Democrats gathered in Chicago for the opening night of their convention as unified and as energized as the party has been since they nominated Barack Obama 16 years ago. Gone was a feeling that they were fighting simply to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, replaced by a feeling that they were fighting for something.
And yet, there was also a sense of nostalgia among the thousands of delegates, many of whom were elected with a pledge to back Joe Biden and up until last month thought they were coming here to do just that.
When Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance onstage after 9 p.m., the United Center erupted at the site of the party’s new savior, but she quickly acknowledged the man she replaced on the ticket.
“I want to kick us off by celebrating our incredible president, Joe Biden,” Harris said. “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation, and for all you continue to do; we are forever grateful to you,” while the crowd, not for the first time on this night, chanted in response, “Thank you, Joe!”
“I was disappointed and shocked” when Biden stepped down, said Dan Farfaglia, a delegate from upstate New York, who was wearing a “Biden 46” jersey and a “Yes, we did” hat. “He had already gotten all the delegates that he needed to win the nomination.”
Amid all of the coconut-flavored good feelings was an unmistakable feeling among some in the audience that had this been Biden’s convention, the vibes would be just as strong, and Harris’s polling bump could have been his.
Among Harris campaign officials, who, until a month ago, were mostly Biden campaign officials, it remains an article of faith that had Biden stayed in the race, he would have eventually won. (Never mind the disastrous debate performance, his unsteady follow-ups, and the party cracking up over his candidacy.) Biden is, they like to point out, the only politician who has defeated Trump, and by November the Democratic base voters who were unenthused about the prospect of a president serving until he was 86 would have ultimately come home, if only to stave off the threat of a second Trump term.
“I absolutely think he would have won,” said J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois and the de facto host of this convention. “I worked like heck to make sure he had the opportunity to do that, but I also honor the fact that he chose to sit this out.”
“Of course,” said Representative Tom Suozzi of New York when asked if Biden could have won. “There is no question that running on his record, and running on Trump’s record, he had a good chance to win.”
“Do you know Allan Lichtman?” asked Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, referring to an American University history professor who achieved social-media notoriety earlier this year by publicizing a theory he developed in 1996 about what it takes to win the presidency. “He has predicted correctly every election, right? And the day before President Biden announced he would not be a candidate, he indicated that Biden was very likely to win. I think it is a matter of how certain you are. Allan Lichtman says we probably would have won, but I think we take some of the uncertainty off the table.”
When Biden finally came out to speak long after his scheduled time and after Americans on the East Coast at least had gone to bed, it provided one of the more electric moments of the night, as delegates chanted “We love Joe” for more than four minutes.
“Our best days are not behind us, they are before us,” Biden said in an energetic address in which he recounted his political and policy victories over the past four years. “Democracy had prevailed. Democracy has delivered. And now democracy must be preserved!”
“This Joe Biden,” one Democratic strategist said after the speech, “is beating Donald Trump by 15.”
Not everyone buys it.
“He didn’t stand a chance,” said Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman who launched a quixotic run for the nomination against Biden that was designed to be little more than a stand-in campaign for voters to express dissatisfaction with Biden’s age. “It’s not what I thought of his age, it’s what the American voters thought of his age, and they were saying what they thought loud and clear.”
With additional reporting by Ben Jacobs.
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