“You know me.” It’s one of the most widely used lines of Joseph R. Biden Jr., a folksy introduction, a deflection and a defense.
Fact-check: It’s true. Mr. Biden has been long enough to be on his third presidency in four decades. Long enough to have played a dubious role in the sexual harassment testimony of Anita Hill’s 1991 First Chamber (for which he regrets), and then to be played by the actress – Kerry Washington, the host of ‘ the third night of his nominating convention – which starred Ms. Hill in the 2016 HBO movie “Confirmation.”
That the Democratic National Convention did not, like many conventions, have to introduce a new face to the public. Instead, it built a connection.
In clips, memoirs, and segments of policy, it presents Mr. Biden as someone who has lived through problems and comforted others in theirs: a colleague talking through grief; helping a young boy who, like Mr. Biden, wrestles with a stutterer.
And the acceptance speech of Mr. Biden casts him as the Connecter-in-Chief.
As you would expect from a challenger, he attacked President Trump’s handling of several national crises, including the pandemic that drew him to an almost empty room. But he, even in contrast to a president who has said he has not cried since his baby, is praying not only to alleviate the wrench problems of the country, but to feel them together with us.
Mr. Biden’s speech was perhaps the most common thing about a shaky but fascinating experimental convention, forced to reinvent itself through the boundaries of Covid-19.
Conventions have for decades been TV productions more than politically decisive than novelty events. But this was the first that was purely TV: Stitch together tapes and location pots, it had no existence in any other physical space than your screen.
It also had a large audience. It had to speak to the moderates of the party and its left. It spent a lot of time litigating against Trump-averse Republicans. And it had to reconcile a party with large constituencies of young people, women and people of color with its nominee, a 77-year-old white man.
That convention was a bit like an old-time performance for the Quibi era: A little something for everyone, and in fast, efficient bits. Speakers, live and tape, were mounted and hustled away. The keynote was cut-and-dice among 17 speakers, and sometimes traded a sentence at a time. (Even Mr. Biden’s 24.5-minute speech was, according to C-SPAN, by far the shortest DNC acceptance speech of the last four decades.)
The whiplash was particularly strong in the first hour of Thursday. HBO’s’ Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ ‘Veep’ delivered scathing jokes aimed at the kind of extreme online voter who would include a reference to Republicans mispronouncing Kamala Harris’ name, amid serious speeches and emotional stories.
Historian Jon Meacham appeared, and so did lip-syncing social media Donald Trump impersonator Sarah Cooper – also something for the PBS audience, something for the TikTok kids.
Senator Cory Booker and several of his primary opponents shared fond memories of running against Mr. Biden, at a round table, which Mr. Booker equal to a ‘Survivor’ reunion special. The mogul and short-lived Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg spoke separately, after apparently blowing the rest of his billions on flags.
It was a lot – policy and personality, kitsch and cheek – but this convention had to reinvent the language of a political ritual that usually required thousands of party faithful, in person, as extras.
How do you recreate the experience of hordes of roaring weddings again when none of them can be there? You can not. What you can do is find a way to create different but equally powerful emotions without them – like, for example, the touchingly kooky delegate roll call reisogue.
Upcoming applause lines do not work the same when there is no one to clap; singers do not land without one to laugh. What works is gravity and heart.
And that, as Mr Biden pointed out in the climax of the convention, is what he can do.
He stepped out of the shadows onto the pop stage, making his first promise: “I will be an ally of light and not of darkness.” This set up his larger theme, which was that he, out of politics, saw the elections as a moral struggle: between inclusion and division, decency and vulnerability, caring and contempt.
Mr. Biden had concrete criticism and counter-arguments against the president, especially about fighting the coronavirus: “It didn’t have to be that bad.”
But that was when Mr. Biden talked about it feeling the pandemic and its devastation that you could feel the speech step up.
He asked to speak to those who had lost someone to Covid. He had also lost, he said – the convention had reminded us of that, and paid a bow of four nights at this moment. “I know how mean, cruel and unjust life can sometimes be,” he said. “Your beloved may leave this earth, but they will never leave your heart.”
More than 170,000 Americans were lost in the pandemic, but no real public mourning. Mr. Biden said nothing about the president who, visiting the site of a mass shooting last year, posed with a hurricane baby and gave a thumbs up. He did not say that the country may be missing out on a leader who believes that loss of feelings does not make you a loser. He did not need that.
The camera pressed closer. Mr. Biden, like his running mate, Kamala Harris, spoke from a stage in an almost empty hall, which gave Ms Harris’ speech a haunting air on Wednesday. This time, the camera held him tightly in the frame, matching his intimate speech. It was not written as if it was meant to arouse a jubilant audience in the room. It was written to the camera, like a presidential address, and reached through the screen to the other side.
The speech ended like Mrs Harris, with music playing anticlimactically in the desolate hall, as Mr Biden turned to supporters on a big screen – a change that has created a lot of pandemic time for live audiences who never stop will to be unusual.
But there was more. Mr. Biden masked up and went to the parking lot, where flesh-and-blood supporters, socially distanced by their wheels, had a party. A modest spray of fireworks jumped overhead into the darkness.
It was not overwhelming. The background was not monumental. But it fits into this American moment of tentative fun and small, improvised holidays. Maybe there would be a bigger firework once, when there was more to cheer about. The important thing, for now, was the feeling.
