An Energy-Filled Night Two of the DNC

The energy that encapsulated the first night of the DNC was certainly present on night two. The second night of the DNC, held on August 20, 2024, once again featured a packed convention center in Chicago. The energetic night was characterized by a dynamic ceremonial roll call and was capped off by powerful speeches by the Obamas. Here are my takeaways:

Notable Moments

There were plenty of notable moments at the last night’s event, which had the theme, “A Bold Vision For America’s Future.”

Representing former president Jimmy Carter, who is currently in hospice care, former state senator Jason Carter said that his grandfather “can’t wait” to vote for Kamala Harris. It had been previously reported that the 99-year-old Carter, who turns 100 on October 1st, was “only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris”. Jason Carter added that his grandfather was “holding on” and that “Kamala Harris carries my grandfather’s legacy”. 

Another scion of a Democratic president addressed the convention early on. Having been recently hired by Vogue as its political correspondent, Jack Schlossberg is better known for being the grandson of former president John F. Kennedy. Schlossberg has vigorously opposed his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign and has used his large social media following to mock J.D. Vance on TikTok and offer strong support for the Harris campaign. His speaking slot is also another indicator of the Democratic Party’s efforts to connect to younger voters, as he is one of many influencers present at the DNC. In his remarks, Schlossberg called the grandfather he never met his hero and said that once again Americans must answer the late president’s call to usher in a new generation of leadership, led by Harris.

A Celebratory Roll Call

This year’s Democratic Party roll call marked a departure from previous ones. The roll call at the Democratic National Convention usually features each Democratic delegation from each of the fifty states, DC, the territories, and abroad casting their votes for the Democratic nominees for president and vice president. This year’s roll call was different in that it was accompanied by party music.

The hour-long roll call was accompanied by DJ Cassidy’s playlist of songs associated with each state. Representatives from the states gave short speeches as they cast their state delegations’ votes for the nomination. 

The delegation from California – Kamala Harris’s home state – was saved for last. Amidst the backdrop of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and Kendrick Lamar, California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered the delegation’s votes for Kamala Harris. A notable moment during the roll call happened during Georgia’s turn when rapper Lil Jon made a surprise appearance and rapped “Turn Down for What”. 

All this pomp and circumstance, of course, was ceremonial. Harris and Walz had been formally nominated in a virtual roll call weeks earlier. After the roll call had concluded, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz appeared on a live video from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they were attending a packed rally held at the same convention center that had held the Republican National Convention a month earlier. 

Republicans for Harris

Part of tonight’s proceedings saw former Republicans take the stage to convince independents and Trump skeptics to vote for Harris. Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, a lifelong Republican, praised the Biden-Harris administration for delivering for his community and declared that “John McCain’s Republican Party” was gone. The late Arizona senator McCain had been the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and had been critical of Trump in his last years. 

In addition to Giles, more ex-Trump voters took the stage, criticizing the ex-president’s criminal convictions and tariff policies. Trump’s former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who had resigned as First Lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff following the January 6th riot, took the stage and told the audience about Trump’s behavior behind doors, saying that Trump mocks his supporters in private and calls them “basement dwellers”. 

These segments of the convention were indicative of the Democrats’ efforts to reach across the aisle and pick off voters who had opposed Trump. After all, in the Republican presidential primaries, almost 24% of people voted for someone not named Trump. Turning those voters to their side would be beneficial for the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party.

Bernie Sanders: “Let us be clear: This is not a radical agenda. But, let me tell you what a radical agenda is. And that is Trump’s Project 2025.”

Source: AFP/Getty Images

The independent senator from Vermont took the stage to make the progressive case for Harris. A leader of the progressive wing of the party, Sanders had ran twice for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and 2020, challenging the establishment candidates. Sanders retains a strong following among his young and progressive voters, and last night he made sure to outline why Harris was the right candidate for progressives.

Sanders praised the Biden administration’s accomplishment, saying it has “accomplished more than any government since FDR”, and advocated for future progressive policies in a future Harris-Walz administration. He said that such policies (campaign finance reform, improved healthcare access, and lowered drug costs) were not radical, contrasting it with Project 2025. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s speech the other night, Sanders brought up the war in Gaza, calling for a ceasefire and the bringing home of hostages. The calls were answered by raucous applause within the convention center. 

Throughout her campaign, Harris had distanced herself from the more progressive stances her failed 2020 campaign took, pivoting to the center and taking a more moderate position. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s appearances at the DNC in her support helped to solidify progressive support for the vice president. 

J.B. Pritzker: “Take it from an actual billionaire: Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity!”

The governor of Illinois, once considered a potential running mate for Harris, took the stage to celebrate the state’s presidential history, noting that former presidents Lincoln (a Republican) and Obama hailed from Illinois and claiming Harris (who had spent time in the state during her childhood) as one of Illinois’s own. Pritzker also pitched the successes of his gubernatorial tenure, which has been marked by a flurry of progressive policies. 

Pritzker also used his speech to poke fun at Trump. “Take it from the actual billionaire!”, the Hyatt hotel chain heir proclaimed, referencing uncertainties about Trump’s net worth. “Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity!” 

Pritzker’s speech had noticeably followed Bernie Sanders’s speech – the same one in which the senator had railed against billionaires. Pritzker’s appearance was immediately followed by Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express and the only business leader on the DNC’s speaking slate, who made the case for Harris to the business community. 

Doug Emhoff: “Here’s the thing about joyful warriors: They’re still warriors. And Kamala is as tough as it comes.”

Source: Getty Images

The Second Gentleman took the stage seeking to show Americans the personal side of his wife. The Harris-Emhoff household is unique in that Doug, Kamala, and Doug’s ex-wife Kerstin all co-parent the children, and remain on good terms with each other. In fact, Kerstin Emhoff was in attendance at the DNC, supporting her co-parent’s bid for the presidency. 

Doug Emhoff, who had practiced as an attorney prior to his wife’s election to the vice presidency, detailed his humble childhood, his courtship with Harris, and his children’s relationship with Harris, whom they call “Momala.” Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a vice president, also used his remarks to speak out against anti-Semitism. After listing humorous personal anecdotes about his wife, Emhoff described her as tough and ready to win the election. 

Michelle Obama: “Hope makes a comeback!”

Source: Getty Images

Michelle Obama took the stage to a raucous applause. After all, the DNC was being held in her hometown of Chicago. In a prelude to her husband’s speech, the former First Lady took the stage and urged Democrats to avoid “foolishness” and do something between now and Election Day. She acknowledged the recent energy behind the Harris campaign and the packed rallies that have been occurring around the country.

Obama warned of the dangers facing Harris, the first black woman ever to be nominated for president. She alluded to Trump’s previous, false racist birther conspiracy theories about her husband in which he alleged the then-president had been born in Kenya. She took a jab at Trump’s previous remark that migrants were stealing “Black jobs” “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs,” she said. 

Obama also spoke of the similarities between Harris’s campaign and her husband’s 2008 campaign, noting the enthusiasm and optimism in recent weeks. She spoke of her and Harris’s shared middle-class backgrounds, contrasting it with Trump’s own background and noting that she and Harris “benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” Overall, Michelle Obama’s speech was a departure from the “They go low, we go high” theme which was popularized by her speech eight years ago at the 2016 DNC. It was indicative of an overall rhetoric shift within the Democratic Party, in which Democrats are now more eager to launch more withering and scathing attacks against Trump. 

Barack Obama: “America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”

Source: AFP/Getty Images

The former president, who largely kept a low profile as Democrats acted to remove President Biden from the running, closed out the second night of the Democratic National Convention with quite possibly his most animated speech yet, reaffirming Obama’s status as the party’s most effective messenger – other than his wife Michelle. “This convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible,” Obama quipped, referencing the 2004 DNC speech that catapulted him to fame. 

Obama lauded his former vice president’s service as president, and contrasted Harris’s campaign with “a guy whose act has — let’s face it — gotten pretty stale”. The speech was full of Obama classics: “Don’t boo, vote!” and a revamp of “Yes, we can!” to “Yes, she can!”. Obama lambasted Trump as a “78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.” Obama took aim at Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd size”, holding his hands a few inches apart and implying that Trump’s size obsession not just applied to crowds. Obama compared Trump to a “neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window”, and asserted Harris is “not the neighbor running the leaf blower — she’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand”. 

Obama drew a contrast between the Democratic and Republican agendas, saying that for Republicans “freedom means that the powerful can do what they please, whether its fire workers trying to organize a union or poison our rivers or avoid paying taxes like everybody else has to do”. Obama declared that Democrats subscribed to a “broader idea of freedom.” He declared that the “vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided”, calling for a return to a less divided America. 

Nearing the end of his speech, Obama reminisced about his grandmother – a white woman who hailed from Kansas and compared her to his mother-in-law, a black woman from the South Side of Chicago who passed away earlier this year. He remarked that they were “strong, smart, resourceful women” who worked hard and “knew what was true and what mattered.”. He declared that Harris was of that same mold and urged America to elect her president, marking a full circle – Harris had been one of Obama’s earliest supporters in 2008, and now he was giving her the favor back. 

With that, Night Two of the DNC ended.