The record for longest sustained applause at the Democratic National Convention was set in
1964. Robert Kennedy, less than a year after JFK’s assassination, received an ovation for sixteen minutes.
While not mourning a tragedy, a similar sense of reverence filled the first day of the 2024 DNC in Chicago. The five-minute welcoming President Joe Biden received when he took to the convention stage was indicative of both the moment and the forty-sixth President’s place in history.
Since the last DNC in 2020, Biden had defeated Donald Trump and, perhaps just as importantly, stepped aside for his Vice President to take the reins when winning in November appeared increasingly unlikely.
At the same time, prospects for flipping the U.S. House of Representatives and holding the U.S. Senate in the 2024 elections appeared bleak.
Biden’s decision to not run for re-election drastically upended this trend, and signaled that the Democratic Party was responsive to voters’ concerns and would not risk a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.
California delegate Deepa Sharma attributed the party’s fallen fortunes eight years ago to complacency and a lack of unity. “For me, I learned about the power of unity, coming together, just listening and talking to one another,” Sharma tells The Progressive. “The polling showed Hillary so far ahead and the gravity of the situation hadn’t landed yet that a reality TV show host could become President.”
Clinton did not lose because she just rested on her laurels—she ran a bad campaign, something Democrats have yet to fully acknowledge.
Clinton missed a trifecta, losing the otherwise reliable Democratic states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, each of which had gone Democratic in every presidential contest since 1992. Clinton had blown off these states and instead focused her time and resources elsewhere.
Joeff Davis
The crowd reacts to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris making a surprise appearance the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Biden learned from this, and focused like a laser on the upper Midwest, making workers’ rights and manufacturing jobs a top priority. His 2020 campaign slogan and agenda said as much: Build back better.
The people responded, and Biden carried not just one but all three of those states in the trifecta.
During his presidency, Biden delivered a battery of legislation that addressed the country’s economic ills along the lines of his party’s New Deal heritage.
Similarly, President Lyndon Johnson’s ambitious domestic agenda was on full display Monday night in the United Center in Chicago; speaker after speaker held up Medicaid, Medicare, and Head Start as legacies of their party. The next generation of challenges, prescription drug reform, price-gouging, and the future of democracy figured highly, too.
Noticeably absent were the policies of the neoliberal era. No mention of the trade deals that Bill Clinton championed in the 1990s were made, nor the de-regulatory framework Jimmy Carter rammed through the U.S. Congress in the late 1970s. They didn’t work then; they wouldn’t work now.
Last night, winners and losers were cast in full relief, and not just through the contrast of the 2016 and 2020 party standard bearers. The strategies of successful campaigns and winning agendas were clear as well; campaigns that focus on issues truly important to folks like those in Biden’s old neighborhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, or Lyndon Johnson’s Hill Country in south Texas matter—not those which place Wall Street demands over Main Street needs—these include a strong manufacturing economy and good-paying union jobs.
In 2020, Biden took the baton from his former running mate Barack Obama in the name of New Deal-era policies. It’s up to Kamala Harris to go further.