A mood of giddy, guarded optimism dominated the convention hall. Conversations revolved around how rapidly the Party’s prospects seemed to have changed, and the arena echoed with chants of “U.S.A.!” At an event on the sidelines, Chauncey McLean, the president of Future Forward, the main outside-spending group backing Harris’s Presidential bid, warned against complacency. The group’s in-house opinion surveys, McLean said, were “much less rosy” than the public polls, and he cautioned that Democrats face very close races in critical states. But McLean left little doubt that the outlook had improved, noting that, before Biden dropped out, the group had concluded that his chance of winning was in the single digits.
For Biden, the recent, sudden surge of enthusiasm among Democrats has been a barbed blessing; victory now seems far more likely, but there’s little doubt how desperate Democrats were for him to step aside. Over and over, the crowd rewarded him with ovations and chants of “Thank you, Joe!” In the hours before Biden went on, one speaker after another seemed to be competing for who could praise him most lavishly. The acclaim occasionally bordered on patronizing, and Biden, one suspects, knows it; his nerve endings are especially attuned to the personal gestures and slights of politics. But, most of all, the sentiment was one of relief and gratitude.
Throughout the night, there was plenty of red meat for the faithful. The delegates watched a video of a man named Rich Logis, a former Trump voter, who said, “I finally stepped outside the MAGA echo chamber. I stopped listening to what Trump said, and looked around with my own eyes.” He went on, “I made a grave mistake. But it’s never too late to change your mind.” Another video called “Two Lies and a Lie” lampooned Trump as someone who “talked a big game but actually lost a hundred and seventy-eight thousand manufacturing jobs.” Joyce Beatty, an Ohio congresswoman, spoke of J. D. Vance, the senator from her state. “As soon as he could, he ran away to Yale and Silicon Valley,” she said, “cozying up with billionaires.” Hillary Clinton, with a look of relish, said, “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial!” The crowd erupted in chants of “Lock him up,” which Harris makes a point to tamp down at her rallies. But Clinton is not running for anything; smiling, she let the chants continue.
For much of the night, Biden was a quiet presence in the programming. A video about the Administration’s response to the pandemic cut from Trump talking about putting disinfectant in people’s bodies to a clip of Harris declaring, “Help is on the way.” The schedule called for more than fifty speakers, performers, and videos. By the time Biden appeared, it was long past eleven o’clock on the East Coast.
From the earliest moments, his speech shifted the tone in the arena. Introduced by his daughter Ashley, he emerged from backstage wiping tears from his eyes, embraced her, and turned to the crowd, basking for a long moment in chants of gratitude. “I love you!” he said. The speech that followed was a valedictory, mapping the arc that he hopes will form the center of his legacy, the story of America passing from a moment of national peril to one of possibility. He conjured the depths of the pandemic, and the horror of January 6th: “I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed.” He spoke of legislative gains—on drug prices, climate change, gun control, infrastructure—that will endure beyond the careers of the politicians who achieved them. He repeatedly introduced his Administration’s wins with the phrase “I’m proud”—a small reminder of how hard it had been for him to walk away. Biden sometimes seemed to slip into the oratory of the address that some piece of him still hoped to give—the acceptance of the nomination!—before catching himself and veering back to celebrate Harris, by adding the phrase “Kamala and I.” He spoke only obliquely of the decision not to seek the Presidency again, saying, in a line that contrasts well with the Republican nominee, “I love the job, but I love my country more.”