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August 20, 2024
“America, I Gave My Best to You”
A sentimental send-off to a brave, accomplished president who knew when to step aside.
Delegates hold up signs as President Joe Biden speaks on the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago on August 19, 2024.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Imges)
It took some meandering to get there, but Monday night’s tribute to President Joe Biden was the tribute it was billed as. After a moving introduction by his wife, Jill, and rarely public daughter, Ashley, Biden came out to Jackie Wilson’s “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher.” He hugged his daughter, wiped away tears, and basked in a five-minute standing ovation.
He started his story with his inauguration, remembering how he stared out at the fencing keeping out violent insurgents and looked back at the Capitol that had been ransacked only two weeks earlier. “You cannot say you love your country only when you win!” he told the adoring crowd. Then he declared, “Democracy has been preserved.”
For now, at least.
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Biden again explained how the white supremacists in Charlottesville moved him to run for president, but with new passion and detail. The neo-Nazis’ “veins were bulging,” as they chanted “antisemitic bile.” He recalled talking to Susan Boo, the mother of murdered protester Heather Heyer. He said he ran for president to defend “an America where everyone has a fair shot, and hate has no harbor.”
Biden went through the best of his accomplishments, presiding “over one of the most extraordinary four years of progress in history”—investments in manufacturing and in green energy, most of which went to red states, he noted. He boasted of being the first president to successfully negotiate Medicare drug pricing. He said his infrastructure bill would spread high-speed Internet the way FDR’s investments spread electricity around the country. He bragged of 500 new electric-vehicle charging stations across America with more to come.
Graciously, he repeatedly referred to “Kamala and I” or “Kamala and me.” When the crowd broke out in “Thank you, Joe,” he came back: “Thank you, Kamala.” Biden endorsed her time and again: “It’s time to put a prosecutor in office instead of a convicted felon.”
He spoke sorrowfully about having to call Trump a “liar,” but he did. He trashed him for torpedoing (thanks to House Republicans) a border-control compromise that passed the Senate with bipartisan support.
Biden said he wrote “a peace treaty for Gaza” a few days ago, and promised “a surge of humanitarian aid” there. He added: “Those protesters out on the street have a point.” A reference to the way the late Henry Kissinger approved of his Ukraine policy didn’t go over quite as well.
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He even addressed the conflict over his decision to halt his reelection campaign. “All this talk about how I’m angry that people told me to step down. That’s not true,” he insisted. ”I love my country more than I love my job.” We need to elect “Kamala and Tim,” to continue to fight “corporate greed” and “bring down the cost of food and pharmaceuticals.” While some pundits have claimed that Harris’s progressive economic proposals on housing supply and subsidies and consumer price gouging, went beyond what Biden would support, he seemed to endorse all of it.
“And like many of our best presidents, she was vice president. That’s a joke,” he joked. “She will be a president who puts her stamp on America’s future.” He promised to be “the best volunteer” for Harris and Walz.
I hate to kvetch, but the program was backward. It should have led with Biden and his family, rather than boxing him out of East Coast primetime. Since Biden has already talked of how he does better earlier, why did he go on at 10:30 central time (which was 11:30 his time). It’s not that he stumbled, much. The rest of the first-night program was good, and with a thoughtful transition from Biden, passing the torch to Harris, it could have been great.
Conspiracy theorists, including the formerly respected Nate Silver, insisted that the DNC did it to hide Biden. I subscribe to Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
The first three hours of speeches were traditional convention fare, mostly dedicated to advancing Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. A strong union leader tableau and the heartfelt, well-crafted homage to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who ran for president 40 years ago, were excellent.
When Harris took the stage, after an ad backed by Beyonce’s “Freedom,” it turned the night around. “I wanna kick us off by thanking our incredible president, Joe Biden. We are forever grateful to you.” It was thrilling. I thought she was turning it over to the Biden tribute portion of the evening.
She wasn’t. Still, lots of wonderful speakers followed. Progressive Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr came out to spread the coach magic, hailing Walz. UAW president Shawn Fain, in his “Trump Is A Scab” T-shirt, brought the house down. “The rich think we’re stupid. But working-class Americans see this for what it is.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez followed, with all her compassion and charisma. “Thank you Joe Biden for your leadership!” But perhaps her most important line was insisting that Harris “is working tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza.” She was the star of the night.
Until Hillary Clinton, who got a five-minute standing ovation. For a while, she took over the “Thank you, Joe” duties of the night. Clinton referred to her own presidential candidacy, briefly, without bitterness. She reprised her line about putting cracks “in the hardest, highest glass ceiling,” referring to her own two tries at the presidency. But on the other side of those cracks, she said, she can see “Kamala Harris is taking the oath of office.”
“I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see this. They’d say, ‘Keep going!’”
Kaitlyn Dawson, Hadley Duvall, Amanda Zurawski, all victims of red-state abortion bans, became the heart and soul of the night. Representative Jamie Raskin got off one of the best lines of the night: “JD Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the GOP ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor.” Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock talked about how his mother’s hands picked cotton, and years later the state of Georgia picked her son as senator. That was January 5, 2021; “we know what happened on January 6.”
Senator Chris Coons led the crowd in the chant “We love Joe,” and out came Dr. Jill Biden, to talk movingly about “weeks ago, when I saw him dig deep in his soul and decide not to seek reelection, and endorse Kamala Harris.”
The night also marked the public debut of first daughter Ashley Biden, who called her father “the OG girl dad.” She invoked her late brother, Beau, who she said “is here with us.” She went on: “A courageous heart can heal a family. A courageous heart can heal a nation.” She urged the crowd to summon its strength and courage to elect Kamala Harris.
In all, it was a very good convention first night. It just felt a little backward.
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Joan Walsh
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.
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