Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Harris, and the band, at Thursday night's convention crescendo. Below: the crowd.
New Haven delegate Audrey Tyson invites U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro to join her in dancing to Stevie Wonder performing on night 3.
Chicago — Beyonce never performed as rumored at the United Center Thursday night — but Kamala Harris did.
Harris received a pop star’s reception as she delivered an acceptance speech as the first-ever Asian-American and Black female Democratic Party presidential nominee, at a convention that marked a new era in political conventions as political theater.
PINK performing Thursday evening.
To rock star-worthy applause, Harris vowed to build and strengthen the middle class with an “opportunity economy” “where everybody has the chance to compete and the chance to succeed.”
“We have so much more in common than what separates us. None of us have to fail for all of us to succeed. In unity there is strength,” Harris declared. Then an estimated 100,000 balloons descended on the hall.
The speech capped the final night of a high-energy four-day Democratic National Convention. The nights drew hundreds of millions of prime-time viewers on TV and online, even if the final night turned a bit anticlimactic amid the anticipation of a Beyonce concert that never materialized.
Organizers of the four-night main events drew on the kind of entertainment that usually fills arenas like the 23,500-seat United Center: Literal performances by pop stars like PINK and the Chicks, Stevie Wonder and John Legend. And full-throated speeches by politicians adopting the cadences and body language and timing of musicians and stand-up comics.
A DJ turned the normally upbeat state-by-state roll call into a full-out party, fun not just to take part in but to watch on screen. On Thursday night a DJ had the crowd dancing within the first hour between politician speeches.
The center was jammed every night. It felt festive, with people jostling their way through makeshift aisles, dancing in their seats, shouting and cheering, guessing which surprise stars might show up, waving slogan-bearing signs. People hesitated to leave their seats or standing spots out of FOMO, or else concern they couldn’t get back in. The seats filled up an hour before Thursday evening’s session began; eventually even the hallways were at capacity and people with credentials couldn’t get in.
The week had the feel of a Kamalapalooza — a Lollapalooza-style cultural celebration, the latest stage in the evolution of the American presidential political convention merging with celebrity popular culture.
Political conventions used to involve politicians meeting to decide on a presidential ticket. They’d negotiate among delegations and in back rooms. They’d debate issues and haggle over the platform. The show was for the politicos present.
That gradually changed with television, but the basic tasks remained the same.
By this year, parties had decided their candidates before the convention. The convention turned into a coronation, a pep rally to send party workers back on the campaign trail with renewed energy and purpose. This year the Democrats even formally chose their candidate in an electronic vote beforehand.
The parties also have gradually sought to make the platform, often ignored in any chance, perfunctory and noncontroversial. The one big issue dividing the Democrats this year — the war in Gaza — was visible in pro-ceasefire advocates wearing kaffiyehs in the hall and protesters marching at a separate location. But the party kept the advocates off the stage and their signs out of the view of TV cameras.
New Haven delegate Martin Dunleavy observed this evolution firsthand. He was attending his ninth national convention (out of 10) since the 1968 Chicago convention.
“Almost every convention I have been to since Clinton has had elements of pop culture and entertainers, especially musical acts,” he noted. This wasn’t Stevie Wonder’s first convention, for instance. And organizers have paid attention to the TV audience for decades.
But until recently, Dunleavy noted, speakers “were aiming their speeches at the people in the hall, not people at home. Now the speakers are clearly aware that the audience is the television audience. It makes them work on their delivery, work on their entertainment value, work on their appeals to nonpolitical audience, which is going to be more entertaining, a few more jokes.” Barack and Michelle Obama, Raphael Warnock … speaker after speaker gave rock-star performances, or at least tried to.
Slicker videos have become central to the presentation. Biographical video of Harris and vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz preceded their appearances, and prerecorded pieces on IVF, Donald Trump’s record, and other issues preceded speeches about them.
The entertainers have become more prominent, with the genres expanding. Including how the convention addressed the “Project 2025” policy plan developed by Trump’s allies at the Heritage Foundation. One of the convention’s most effective pieces of political theater came Wednesday night when comedian Kenan Thompson presented highlights (lowlights?) of the plan as questions to people whose lives would be affected by it, in the form of a Saturday Night Live mock quiz show.
“Tonight I’m thinking of the Chicago of 1968 with bloodied protesters chanting ‘The whole world is watching,’” former state Comptroller, White House advisor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry posted Thursday on Facebook. “We are as united now as we were divided then. The whole world is watching but this time it’s to see if Beyonce and Taylor will show up. Who knows, they just might. Either way, we’ll all be there having the time of our lives. Amazing. Simply amazing.”
Beyonce and Taylor never showed. But the show went on.
Pro-Palestinian uncommitted delegates marched and chanted in the arena hall Thursday night when they were prevented from taking their assigned seats in the hall. DNC reps said the fire marshal had declared the arena at capacity. Eventually people were moved and the delegates seated.
Paul Bass Photo
New Haven delegate Dunleavy on convention floor: Speakers now put TV audience in mind.
Harris onstage Thursday night.
The Independent live-blog team documented and commented on the evening in real time. The live-blog follows: