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AUGUST

**20, 2020**

Harold Meyerson' s
National Convention Report

**Unconventional: The Democrats, Day Three**

Obama Delivers His Gettysburg Address

****

Donald Trump reportedly considered giving his acceptance speech next
week at Gettysburg, but it was Barack Obama who delivered a
Gettysburg-esque address on the third day of the Democratic convention.

The part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that may sound a little
strange to modern ears is his linkage of the as-yet-undecided outcome of
the Civil War to the prospects of democracy itself. The battle, he said,
was a test of whether "any nation so conceived [in liberty] and so
dedicated [to the proposition that all men are created equal] could long
endure." Lincoln closed by exhorting his listeners-the nation-to
work to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth."

Familiar words, but did Lincoln really believe, did Northern soldiers
believe, did the North believe that government by the people would
actually be imperiled if the South won?

Yes, they did. Historians who've read the soldiers' letters and
their families' letters and their newspapers have concluded that most
Northern troops fought and died not for abolitionism, or at least, not
until it became clear that winning the war required emancipation. They
fought for the belief that the United States was then the world's only
experiment in popular sovereignty, and that if it broke apart, it would
deal a mortal blow to the democratic model. European powers had brutally
suppressed any democratic green shoots after the failed revolutions of
1848; America, the North viewed, stood alone. So in asserting that
democracy itself was at stake on Cemetery Ridge, Lincoln gave voice not
just to his own hopes and fears, but those of his soldiers and the North
generally.

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Which is why Barack Obama's remarkable speech on Wednesday night was
the most Lincolnesque that he, or any post-Lincoln American, has ever
given. He gave his long-muted voice not just to his presentiments about
the authoritarian threat that Donald Trump has posed to the nation, and
what horrors of racism, irrationality, and brutality may follow should
Trump be re-elected, but to the fears of millions that American
democracy itself is on the line in November. And like Lincoln at
Gettysburg, Obama defined the stakes of the conflict threatening the
nation more logically, more compellingly, and more movingly than anyone
else could have.

In a sense, Republicans have been warring on popular sovereignty for
years, as the nation has grown more racially diverse, and America's
young have grown up in a world where mere sentience produces
progressivism. As a consequence, the fundamental precept of the
Republican Party has become whatever it takes to preserve their minority
rule. Its Supreme Court justices trash the Voting Rights Act. Its
election officials throw minority and young voters off the rolls. Its
very existence relies on the Electoral College and the Senate, two
18th-century institutions established to create governments freed from
popular rule. As with everything he touches, Trump is the logical end
point of the party's fear of popular sovereignty, and an uglier one
cannot be imagined. If denying the franchise to minorities and
immigrants and city dwellers and the like has no basis in law or
democratic values, Trump's response is to demonize them, vilify them,
lie about them, encourage his henchmen to close their polling places and
stop their mail. That Trump actually is a racist and encourages racism
in his followers only makes his attacks more vehement.

In his speech, Obama attacked Trump's incompetence and indifference,
but his chief critique was Trump's failure to understand, appreciate,
and uphold the nation's democratic essence, flawed and incomplete as
it may be. He cited Trump's abuses of democratic rights-to assemble,
to protest, to vote. To the potential voters that the convention had
largely failed to address until Wednesday, those under 30, Obama noted
that they appeared to be the first generation in the nation's history
that truly wishes to purge the country of its racism and move it toward
economic justice. As Lincoln told the nation that it could either expand
democracy with the "new birth of freedom" that was emancipation or risk
losing it altogether, so Obama told the young that they could make
American democracy more real by continuing their fight, or risk losing
it altogether should Trump win.

We Can't Do This Without You

"You can give our democracy new meaning," he said. "You can take it to a
better place. You're the missing ingredient, the ones who will decide
whether or not America becomes the country that fully lives up to its
creed ... That work will continue long after this election. But any
chance of success depends entirely on the outcome of this election. This
administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's
what it takes to win."

Obama concluded with a notably Lincolnesque line: "What we do echoes
through the generations."

Besides Obama's impassioned talk, the one other element of the
Democrats' third session that will echo down generations was Kamala
Harris's nomination as the party's vice-presidential candidate,
because of who she is and what she represents. Her speech-conceived as
all such speeches are, as a way to introduce herself to the American
public as a relatable and competent leader-met those goals without
reaching any oratorical heights, though to say that Obama was a tough
act to follow is to understate.

The rest of the evening worked rather well, focusing on roughly
outlining the party's and the ticket's stance on gun control,
immigration and immigrant rights, women's rights, the climate crisis
and environmental justice, and rebuilding the economy, with Elizabeth
Warren very effectively making the case for one of Joe Biden's most
progressive positions: investing in child care as a necessary component
of the nation's infrastructure.

But at a time when the nation sometimes seems on the brink of a second
irreconcilable conflict, it was Obama, finally, who defined what this
election is most deeply about, much as Lincoln, at Gettysburg, defined
the meaning of the Civil War.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Biden Back Better?

The nominee's speech tonight is his best opportunity to actually
explain what he wants to do in office. BY DAVID DAYEN

Women Will Decide Which Man Is Right for the Job

Presidential character is a key factor in 2020. BY ALEX J. ROUHANDEH

The Democratic Platform Caves on Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Grassroots DNC delegate RL Miller on the Democratic leadership's
broken promise, and how to drag the party to reality on climate action
BY MARCIA BROWN

This Is Not a Convention

It is every politician's dream of a totally scripted TV unity fest.
That's OK for now, but once it's done we need a return to real
politics. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

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