What Went Down On The Final Night Of The DNC

Do you think more people are watching the DNC or the NBA Draft Lottery right now?

Earlier today I spoke with Addisu Demissie, Biden’s senior adviser for convention coordination, about what it’s like to take a time-worn in-person event and adapt it to a virtual setting.

Shortly after Demissie was tasked with organizing the convention back in May, Democrats decided to cut the program back to just two hours a night. Demissie said that dictated a lot of programming decisions, such as having shorter segments and more variety among them. They also made the obvious choice to record more content ahead of time. “The most common element of previous conventions is the one element we haven’t had at our disposal: a speech in front of a live crowd,” Demissie said.

Demissie called it a “fun challenge” but admitted it’s been more difficult to piece together the convention remotely than it would have been in person. The program has changed several times over the last few months, and they’re coordinating everything “through shared docs and Zoom calls.” Demissie was quick to credit the DNC staff for making everything run smoothly, though: “It’s been a team effort. We’ve literally had someone on the ground in every state — because of the roll call — to help us execute these things.”

One reason it’s been hard to plan a remote convention is that, as Demissie explained, “you don’t really know what it’s going to look like until you see it live — unlike past conventions.” But he said he hasn’t been nervous that something would go wrong, like losing the connection in the middle of a live speech. “In many ways, the calmest hours have been the two hours from 9 to 11 each night, because we have a great production team and they’ve already done all the hard work.”

The Rhode Island calamari chef just got a shoutout in Perez’s intro. I stand by my belief that fried clams is the superior fried seafood.