Convention Connection, Day 2

The Democrats celebrated the past, the present, and the future in day 2 of their virtual convention, with some Never Trump Republican performative theater, but then again, conventions are about performative theater, and I certainly don't have to forgive a single Republican personally if they want to vote for Biden in November.

Oh, and Bill Clinton was there. Briefly. Still, the night was about Dr. Jill Biden.

Four years ago, Clinton mesmerized Democrats in Philadelphia with his defense of “the real” Hillary Clinton versus the Republican caricature of her.

Clinton’s speech on Tuesday served as a reminder of his ability to distill complicated subjects into something someone might want to listen to – in this case, devastating statistics related to the coronavirus.

But Jill Biden’s role this year is more important. Democrats are acutely aware that Biden remains only softly defined for large swaths of the electorate, and on Tuesday, Biden sought to personalize him.

Speaking from a school in Wilmington, Delaware, Jill Biden said she “fell in love with a man and two little boys standing in the wreckage of unthinkable loss, mourning a wife and mother, a daughter and sister” after the 1972 car crash that killed Biden’s wife and daughter.

“How do you make a broken family whole?” she said. “The same way you make a nation whole, with love and understanding and with small acts of kindness. With bravery, with unwavering faith. You show up for each other in big ways and small ones again and again.”

There are exceptions to the rule. Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American Army captain who died in Iraq, was effective from the podium in 2016. But most people who are not politicians or performers have difficulty holding a room.

It’s a problem that Democrats at least since the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 have been trying to find an answer for. The coronavirus, it turned out, did the work for them.

At its darkest, the effectiveness of human testimony from afar was clear on Monday, with Kristin Urquiza’s story about her Trump-supporting father dying from the coronavirus – a “a healthy 65-year-old,” she said, whose “only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump.”

But on Tuesday, Democrats demonstrated that they could make more joyful vignettes work, as well – having Biden nominated by The New York Times security guard who told Biden “I love you” when the two met in an elevator last year. The exchange went viral, even as the newspaper did not endorse him, and Biden’s campaign delighted in the contrast between the security guard’s judgment and that of the newspaper.

“I take powerful people up on my elevator all the time,” the woman said on Tuesday. “When they get off, they go to their important meetings. Me, I just head back to the lobby. But in the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me. That he actually cared.”

I've never questioned Biden's humanity and his empathy. He's really good at it, even more so I think than Barack Obama or even 90's Bill Clinton.  Obama is cool and funny but still nerdy as the professor you want to excel for, whereas Clinton overdoes it with the Slick Willie car salesman act at times, but Biden always came across as genuine to me, even if his policy decisions were awful.

Oh, and he's learned from his mistakes (some of them).

Dr. Jill Biden's story of her husband was phenomenal though, moving, funny, and real. She's going to go far as First Lady.

We'll see what day 3 brings.