National conventions traditionally mark a high point for presidential campaigns. There's nothing traditional about 2020.
Forced to abandon their in-person convention in Milwaukee because of the pandemic, Democrats begin their all-virtual affair on Monday night. There will be no physical gathering place, no cheering audience, no balloons. The program will consist of a series of online video addresses — roughly half of which will be prerecorded — that play out for two hours each night until Biden formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday in a mostly empty Delaware ballroom.
While that may sound underwhelming, the last hour of the speaking program each night will be broadcast live on network television and feature the Democratic Party's elite: former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and 2016 party nominee Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Even a Republican former governor of Ohio, John Kasich, will speak on Biden's behalf.
Michelle Obama will stress Democrat Joe Biden's competency and character that will draw sharp contrasts between the Republican incumbent seeking reelection and the man who was her husband's two-term vice president, an adviser said.
“This election is very personal for her,” Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser to Barack and Michelle Obama, told The Associated Press. “She's going to take this opportunity to speak about Vice President Biden in two ways: competency, which she had a chance to observe first-hand while he served as her husband's vice president, but also his profoundly decent character.”
Republican Donald Trump succeeded Democrat Obama in 2017 and promptly set out to undo many of Obama's achievements on health care, the environment and foreign policy, among others. Trump also routinely criticizes Obama's job performance.
Biden's sense of empathy will also be a focus of Mrs. Obama's speech.
Tragedy has followed Biden, from the death of his first wife and baby daughter after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, to the death of his son, Beau Biden, from brain cancer in 2015.
Mrs. Obama, who leads an effort to help register people to vote, will also speak about the importance of voting in the Nov. 3 election, which will take place in the midst of a deadly coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 170,000 Americans and sickened more than 5 million others.
Her remarks will come as debate rages in Washington about U.S. Postal Service changes that are delaying mail deliveries around the country, and vociferous denunciations by Trump — who lags behind Biden in some national and state polls — of efforts by some states to expand voting-by-mail options because of the pandemic.
“She knows the lengths that people are going through, around our country, to suppress the vote and it’s why she has poured so much of her energy into getting folks registered and educated about voting,” Jarrett said.
In keeping with the virtual nature of the convention because of the coronavirus, Mrs. Obama's remarks for Monday night were recorded before Biden's announcement last Tuesday that he had chosen California Sen. Kamala Harris to be his running mate.
But Mrs. Obama wrote lengthy posts on her Facebook and Instagram accounts praising Harris, a Black woman born to Jamaican and Indian parents. after she joined the Democratic ticket.
Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican who sought the GOP nomination against Trump in 2016 also will speak Monday night in favor of Biden. Kasich has admitted to having to do some "soul searching" before crossing the aisle to back the Democratic nominee, but told CNN on Sunday he intends to remain a Republican.
Three more Republicans will cross party lines to speak in support of Biden as well.
Former Representative Susan Molinari of New York, former Hewlet Packard Enterprise Co. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, who unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in 2010, and former Governor Christine Whitman of New Jersey are slated to speak. They will join Kasich, who served two terms as governor of Ohio and challenged Trump for the nomination in 2016.
The Republicans will make a pitch to GOP voters whose support for President Donald Trump might be wavering. “It’s important to let them know that they’re not alone,” said Representative Cedric Richmond, a Biden campaign co-chairman, on a conference call with reporters. “There are Republican leaders voting for Biden-Harris.”
Molinari, once a rising star in the GOP who gave the keynote address in the 1996 Republican National Convention, left office in 1997 for a job at CBS News. She served as Google’s top Washington lobbyist before moving into an advisory role late in 2018.
It’s not the first time that two of the speakers have backed a Democrat. In 2016, Meg Whitman endorsed Hillary Clinton and said she would donate to her campaign and try to raise money for it. Christine Whitman also endorsed Clinton. Both have been critical of Trump.
There are no other moments in politics that offer campaigns the ability to deliver their carefully scripted message to millions of voters on prime-time television four days in a row. That's bound to energize some of Biden's coalition.
What is the Kamala Harris effect?
California Sen. Kamala Harris won the veepstakes five days ago, and we're just beginning to see her impact on the Biden campaign.
The impact of running mates is often exaggerated. Still, the early reviews have been positive. Biden's campaign raised a staggering $48 million in the 48 hours after last week's announcement, people of color — in the African American and Indian communities — are excited, and Trump's campaign has struggled to identify a coherent message against her.
Trump's campaign surrogates have cast her as an extreme liberal, while Trump himself settled on a series of racist and sexist comments. The Republican president described Harris in recent days as a “madwoman” and claimed at a White House news conference to have “no idea” whether she was eligible to serve as vice president because her parents were immigrants. Born in California, she is eligible as set out in the Constitution.
Harris faces the largest test of her political career on Wednesday night when she makes history as the first woman of color to accept a major party's vice presidential nomination.
Biden won't be in Wisconsin for the Democrats' convention as initially planned this week, but Trump will.
The Trump campaign has announced two in-person campaign appearances on Monday and a third on Tuesday as the Republican president works to undermine the opening days of the Democratic National Convention. He's scheduled to deliver remarks in Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday before heading to Arizona on Tuesday.
Trump has proven to be a master of manipulating media coverage to ensure he's the center of attention, even if that attention isn't always positive. By being willing to travel to battleground states that Biden hasn't visited for months, Trump is ensuring that he'll be a significant part of the conversation on what may be the most important week of Biden's decades-long political career.
The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News contributed.
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