The opening night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday crackled with an energy the party hasn’t seen since 2008, thanks in large part to two back-to-back, barn-burning speeches by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hillary Clinton — two women seemingly at opposite ends of the party spectrum — that got the crowd on their feet and visibly emotional. Despite their political and generational differences, AOC and Clinton delivered a one-two punch against Donald Trump along with fiery calls to action that had me feeling hopeful that Democrats have finally learned how to play offense and fight with as much gusto as the other side.
This prime-time pairing may have seemed like an unlikely, or even risky, choice by the Democratic Party. Long treated as an outsider by top party brass, AOC was only given about 30 seconds of stage time to introduce Senator Bernie Sanders at the last convention in 2020. Even though she’s worked more closely with Biden’s White House, she’s criticized him from the left most notably on his weapons shipments to Israel. Clinton, of course, notoriously lost to the same Republican self-described billionaire that Kamala Harris is currently trying to beat, which doesn’t seem like the ideal legacy to rehash in order to motivate the Democratic base.
But the risk undoubtedly paid off. Both women were given a hero’s welcome at the convention, and the fiery speeches they delivered in tandem appeared to unify both wings of the party at exactly the right moment for Harris, who has less than three months until Election Day to rally an entire party around her. The excitement in the room was apparent even to those watching from home: Delegations jumped to their feet before AOC began speaking, then remained standing as she called Donald Trump a “two-bit union buster” who would “sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the pockets of his Wall Street friends.” She also gave Harris her full-throated endorsement, making the case for the vice-president to her progressive fans.
“In Kamala Harris we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class, because she is from the middle class,” the New York representative said. “She understands the urgency of rent checks, groceries, and prescriptions. She is as committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate greed. She is working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and [bring] hostages home.”
AOC’s speech effectively hyped up the audience for Clinton, who’s become something of a tragic figure in the party as Harris inherits her — arrested? Unrealized? — dream of becoming the first woman in the Oval Office. Some viewers who were traumatized by Trump’s win in 2016 were probably triggered when she walked onstage to Sara Bareilles’s “Brave,” referenced the “cracks” she herself put in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” then exited to Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” a ubiquitous anthem during her campaign. But her appearance wasn’t grim; it was dignified and determined. And it sounded, at times, like the revenge of a woman who’s been seething for eight years over the injustice of her loss to a now-convicted criminal. A woman who, after winning the popular vote by millions, had to watch Trump appoint three Supreme Court justices that she could’ve gotten to nominate, who then overturned the right to an abortion for which she had always fought.
Clinton directly called back to Trump ridiculing her in 2016, saying of his jeers at Harris, “He’s mocking her name and her laugh. Sound familiar?” She then delivered one of the most memorable lines of the night: “But we have him on the run now.” In another full-circle moment, after noting that Trump “made his own kind of history” as “the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions,” Clinton simply smiled as the crowd began booming chants of “lock him up.”
She continued with an emotional acknowledgment of the race and gender barriers being broken — barriers that Harris has been reluctant to highlight herself — that had Tim Walz’s wife, Gwen, in tears. “I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us. They would say, ‘Keep going,’ surely. Gerry [Ferraro] and Shirley [Chisholm] would say, ‘Keep going.’”
“On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States,” Clinton continued. “Because, my friends, when a barrier falls for one of us, it falls. It falls and clears the way for all of us.”
The speech received a two-minute standing ovation. Campaign workers who’d fought for Clinton eight years ago reveled in watching her finally get her flowers after being treated like a liability by the party for so long. It was a satisfying kind of closure for the woman who’d seemed destined her whole career to become the first woman president, and it certainly made for a memorable night in politics. If AOC doused the torch with fuel, Clinton got to light it on fire and pass it to Harris to potentially finish what she started.
