This summer's Republican and Democratic nominating conventions were anything but traditional. Neither convention featured the personal conflicts and partisan fighting that typically ensue when the two parties come together to nominate their leaders.
What explains this rare display of party unity? Perhaps it's because Donald Trump has a genius for dividing Americans.
The Republican Convention was held in Milwaukee in July. More flashy and loud It looked like a Communist Party of China congress, with speaker after speaker praising Trump as the party's great leader, and Trump looked on approvingly from the imperial bench.
Trump's third nomination was like a mass proselytism in which Republicans pledged allegiance to his apocalyptic populism.PlatformIf you do, you will see that the Republican Party no longer stands for free markets, small government, individual autonomy, fiscal prudence, judicial restraint, and strong American leadership for a freer world.
Instead, the Republican Party has degenerated into a servile cult of personality that has no room in today's Republican Party for anyone who questions Trump's torrent of lies and insults, including his bizarre claim that America is in the final stages of national decline.
One had to tune into the Democratic Convention in Chicago to hear the Republican opposition.
“Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party,” said former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). He told the delegation before endorsing Kamala Harris last Thursday night.
Kinzinger was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 coup attempt. MAGA enthusiastsI cornered him and everyone else except for one.The lawmakers were relieved of their duties because they prioritized their duty to uphold the Constitution over their loyalty to President Trump.
Trump's win in Milwaukee emboldened anti-Trump factions in Chicago, where Harris won the nomination unopposed despite not campaigning and not receiving a single primary vote.
President Biden's delegation is relatively young.59 years old) candidate quickly re-energized his core base, erasing Trump's summer surge in the polls.
The lack of opposition made me question whether I was really at the Democratic National Convention, when, once again, by my good fortune, anti-Israel protesters threatened to disrupt the convention. We're screwed.
While Trump Republicans are now divorced from their party's past, Democrats have no problem fitting Harris into the party's traditional framework of civic engagement and liberal pluralism.
Conspicuously absent from Milwaukee was George W. Bush, the only living Republican president other than Trump. Other prominent Republicans from other administrations were also not heard.
In Chicago, prime-time speeches by former presidents Clinton and Obama, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, underscored the continuity of Democratic principles and promoted Harris as the party's leader.A realistic liberal mainstream faction.
She emphasized that point Eloquent acceptance speech On Thursday night, Harris introduced herself as the child of mixed immigrants who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Oakland — a quintessentially “only American” story of social mobility.
Harris is nothing like Trump's San Francisco extremists, shying away from identity politics, never complaining about discrimination or systemic racism, or obsessing about the boundary-breaking nature of her bid to become the first woman president.
Instead, she emphasized her background as a prosecutor and positioned herself as a member of the working-middle class who believed in the American Dream, played by the rules, and expected others to do the same.
Harris called American democracy “the most important story ever told” and accused Trump of “degrading America as a failed state” and flirting with dictators rather than supporting America's friends abroad.
Harris's overt patriotismA refreshing contrastHe also notes that many of Israel's college-educated elites have a low opinion of their own country. His outspoken support for Israel's right to exist and his condemnation of Hamas terrorism also set him apart from the progressive left.
For Harris, Chicago was a debut party where her determined, upbeat personality finally came to the forefront — and, unlike Trump, she seems to be having fun.
Importantly, her speech showed that she is appealing beyond her party base to the swing voters in battleground states who will choose the next president: moderates, independents and working-class voters.
But she still has a lot of work to do. Over the next two months, Ms Harris will have to assuage Democratic doubts that, combined with her age, have eroded public confidence in Mr Biden.
That means rebuilding voters' confidence in the party's ability to steward a dynamic and growing economy, expanding opportunity for Americans without a college degree, controlling the public debt, embracing a more realistic transition to clean energy, and taking center stage on immigration, crime, and cultural issues like what our children are taught in school.
They also need to do things that party activists don't like, like eschewing the hackneyed rhetoric about corporate greed and price gouging that is reminiscent of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) circa 2010.
Now that she has united her party, Harris' job is to transcend it – to become a national leader rather than a partisan one, someone who can unite a country torn apart by Trump's venom and anger.
Republicans have become mired in a decadent pessimism and nostalgia, losing faith in America's ability to transform diversity into a source of national vitality and self-renewal. Harris and the Democrats still believe that America is working as it should, to make freedom and democracy work for all its people. In that optimism lies our best hope for victory in November.
Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
