Democrats have one message as they close their convention: Don’t start celebrating

Democrats certainly have the momentum. But they’ve seen too many elections where they got too excited

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) offered a strategy to make sure that Democrats win when he delivered his speech on Wednesday (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

Long after other delegations had filed out of the United Center following Governor Tim Walz’s acceptance speech, Minnesota’s delegation were still celebrating.

Minnesota technically doesn’t have a Democratic Party, but rather a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. Members of the delegation chanted “D-F-L,” Walz’s name and “Let’s go, Coach” — a nod to his time as a defensive coordinator at Mankato West High School — as they partied. But Walz wasn’t even there. An Irish goodbye is leaving without telling anyone, but a Midwesterner goodbye lingers as long as possible, which is fitting for Chicago. Although he wasn’t present, he had clearly left a long-lasting impression in the room.

“We were having fun, we was representing our state,” Latonya Reeves, a Democratic National Committee member from Minnesota, told The Independent, before rattling off all of the progressive accomplishments the state has recently achieved. “We have the best state in the union and can’t nobody tell me no different.”

This came after a positively Minnesotan third night that included a performance of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” by John Legend, Sheila E and Ariel O’Neal followed by a speech from Minnesota’s senior Senator Amy Klobuchar and Walz’s own heartwarming speech. In a heartwarming moment that went viral, Walz’s son Gus became emotional watching his father address the convention, at one point saying to the camera: “That’s my dad!”

To borrow from the governor, the Democrats are “bringing the joy” back after feeling incredibly grim for most of the year with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Even Rodney Davis, a Republican former congressman from Illinois who lost his primary in 2022, was caught sipping a drink and hanging around the CNN and Politico grill.

“Obviously, it's been a convention that's excited Democrats, and now, as we're looking ahead, the campaign is really going to get into that final stretch,” he told The Independent. But the Republican had some sober advice about the final 74 days of the race.

“I think voters are going to be able to decide who they want to elect as president, but the undecided voter is very limited right now when it comes to numbers,” he said.

As Inside Washington likes to say, this is the “vibes” election and there has undoubtedly been a “vibe shift.” As one Biden campaign staffer told The Independent , “We were expecting a funeral — we got a Taylor Swift show instead.” The youth group Voters of Tomorrow even held a “Hotties for Harris” event after the second night.

But despite the ebullience at Kamala Harris being at the top of the ticket, Democrats know they cannot live on vibes alone. Indeed, one persistent message throughout the past few nights was that the race is not in the bag and the party cannot celebrate until the final votes are tallied.

Right now, Democrats certainly have the momentum. But during her speech on Tuesday evening, Michelle Obama, perhaps the most gifted orator in Democratic politics despite her hatred of it, invoked Harris’s mother and told people, “Don’t just sit around and complain. Do something.”

“So if they lie about [Harris]—and they will—we’ve got to do something. If we see a bad poll—and we will—we’ve got to put down that phone and do something,” she said. “If we start feeling tired, if we start feeling that dread creeping back in, we gotta pick ourselves up, throw water on our face, and what?”

That crowd responded in kind by chanting: “Do something.”

Similarly, former president Bill Clinton, who once was known as “the boy governor” and “the comeback kid” but now acted more like an elder sage, offered some of his earthy Arkansas wisdom.

“We Democrats have a lot of hay in the barn—we just need to saddle up and ride with strength through November,” he said. Clinton, and his wife Hillary, know all about this. Just eight years ago, everyone believed they would return to the White House, except with Hillary in the Oval Office and Bill baking cookies.

Four years before Bill won the White House, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis had a double-digit lead and was measuring the drapes — until the elder Bush hammered him on crime and he made an ill-fated photo op of himself riding in a tank.

Shortly after Clinton took the stage at the DNC, Hakeem Jeffries, the would-be speaker of the House if Democrats flip the lower chamber, delivered another exhortation while paraphrasing the Book of Psalms.

“Strategize on Sunday,” he said. “Meet the moment on Monday. Take it to them on Tuesday. Work it out on Wednesday. Thank the Lord on Thursday. Fight the power on Friday. Set it off on Saturday. Get a few hours of sleep, wake up the next day and do it all over again until joy, joy, joy comes in the morning.”

But Democrats may need more than joy to get them through November. On Wednesday evening, uncommitted delegates and pro-Palestine advocates expressed dissatisfaction that the convention did not allow for a Palestinian voice to speak on the convention stage, considering that the parents of an Israeli hostage held by Hamas spoke. While most of the pro-Palestine advocates inside the convention area have said they want to get to a point where they can support Harris, late into the evening, a few protesters outside the security perimeter blasted Harris as a stooge for Israel. One had a keffiyeh over his face and a “Make America Great Again” hat.