This could have been a little
weird, given the generational and ideological differences. But it ended up
proving that the Democratic Party is capacious enough to include both politicians
comfortably. AOC took the stage to thunderous applause, which was great to hear.
The Democratic Party, as manifest in that hall, isn’t a lot of Gen Zers from
bohemian urban neighborhoods. It’s middle-aged lawyers and public employees and
other union workers from the suburbs. It was great to see those people give her
that welcome. And she was amazing. She spoke about having been a bartender six
years ago and how Republicans want her to go back to that, which she said would
be fine because “there’s nothing wrong with working for a living.” She filled
in some biography that a lot of people don’t know, about her family facing financial
peril after her father died of cancer. That established her as a working-class
person and cut against the common picture of her as a lefty elitist. She killed
it.
Then, shortly thereafter, came
Clinton. If this crowd adored AOC this much, I wondered, was it going to be a
little meh about Clinton? But her reception was even more rapturous. She
couldn’t even start her speech for two or three minutes. And once she did, she
killed it, too. She did a great job of boosting Harris (“this is our time,
America, this is when we stand up, this is when we break through”), but she
took the lead, wearing the battle scars that gave her the right to do so, in
ripping into Trump. “We have him on the run now,” she said. And when she
mentioned his convictions and the crowd started chanting “lock him up,” well, she
didn’t get nervous and shush them. Instead, a smile creased her faced. Let the
right prattle on about it being tasteless. That smile had a lot of history and
truth in it, and every single person in the hall knew it.
Whoever organized the speaking
order last night certainly tried to stuff too much in there (poor Rep. Grace
Meng, who got bumped!), but putting AOC and HRC that close to each other was a risky
but brilliant piece of stagecraft. They’re awfully different, but last night,
they were part of the same story.
