What's Tony Thinking

What a Difference a Quadrennial Makes

I was in the mountains last week and so missed seeing any of Democrat’s National Convention live. But I’ve been catching up, and recently watched Vice-President Harris’s acceptance speech.

Harris rose to the occasion. She embraced the stature and authority of her new position and role as the party’s presidential nominee, even as the party enthusiastically embraced her. It’s tough to be #2, but now she no longer had to do that awkward dance, one that involves constantly looking over your shoulder. Now, she is the one, the nominee, possibly the next President. She stepped up and into that new role convincingly.

That said, what a difference the passage of time from 2020 to 2024 has made. In 2019 – 2020 her background as a prosecutor was, amid a string of high-profile incidents of police violence and Black Lives Matter, not in her favor. She was law enforcement, a prosecutor. Horrors!

No longer. Now, she touted that role and experience. “Kamala Harris for the People.” She spoke of being moved to be a lawyer and a prosecutor by telling the story of her best friend in high school, a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a step father. She wanted to protect people like her friend. The same theme, on a larger screen, with the Great Recession and predatory banks.

In 2020 law enforcement was suspect or worse. Harris herself flirted with “defund the police.” But what that neglected, which it seems that Harris the prosecutor gets, is that while the police and courts can be an instrument of oppression, they can also be an instrument of law and order to protect the vulnerable. “Defund the police” was never that popular in actual minority communities because people there understood that the absence of police lets criminal elements have a free hand. But that couldn’t be said in 2020.

This was not the only change in these four years. The New York Times 1619 Project would be published and awarded a Pulitzer Prize that year, lending credence to those who claimed that the single most important fact about the America was virulent and persistent racism. White Supremacy was, we were told, the real truth about America.

Now, in 2024, Harris spoke of the U.S. as “the greatest nation on earth” and “the world’s greatest democracy.” The convention delegates chanted “USA!” “USA!” She closed by speaking of the privilege and pride of being an American.

I’m not sure that could have happened in 2020. That said, such affirmations sound different, and to my mind better, coming from a woman of color and child of immigrants than they do coming from a billionaire white guy who uses the legal system to protect himself.

Harris also promised that under her Presidency the US would have “the strongest, most lethal, fighting force in the world.” I can’t remember what was said regarding the military readiness by candidate Joe Biden in 2020, but I’d be surprised if it was anything that forceful.

What a difference a quadrennial makes.

The Woke Left of the Democratic Party was hardly evident. No one, I heard, was chanting “DEI!” “DEI!” And outside the Convention, the expected 100,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were nothing close to that. Inside Harris walked a fine line of support for Israel while acknowledging the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, but condemning the tactics of Hamas and other Iranian sponsored terrorist groups.

In 2020 Biden was fighting off, and caving into, the far left wing of the party. In 2024 Harris is pretty much able to take it for granted as she moved to a center rooted in the classic American story of immigrants who have risen by hard work, determination and discipline. Along with several other speakers, Harris gave special emphasis to the strength and courage of her mother.

Could it be that people of color, immigrants and women will save* us from ourselves? Here’s hoping.

*I use “save” not in the ultimate or a religious sense, but as in deliver us from Trump’s mendacity and demagoguery, and putting politics in its proper, i.e. relative, place.