The Party is for Everyone

“The party is for everyone” Levar Stoney, Mayor of Richmond Virginia, day 2 of the DNC.

I was lucky enough to be invited as a guest of the Progressive Policy Institute to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. It’s a hard thing to sum up, a gigantic carnival of colour, noise, and politics that sprawls across America’s third largest city.

But that line, the party is for everyone, delivered by the young, confident mayor of Richmond is the best way to unlock what the DNC meant, or at least what Democrats wanted it to mean.

There’s three distinct ways to understand what Mr Stoney was saying. One, the Democrats have an offer to every voter. Two, Kamala Harris is leader for every wing of the Democrats. Three, there’s a party going on here and everyone’s invited.

From what I saw this week, only the third is unequivocally true.

It’s certainly the case that the offer to voters is coming together. Harris herself is building a narrative that she is a strong but fair leader that Americans can believe in. A well worked out offer to women, whose rights are menaced by Trump and the shadowy Project 2025, is at the forefront of this convention. There’s a commendable focus, at least in words, on restoring security to the middle class. And throughout the convention there was an emphasis on showcasing former Trump voters, and indeed staff, to show it is possible to vote for him in 2016 or 2020 and come back this time.

But all that said, neither in the main hall of the convention or in what roughly equates to a fringe event, there’s no real sense of why those Trump voters should come back. The argument that Trump is despicable is well developed and Dems can expound on it at length. But when it comes to the positive offer that will entice former Trumpers back there is very little.

Even more weirdly I found very little discussion or deep understanding of what drove these voters to Trump in the first place. Nostalgia for a richer, more confident America, and racism are the two most commonly offered accounts. These are certainly part of the picture but what to do about them, or how to deal with data that doesn’t fit this narrative e.g. why Hispanic people seemed to be moving to Trump in 2020 is not discussed enough.

The other way of looking at this convention is the Party, the Democrats, is under Kamala Harris a viable place for every faction within it. There was certainly a big performative show of unity in the main hall, not least with Bernie Sanders given a platform (which he largely squandered with a long and droning speech).

Unity is the order of the day but beneath the smiles you can see the outline of issues that might become un-ignorable as the election gets closer. Several people said to me that Kamala Harris is currently the ‘not Trump’. A cipher who is easy to rally around. One journalist told me “She is the most famous woman in the world and no one knows who she is”. As she defines herself the factional cracks may show.

Remember that very little policy has been announced to disagree over. Centrist Dems are already worried re the mechanics of the proposed ban on price gouging and there is a sense the Progressive wing smell a chance to get large parts of their agenda into the platform, though it’s not clear what they want yet.

And of course the crisis is Gaza is bubbling under the surface, occasionally flaring up inside and outside the convention itself. Protests were not as large as the organisers were hoping – as shown by large piles of unclaimed placards around the centre – but they were still large. I saw small verbal fracas occasionally break out in the streets between supporters of either side and a caucus event I was watching was disrupted in the manner we have become familiar with in the UK. How Harris navigates the issue will inevitably alienate some powerful people in her party.

Finally though, there is no doubt that the small-p party is for everyone. The energy and positive atmosphere is real. It’s an organic flowering of relief and hope – but one also carefully cultivated by the convention organisers with the deployment of music and celebrities. Harris herself has steel but also clearly a sense of fun. She has been endearing and positive and overall, the convention has challenged the Dems self-hating stereotype. There might not be a big policy offer yet but purely on vibes the Democrats feel like they’re holding a party that anyone would want to be involved in.

What should we in the UK take from all this? Well the truth is the unity in Chicago probably won’t last. It’s a freak of circumstance that comes from uniting against a common enemy. Perhaps there is a read across from that to our position post-election.

But I’d say the real takeaway is the sense that centre left politics can be fun, diverse and dynamic is something we need to re-find. This is very hard to do in government, where seriousness is the order of the day, and I don’t expect to see many rappers or sports stars in Liverpool next month. But it’s also never more important than in government if we aspire to stay there. The party needs to seem energetic and appealing to reassure voters that the chance they have taken on us is paying off through this parliament and make them feel positive about voting Labour again next time.

 

To read more on this topic, check out To Win, Harris Will Need to Follow Starmer’s Example.

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