What Went Down On The Final Night Of The DNC

I’m thinking about the combination of, for example, Duckworth referring to Trump as “Coward-in-Chief” and the other direct attacks on the president, alongside the points about compromise and bipartisanship. I think these are working in concert, with the bipartisanship providing a backdrop for these very sharp criticisms. There is no “he means well, we just disagree about policy” here. The inclusion of Republican perspectives makes this about something other than party politics.

Here’s a thought … one thing both of the Obamas tried to do in their speeches was appeal to those who don’t like politics or feel apathetic about voting. Do you think it would have been more effective for Democrats to try and feature videos from Americans who don’t vote regularly but are thinking about it this year, rather than highlighting “future former Republicans”? As a point of reference, the former is more than 40 percent of the voting eligible population.

Democrats typically speak a lot about class, characterizing Republicans as the party of big business and the rich (the most commonly cited thing people say they dislike about Republicans). In 2016, Clinton made that argument less often than Obama did when running against Romney, which meant attitudes toward the poor and resentment of the rich had no effects on voting in 2016 despite their strong effects in 2012. It will be interesting to see if Biden ramps up the class rhetoric, which was a staple of his early primary speeches.