Last week the Democrats managed to do what seems impossible to bring off in any modern multi-day political convention: they not only kept the attention of the 20,000 or so in the United Center, but consistently moved them, often to exuberance. Defying conventional wisdom, the overarching message of the convention was that the Democratic Party is the patriotic party; the one committed to doing all it can to realize the founders’ dream of a more perfect union. Toward preserving and promoting the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are the fruits of an authentic democratic society. A patriotism grounded in the populism articulated in the preamble of our Constitution: that “we the people,” are the source and embodiment of the government which conventions meet quadrennially to renew.
At its convention, the Republican Party, irreparably hollowed out by Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, left no doubt that it has abandoned patriotism for a cult of personality. It was no accident that Trump prominently reigned over the proceedings from opening to closing. Nor was it accidental that the Democrats throughout their convention put on display living exhibits of the carnage that Trumpism has wrought: the victims of the draconian abortion bans; the survivors of the war zone into which an off-the-rails Republican-fostered gun culture has turned the entire country; the Central Park Five, preeminent targets of Trump’s enduring racism; Capitol and Metropolitan police who paid the greatest price for Trump’s ultimate betrayal of democracy, his petty insurrection on Jan. 6.
How the two conventions related to that infamous day spoke volumes. Peter Navarro, fresh out of jail for defying a congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the plot which ended with the storming of the Capitol, received one of the most sustained ovations of the week from the adoring Republican delegates. The Democrats, for their part, displayed on the giant arena screen graphic footage of the Trump-incited mob savagely breaching the thin police lines and desperately attempting to break into the Congressional chambers to execute citizens’ justice on Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and all those who would deny Trump his delusional reelection. Accompanying the video was the whiny voice of Donald Trump egging on the insurrectionists, doxing Pence, and giving a shout out for all the love he claimed to see animating his minions as they turned the nerve center of American democracy into a medieval battleground.
The courageous Republicans who spoke at the Chicago convention — Stephanie Grisham, Geoffrey Duncan, Elizabeth Troye, Adam Kinzinger — had a common message for their fellow Republicans: that they would not be abandoning their party or their principles by voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. As John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona put it: they didn’t owe a damn thing to the Republican Party which Trump had made over into his own image. Backing the Harris/Walz ticket was the right thing, the patriotic thing, their only choice. At least for this election, the Democratic Party has become America’s party.
At the conclusion of Kamala Harris’ pitch-perfect acceptance speech (in itself a stark contrast to Trump’s endless improvised stream of ego-gazing), the crowd erupted in a euphoric celebration with a sea of American flags joyfully waving in celebration of this historic testament to putting country above party. One could not help seeing in the mind’s eye a split screen in which this earnest revelry occupied one side; on the other was another mass of flagbearers, the MAGA mob using their patriotic symbols to batter and maim the outnumbered police putting their lives at risk to enable the Congress to fulfill its Constitutional duty to certify the 2020 election. No bifurcated image could have better captured what the two parties have come to stand for: the Democrats for a joyously tolerant democracy; the Republicans for an authoritarianism grounded in bigotry and violence.
Robert Emmett Curran is a Professor of History Emeritus at Georgetown University who lives in Richmond.
