years ago. “It was in that moment when we realized this is the only place in the entire Middle East where we can take our own family,” she said, referring to Israel’s openness to LGBT people.

And Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, a black congresswoman from Cleveland, likened her experience growing up in the inner city to the dangerous conditions Israelis live under, which she said she saw first-hand during a visit to the Jewish state. “Being vulnerable, hearing gunshots is not an unfamiliar thing to me,” Brown said. “I never felt more vulnerable standing within a few feet of bomb shelters. Knowing how vulnerable the state of Israel was made me recognize how important it is for us to have a solid friendship and to always, always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Despite the positive attitude at the DMFI event, there was still a sense that the pro-Israel wing’s dominance in their party remains tenuous.

“There’s no question that my colleagues … stand with Israel,” Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois told attendees. “But there is no certainty whatsoever that that majority will be there in the next generation unless we work together and ensure the Democratic majority for Israel.”

Schneider later told Dispatch Politics that Democrats like him do not want to see Republicans alone claim to be the pro-Israel party. Late on Wednesday night, for instance, Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account an attack on the “highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro” and claimed Harris “hates Israel.”

“You’ve had a concerted effort to make Israel a partisan issue—a wedge issue, and that’s the Republican side. And they’ve been trying to do that for a generation,” Schneider said. “I would prefer [that it be a] nonpartisan, bipartisan issue.”

And that, Mellman said, is why he believes Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, should articulate their support for Israel on the trail. 

“I think the pro-Israel community is far larger than the anti-Israel community, and it’s a community that needs some reassurance,” Mellman told Dispatch Politics. “I think it’s important for the campaign to provide that reassurance in the form of verbal commitments during the campaign.”

Notable and Quotable

“I had 24 kids in my high school class—and none of them went to Yale.”

—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, during his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination, hitting his Republican counterpart, Sen. J.D. Vance, for going to Yale Law School, August 21, 2024.