The Democratic Party has remade itself
My takeaways from the DNC.
Last night, one of America’s two political parties gathered in Illinois and heard from a former CIA officer and several military veterans. They waved American flags and chanted “USA” while homage was paid to John McCain and Ronald Reagan. A sheriff spoke about increasing police funding; a Tea Party lawmaker opined on what it means to be conservative. The party’s presidential nominee, a former prosecutor, promised to toughen border security and protect American freedom.
No, it wasn’t a Republican convention. Just a new political reality.
The Democratic convention in Chicago showed a party finally addressing a core contradiction of the past half-decade. Electorally speaking, the Trump years have been good to Democrats, with victories in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2023 raining down like manna from heaven. But from a messaging standpoint, the era has been one stumble after another, with the party bouncing around the ideological map in search of a narrative that clicks. The persistent sense has been that the Democrats have won more for being the “not Trump” party than due to any positive association in voters’ minds.
Polls show that the party has a brand problem — one they may be able to overcome while Trump is on the ballot, but which will surely be lurking afterwards. But conventions are nothing if not branding exercises; the Democrats’ this past week reflected a party trying to forge a new identity. So what if it meant pissing off some members of their coalition and cribbing several major Republican talking points? The convention showed a party was a party that wants to win — not just against Donald Trump, but after him too — and is willing to remake itself to do it.
The Democrats appeared keenly aware of their worst stereotypes and came prepared with carefully calibrated, poll-tested responses to each one.
Soft on crime? “After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security,” Vice President Kamala Harris said, in an acceptance speech that returned repeatedly to her experience as a prosecutor.
Weak on national security? “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests,” she declared.
Afraid of military might? “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” Harris said.
Judgmental? Nearly ever major DNC speaker took pains to offer grace to conservatives, instead of scorning them, from former President Barack Obama noting that when “a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people” to Oprah Winfrey promising that “we are not so different from our neighbors.”
Unpatriotic? When Harris walked onto the stage, the crowd didn’t chant “Kamala” or “We’re not going back” or any of the other slogans in their arsenal. They chanted “USA.” In fact, “USA” chants were heard every night of the convention, often during almost every speech. Attendees held aloft “USA” signs and American flags; later, when they were handed long “Kamala” signs ahead of her acceptance speech, many delegates stuck the American flag on top of them, so that when they cheered for Harris, the floor remained a sea of flags.
Many of these epithets are labels that have haunted Democrats for decades, stretching back into the 1970s and in some cases even earlier. In that time, Republicans have reliably been the party that has wrapped themselves in the flag and projected a tough image on national defense and law and order, so much so that the scene from the United Center sometimes seemed straight out of an RNC. Harris also seemed to determined to break with the long Democratic tradition of condescension, from “egghead” Adlai Stevenson to “elitist” Hillary Clinton and her “basket of deplorables.” This convention was one of the first times they seemed conscious of it, and actively tried to move in another direction.
The whole event was a far cry from 2020, when Democrats allowed themselves to become the party of “defund the police” and the academic alphabet soup of DEI and CRT. In just four years, the party went from declaring in their platform that “Democrats believe we need to overhaul the criminal justice system from top to bottom,” because “police brutality is a stain on the soul of our nation,” to pledging to put “more police officers on the beat” in the 2024 version. “We need to fund the police, not defund the police,” the party’s platform now reads. Attendees cheered when a sheriff made that same point on Thursday, something that would have sounded unbelievable to 2020 ears. (As would the nomination of a former prosecutor.)
It was also a departure from 2016, when identity ruled the day as Hillary Clinton reminded delegates that she was the first woman nominated for the presidency. Harris never once referred to the fact that she was only the second female nominee, and first Black female nominee, allowing the delegates wearing suffragette white to serve as the lone nod to her history-making nomination.
Other typically Democratic elements were airbrushed from the speech as well. Issues that poll well, like abortion, were emphasized. Issues that poll poorly, like climate change and transgender issues, were mentioned once and not at all, respectively, by Harris. (Democratic fears of yet another label — “woke” — were clear.)
These decisions angered some activists, as did the exclusion of a Palestinian-American speaker, but after years of attempting to please every segment of their varied coalition, Democrats have made the cold calculation that the voters they truly need to target are the plurality in the middle. Just as they pushed out Joe Biden in service of chasing victory, evincing little emotional attachment to an aging leader, the party seems newly willing to spite its fringes to save its power.
Smaller-than-expected protests aside, it was striking the degree to which the whole party bought into the new tone throughout the week. Moderate Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin made explicit the party’s attempt to reclaim patriotism: “Do not give an inch to pretenders who wrap themselves in the flag but spit in the face of freedoms it represents.” And progressive New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped the “laundry list of leftist principles” from her 2020 speech to deliver a much more measured address. The crowd serenaded her with “AOC” chants as a result.
Even when Harris referred to standard party principles, she did so in a careful way. “Freedom” was the slogan — and anthem, via an absent Beyoncé — of the convention, and it was how she packaged her lone mentions of climate change and gun control. When she referred to abortion, she called it an issue of “heart and home,” an almost pastoral phrase much more evocative of traditional Republican messaging.
Of course, none of this means that the re-brand will work — come November, it could just prove to be the “New Coke” of political party messaging.
Perceptions are hard to reverse, and the popular perceptions of the Democratic Party are not pretty. Just 19% of Americans view the party as “patriotic,” according to a YouGov poll last month; just 16% call it “law-abiding.” Not even a majority of Democrats believe those labels are applicable.
It is also difficult for a party to persuade one’s own members to shift their rhetoric: sure, AOC seems to have bought into the new plan, but that doesn’t mean her followers will.
For me, one of the most enduring images of the convention will be the two young men standing near me who looked like they could have been straight out of a Barstool video — a demographic Democrats have struggled with — screaming “USA” with a fierce intensity. In reality, though, these young men are a Democratic minority: only 29% of Democrats told Gallup they are “extremely proud” to be Americans last year; 60% of Republicans did so. I think back to the conference of young Democrats I covered last year, when a speaker asked how many attendees are “patriotic” and only a scattering of hands went up.
I’ll be curious to see the partisan split in the next poll on national pride to come out — will the Democrats’ four-day, flag-waving bonanza in Chicago move the needle? Or are party leaders trying to lead a movement of patriotism their members aren’t interested in?
And even if party members do adopt the messaging, that doesn’t mean swing voters will buy it. “My mother had another lesson she used to teach,” Harris said last night. “Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.”
But Harris’ campaign has been a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Her address was light on policy specifics, full of vague promises to bolster the middle class, end the war in Gaza, and restore abortion rights without saying precisely how she planned to do so. She is betting that vaguer is better, that voters want a nice-sounding message more than they want a stack of white papers — and that they want many core tenets of Republican messaging, but without Donald Trump as messenger.
According to a recent Marquette University poll, 36% of voters describe themselves as “moderate.” But only 19% describe Harris that way, and only 10% for Trump.
This election, like every election, will be won or lost according to whichever candidate can win this pool of voters. This is something Trump seemed to understand for much of this campaign, moderating on abortion and remaining narrowly focused on issues swing voters care about (and disapprove of Democrats on): the economy, crime, immigration. That focus has drifted in recent weeks, especially in his response to Harris’ speech last night. (“WHERE’S HUNTER?” he wrote, bizarrely.)
The Democratic convention showed a party playing to win, unlike the Republican convention in July, which showed a party that believed it already had. The DNC also showed a party preparing for the future — parading its bench, shaving down its harsher edges to position itself for campaigns against post-Trump opponents — in stark contrast to the Trump-centric RNC. At the same time as Trump appears distracted, Democrats have never seemed more laser-focused on pursuing victory.
For much of my life, the word "patriotic" has been problematic. It feels like that word has been on a downward spiral since I learned it as a child in the early 90s. It's been jarring to see the emphasis on USA and the flag during the DNC. Maybe patriotism can be reclaimed. Maybe we can come together and make positive changes. I really want to embrace the joy and hope I have seen over the negativity and divisiveness of the past.
I thought this was a great piece. One aspect I’d love to hear more about is the back story as to how Dems collectively (and ruthlessly) elected to moderate their policy stands to win swing voters. It reminds me of how Dems similarly unified under Biden in 2020 as their nominee after he won the North (?) Carolina primary.