Adam: Well, Shane, that was unlike any convention I have ever been to. Or, rather, not been to. Starting with Eva Longoria as the host — is that even the right word? She was more than just a host — and ending with Michelle Obama showing you can do a major convention speech without an audience. A lot to digest there, including the fact that we saw the candidate on Night 1. How do you think it went?
Shane: No glitches, no drama and lots (and lots) of talk of unity. The Democrats basically opened up their convention playbook for the week. They cast Joseph R. Biden Jr. as better equipped to manage what they described as three simultaneous crises facing the nation: the pandemic, the economic downturn and the racial justice reckoning.
Adam: Agreed. I was also really struck by the quality of the productions. I know, I shouldn’t have been; the Democrats have lots of money and Hollywood talent. But for some reason, I thought this convention was going to be like a Zoom call with some friends — you know, CAN YOU HEAR ME! CAN YOU TILT YOUR SCREEN DOWN, PLEASE? WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT BACKGROUND? You know, dogs barking in the background. But wow.
Shane: That’s probably because you’ve been watching previous Biden content. (Usually it’s birds chirping for Mr. Biden.)
Adam: There were very few technical glitches. The memorial for Covid-19 victims was pretty powerful.
Shane: And something a Trump convention — even after 170,000 deaths — is unlikely to be able to acknowledge.
Adam: Can I confess one bias? Springsteen. They get many, many, many points for using “The Rising,” a song written — well, for those who don’t know it, it’s worth checking out the lyrics.
Shane: One thing that struck me was Mr. Biden’s own appearance. And it’s not just that he appeared so early — which is unusual, right, Adam? — but how he appeared. He was not speechifying. He was in conversation and listening. Which, of course, draws an unspoken and intentional contrast with Mr. Trump.
Adam: You sometimes see candidates doing “surprise” early appearances, a little faux drama. But you captured exactly what made Biden’s appearance notable. No dramatic walks into the hall or anything like that.
Covid, Cuomo and the Fall Campaign
Shane: The Biden campaign had telegraphed for weeks that it wanted to elevate regular people’s voices in this convention and make the Covid-19 pandemic the central element of their case against Mr. Trump. Kristin Urquiza stood out, and her line about her late father — “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life” — has the potential to outlast the evening.
Adam: Putting Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York out there was a real signal. Yes, New York and Mr. Cuomo moved slowly in responding to the pandemic, and mishandled nursing homes, and they have been heavily criticized for that. But at this point, New York, after being the domestic epicenter of Covid-19, seems to have the virus under control. It’s a contrast Mr. Biden will no doubt offer to what Mr. Trump has done nationally.
Shane: Every day the Biden campaign has the country focused on the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus is a day the Biden campaign thinks it is winning politically.
Adam: Does the platform the Biden campaign gave to Mr. Cuomo suggest that the party looks at him as a future leader?
Shane: Mr. Cuomo may not be the future, but he sure is a big figure in the present. His daily coronavirus briefings were cable fixtures, and his convention speech — complete with an opening PowerPoint slide — paid homage to that. You and I have both covered Mr. Cuomo — it’s quite a thing to see him have a star convention turn nearly four decades after his dad.
Adam: Right. Though I must say, I knew Mario Cuomo, and Andrew Cuomo is no … Well you know. Anyway, Andrew Cuomo, who is 62, deservedly is enjoying a lot of attention right now, but I’m not sure he is a future presidential candidate, particularly if Kamala Harris, who is 55, is in the White House complex next year.
Shane: If Mario Cuomo talked about the tale of two cities, Andrew Cuomo riffed on a line that really surprised me: “In many ways, Covid is just a metaphor.” What did you make of that?
Adam: This gets into father-son stuff that I should probably avoid. (Don’t want any calls from Albany tomorrow!) OK, I can’t resist. Mario Cuomo’s keynote to the Democratic convention in San Francisco in 1984 blew the room away. This is obviously a much different kind of stage, but even accounting for that, I’m not sure the son, for all his many talents, has the same rhetorical abilities that his father had. Then again, I’m not sure his father could have done those daily briefings trying to reassure and lead New Yorkers through the worst of the pandemic.
Shane: We should note Mr. Cuomo was just the first of two blue-state governors to speak on Monday night. A little while later, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan hammered home the party’s point: Democratic governors handled this better than the Republican president.
A Republican Validator
Shane: Adam, I can’t believe they had John Kasich stand on an actual crossroads. What did you make of the first night’s Republican star speaker?
Adam: A few thoughts: John Kasich is good on television (maybe he’s not as good in person). This format was good for him. But I wonder how many persuadable Republicans or undecided voters were watching him? That seems pretty key. In any event, that seemed a pretty slick part of the night, which is why the Democrats scheduled it at the top of their prime-time hour. But Shane, here’s a question for you: Do you think there will be a Democrats for Trump segment at the Republican convention?
Shane: Maybe — but I doubt it will be a prominent former Democratic governor! There is only one line of Mr. Kasich’s speech that I’ll remember, and it was his pitch to Republicans and independents who might “fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind.” No dice, he said. “I don’t believe that because I know the measure of the man,” he said, adding, “No one pushes Joe around.” How do you think that sounds to progressives? (Especially since the Biden team has final approval on everything aired.)
Adam: I’m guessing the Republican segment was an excuse for many of the more progressive members of the television audience to head to the refrigerator for a beer. Or a glass of white wine.
Bernie Sanders’s Big Biden Embrace
Shane: Wow, what a difference four years make.
Adam: Are you suggesting that the sound of pounding we’re hearing in Chappaqua is Bill and Hillary Clinton’s fists hitting the wall? You can’t blame them for being a little frustrated, I guess.
Shane: Four years ago, Mr. Sanders may have spoken about unity, but his delegates could still be heard loudly disagreeing and protesting inside the convention hall. On Monday, the only voice of the Sanders movement belonged to Bernie Sanders.
Adam: Mr. Sanders is aware that he took some heat in 2016 for contributing to Hillary Clinton’s loss (fairly or not). I’m not sure he could have been any more full-throated in his support for Joe Biden. It shows you one of the major dynamics of 2020: Mr. Trump unites the Democrats more than anything else. Ever.
Shane: “This is not normal,” as Mr. Sanders said, though he later delivered the one-liner of the night: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.” What struck me most was that Mr. Sanders directly addressed his supporters, thanked them and then made the most explicit policy case for Mr. Biden of any speaker all night. He tried to take it a step further than just being anti-Trump.
Michelle Obama Steals the Show (Again)
Adam: So Shane, forgive me for asking the obvious question after watching this. Could she, should she have run for president?
Shane: Could, yes. Would, no.
Adam: This was quite a speech. It covered so many bases: the Obama legacy, the Trump repudiation of the Obama legacy, the crises this country is enduring, racial injustice, poverty. I was struck when she talked about how some people won’t listen to a Black woman speaking to a Democratic convention. Kind of refreshingly aware.
Shane: Look, I admit I was skeptical of how a prerecorded major convention speech might play. But this played.
Adam: Her speech was a really good example of how a virtual convention, at least this first night, seems to be playing for the Biden team. Her low-key, somber, engaging, empathetic tone did not need an audience; it was probably better without one. That said, after watching her for 12 years, and considering her arena-level book tour, I suspect she would have adjusted to an audience of 20,000.
Shane: She had one of the defining lines of the convention four years ago (“When they go low, we go high”). And she followed it up with a devastating rebuke of Mr. Trump this time: “He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
That said, and while I think her speech was powerful and clearly the evening’s showstopper, the Sanders speech was, in some ways the real linchpin of the night for Democrats. Night 1 was about unity, and the party had the leader of the left give his full and unconditional embrace to the more moderate nominee.
Adam: I’m left with a question as the final gavel drops and everyone heads, um, to their bedrooms. Did Mrs. Obama and Mr. Sanders raise the bar for President Trump (and to a lesser extent, Mr. Biden)? They showed it is possible to do a convention speech without a convention. Can Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump do the same?
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