DNC Day 1 Analysis: Dems Paint Picture Of Prosecutor Vs. Felon, Focus On Freedom

CHICAGO — It was clear the circus was coming to my neighborhood even before the weekend, when cars were gridlocked along Western Avenue, blocked by blocks and blocks of buses, inexplicably sitting empty in the left lane and halting traffic.

This was well outside what city officials dubbed the "impacted area" around the 2024 Democratic National Convention, a security perimeter that extends about two dozen square blocks around the United Center on the Near West Side.

Monday morning I rode over to the edge of the other high security zone that surrounds McCormick Place to pick up the passes from the Secret Service and convention organizers I would need to get past the recently erected layers of 10-foot metal fencing.

The nearby Hyatt was decked out with red, white and blue donkey paraphernalia, abuzz with lanyard-wearing partisans and professionals waiting in various lines.

A merch table offered a "curated collection" of official products, ranging from socks to mugs emblazoned with past Democratic presidents, to "Madam President" shirts featuring the image of current vice president — the first candidate since Hubert Humphrey to secure a major party's nomination without winning any delegates.

That was in 1968. Also in Chicago. And like that year, anti-war demonstrators squared off with the Chicago police.

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But this year, neither the police nor the protestors had the appetite for violence that they did 56 years ago, when young American men were headed to Southeast Asia to kill and die for a client state in a land partitioned by colonial powers.

This time, the protestors, composed of a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups, socialists, Jewish peace activists and others, were calling for an end to U.S. support for another client state in a land partitioned by colonial powers.

By the end of 1968, about 30,000 American soldiers had already died in Vietnam, barely half of the U.S. military's total losses from the conflict. It cost the country about 2 percent of its gross domestic product that year.

The Israeli military has killed more than 40,000 Gazans in the past 10 months, according to the health ministry there. And the more than $15 billion that Congress has sent to Israel in that period is less than 0.15 percent of GDP.

Some protestors held up pre-printed signs with messages like, "Victory to the Palestinian Resistance" and "Stand With Palestine! Defend LGBTQIA+ & Reproductive Rights! End U.S. Aid To Israel!"

Later that night, President Joe Biden would tell the crowd that he "wrote a peace treaty for Gaza" and said he and his secretary of state, noted bluesman Anthony Blinken, were "working around the clock" to stave off a larger war following Israel's recent assassinations of opponents in Lebanon and Iran.

"Those protesters out in the street, they have a point," Biden said. "A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides."

On Monday afternoon, a small group of protestors managed to breach one of the fences along Washington Boulevard. A couple hundred demonstrators and a roughly equal number of press were soon surrounded by police and corralled back into the nearby park.

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Police said they arrested 13 people, most of them at the breached fence, which was subsequently reinforced. According to Superintendent Larry Snelling, who was on the scene, protestors used pepper spray on some of his officers, who "could have used more force" and "showed great restraint."

Meanwhile, thousands of convention attendees had begun approaching the United Center and the checkpoints that surrounded it. Some managed to get out of their hired cars and shuttle buses to line up for blocks around the parking lots on the north side of the stadium.

As they waited, some of the anti-Israel protestors began haranguing the conventiongoers. They shouted through their N95 masks about how inappropriate it was to celebrate amid the ongoing killing in the Gaza Strip. Most of the lanyard-wearing attendees ignored the demonstrators as they queued, but a few engaged with the hecklers.

In a situation that the Secret Service would later blame on a minor bus crash and mechanical issues that disabled one of the entrances, the convention's entrances were overwhelmed with crowds as the evening's program got underway.

On the campus of Malcolm X College, to the south of the United Center, throngs of Democrats and press personnel were crowded into a series of bottlenecks for bag checks. Women in flag-themed attire ask, "what's the hold-up now?" and complain it is "very badly run."

At one point, Terry McAuliffe , a former party chair and Virginia governor, is pushed through a crowd with a small group of people, saying something about having to be on television. This drew the crowd into a bit of a frenzy, as a private security guard tried to keep people calm and get them to organically merge into a single file line.

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The whole security affair was more reminiscent of the kind of scenes one would expect at the gates of a Turkish commuter airline than at an American professional sporting event.

But this is not a Blackhawks game, or even a Taylor Swift concert. This is a National Security Special Event, and that means the Secret Service (now under new management after allowing the Republican candidate to get shot in the ear) is in charge.

Outside the arena, some people are taking selfies. Some television presenters are preparing for stand-ups in front of the United Center. Some solo journalists are taking selfies and recording stand-ups at the same time.

Once inside, the feeling is not unlike a typical sporting event at the United Center. Instead of jerseys, the Windy City Sports Zone kiosk offered T-shirts for sale with messages like "Trust Democratic Women" and "Make History Again!"

Technically, the Democratic Party has already nominated Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate. After an earlier effort for a "virtual roll call" to nominate Biden for reelection was blocked, delegates held one for Harris, bypassing any potential issues with the 80 uncommitted delegates or Ohio lawmakers blocking the Democrats from the presidential ballot. Nevertheless, for the sake of appearances, party officials have planned a pretend roll call vote on the convention floor.

As prime time began on the first night of the party's four-night infomercial, a progression of progressive hot prospects warmed up the crowd for the headliners — among them the party's prior two nominees.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow thumped on a large prop copy of Project 2025, the much-hyped transition agenda from The Heritage Foundation. Warning of "MAGA minions," she described the conservative think tank's report as a "plan to turn Donald Trump into a dictator." (Trump aides have said he was only trying to "trigger" the left when he said he would not be a dictator "other than day one.")

California Sen. Laphonza Butler, who was appointed last year to replace the late Dianne Feinstein (or as President Biden described her, "the distinguished senator from California") described her friendship with Harris, who she met when Butler was a union president and Harris was a prosecutor in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The theme of the night was "for the people," as Democrats seek to highlight Harris's law enforcement connections, contrasting them with former President Donald Trump's legal entanglements, which have so far resulted in a criminal conviction in New York state, various civil judgments and some pending federal cases.

One of the videos Democrats showed on screen referenced the "Law & Order" opening, and speakers repeatedly described Trump as a felon.

A 24-year-old activist, the "influencer and surrogate strategist" for Harris's 2020 campaign prior to its suspension in December 2019, and one of the 200 credentialed "content creators" at the convention introduced a performance from Jason Isbell. James Taylor was also booked to play, but with the schedule running about an hour behind, he was apparently bumped.

This was followed by Gina Raimondo, who was welcomed to the stage by a chant of "Gina, Gina, Gina." Once she begins speaking, the crowd quickly loses interest and begins conversing among themselves, uninterested in her message about Rhode Island's withering manufacturing sector.

Raimondo, Biden's commerce secretary, asserted that Harris has a pro-worker agenda, citing her working class background as the child of a pair of immigrant professors and her job working "to lock up criminals." One guy shouts out "woo" as Raimondo decries corporate monopolies, though it's not entirely clear that was what he was responding to.

New York Gov. Kathy Hocul gets the crowd more fired up as she boasts about her state convicting the former president of 34 felonies.

The crowd gets even more psyched by a hype video with clips of Harris's stump speech set to Beyonce's "Freedom." There is a lot of talk about fighting and a lot of talk about Freedom. The crowd knows the lines from Harris's speech. They shout out the responses.

"Freedom? No one loves it more," declares a voiceover actor over patriotic stock footage.

This is the big message that Democrats are trying to get across. They want to be the party of freedom. Conservatives have long been associated with "liberty," but now, motivated by the loss of reproductive freedoms in a large swath of the country, progressives are making a move to use similar rhetoric and appeal to the same values that distinguish our constitutional republic.

A recent poll showed nearly three out of four Americans fear that they could lose the constitutional freedoms they currently have, though there were differences among partisans. When asked how important are various constitutional freedoms to them personally, Republicans described more of them as "extremely important," among them speech, religion, privacy, protection against unreasonable searches and the right to bear arms. The only right that Democrats considered significantly more important than Republicans was the right to a jury trial.

The hype video is punctuated by a surprise on-stage appearance from Harris, provoking the loudest roar of the night and bringing the crowd to its feet.

The vice president promised a great week and thanked the "incredible President Joe Biden," the man who had been due to receive the nomination from that same stage until the precipitous fall in his prospects of reelection that followed his disastrous debate performance just over eight weeks earlier.

Basketball coach Steve Kerr, a former Chicago Bull, keeps the crowd mostly on board until a joke about second-guessing the play-calling acumen of Tim Walz, a former high school football coach.

United Auto Worker President Shawn Fain makes a reference to Nelly's "Hot in Here" and removes his jacket to show off his "Trump is a scab" T-shirt.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is drowned out by chants of "A-O-C" as she takes the stage and delivers the most effective speech yet at keeping the crowd's attention. She said it was "only through the miracles of democracy and community" that New York City residents "chose someone like me to elect them in Congress."

Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton feeds off the energy of the crowd as she tied Harris's candidacy into the history of women in American electoral politics.

"The story of my life, and the history of our country is that progress is possible, but not guaranteed. We have to fight for it and never, ever give up," Clinton said, suggesting Harris would "restore abortion rights nationwide."

Clinton, so far the only person to lose an election to Donald Trump, declared that the Republican nominee was now on the run.

"It is no surprise, is it, that he is lying about Kamala’s record, he’s mocking her name and her laugh," she said. "Sounds familiar?"

She smiled widely as the crowd chanted "Lock him up," a reference to the common refrain that crowds at Trump rallies in 2016 directed at her over her classified email scandal.

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Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin devotes his speech to attacks on "Banana Republicans" and describes Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance as Trump's "pet chameleon," although he is briefly halted by a teleprompter malfunction.

Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a former public defender and criminal defense attorney, says that she recognizes a good prosecutor when she sees one and briefly cries as she describes a first meeting with Harris where she says the vice president wiped away her tears.

Before bringing out Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a trio of women emphasized the practical reality of the Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade and opened the door for strict state-level abortion bans. Amanda Zurawski and her husband Josh described how Texas doctors nearly allowed her to die after miscarrying a baby. Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana warned that the lives of women depend on the coming election. And Hadley Duvall, who was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant at age 12, warned there are other survivors of sexual assault without any options.

As Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock asks, "who will heal the land," volunteers begin to hand out signs for Jill Biden's speech. After calling Trump a "plague on the American conscience," he becomes the second speaker after Ocasio-Cortez to mention the Palestinians, including them as well as Israelis, Congolese and Haitians among a list of various people deserving of peace.

Jill Biden, who along with son Hunter reportedly urged her husband of five decades to remain in the race even after the June debate exposed his fragility and lack of electability, said she watched the president "dig deep into his soul" to decide last month to end his campaign and endorse Harris.

After an introduction from his daughter, Ashley, the president delivered a 52-minute address recounting why he decided to run for president ("extremists coming out of the woods" and "carrying Nazi swastikas" in Charlottesville in August 2017).

Joe Biden was met with chants of "Thank you, Joe" as he trudged through a litany of his accomplishments. No doubt, many were thanking him for dropping out of the race more than any of those policy achievements.

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Swapping out the 81-year-old incumbent for his 59-year-old deputy has injected an undeniable excitement into the base of the Democratic Party, whose prospects of retaining the White House and retaining at least one chamber of Congress have increased from a long shot to a coin flip.

"It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more. I love my country more," Biden said. "And all this talk about how I’m angry with all those people who said I should step down — that’s not true."

The convention's second day is due to feature the man Clinton and Biden defeated for the party's nomination and the man who defeated Clinton and Biden for the nomination — Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former President Barack Obama.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who made it onto the shortlist to become Harris's running mate, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth are also slated to speak. Meanwhile, Harris and Walz are scheduled to hold a rally Tuesday evening in Milwaukee.