Democrats, day 1

I didn't see any of this when it was happening; I was still driving home from LA. I started to watch day 2 live this evening, but the talking heads kept rambling on instead of letting us hear the proceedings, and they did not say anything that hadn't already been heard many times. So I turned it off and spent my time watching the unannotated video of day 1.

This was the "Thank you Joe" day, and that came through clearly. I'm confident that Biden's withdrawal freed Democrats to express their natural love and respect for him and what he's accomplished, without it being burdened by the problematic need to support him for a second term. Biden's own speech concluding the evening included a specific denial that he's angry at anyone for forcing his withdrawal. You can believe that or not. The speech was a stemwinder, and fortunately largely State of the Union Joe rather than Debate Joe, though there were a few glitches, mostly places where it appeared the needle had skipped over a groove, to use an obsolete metaphor I still find useful.

Many other speakers mixed the Biden eulogy with the Harris-Walz support card. A lot of names got chanted, mostly speakers' first names, including Laphonza Butler, whom I wouldn't have thought that well-known; though when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared, the form of her name that got chanted was "AOC! AOC!"

The speeches that most stuck with me were Jamie Raskin, elegant in a suit and white tennis shoes, who got in a few crufty lines like "banana Republicans" and "kangaroo Supreme Court," and Raphael Warnock. When Warnock calls a vote "a prayer for the world we desire" and adds that "our prayers are stronger when we pray together," you can't forget he is a preacher. He also made a point that's rarely brought up about public health: that our own health is protected by investing in the health of our neighbors. We really are in this together.

Of course he also called DT "a plague on the American conscience," and a lot of others had similar remarks, but mostly this was an upbeat evening about healing and moral imperatives. Hillary Clinton's major speech, in which she called Harris's nomination the culmination of a long series of women's advances, from the 19th Amendment to Shirley Chisholm's run to Clinton's own nomination. She seemed happy to pass the torch on, and so did Biden. I hope that's the case, and I'm ready to watch day 2 unannotated on day 3.