Kamala-Jitsu: Democrats Turn Trump Into the Incumbent
If the convention accomplished one thing, it’s this: The people in power have now framed themselves as the opposition party.
DEMOCRATS SPENT FOUR DAYS in Chicago castigating, belittling, and demonizing Donald Trump. And then they did something even more vicious: They turned him into the incumbent.
The 2024 Democratic convention will be remembered for, among other things, Oprah’s oratory, the proud tears of Tim Walz’s son, Michelle Obama’s call to action, and the historic nomination of the first black female presidential candidate, who delivered a speech that sought to claim the mantle of patriotism and outline a less rancorous politics.
But the most consequential outcome may end up being how the convention transformed the team currently occupying the White House into the opposition party, while portraying Trump as a dangerous blight that needs to be defeated.
“Yes we did,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, when asked if Democrats sought to make the contest into a referendum on Trump. Pointing to the crowd surrounding him on the convention floor, he added, “there is excitement of what we can do and there is excitement to not let that son of a gun become president.”
Time and again, speakers in Chicago portrayed the election as a judgment on the candidate who currently does not hold office. They described a country still dealing with the lingering outcomes of a presidency that ended three and a half years ago, from a pandemic that shattered society to the rapid debasement of our politics. And they treated the record of the current administration as something to tout and praise but not dwell on.
The predominant theme of the entire week, “we’re not going back,” was not an affirmative case to continue the progress of the current administration, it was a fearful warning about returning to the prior one.
“Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election,” Harris said in her acceptance speech, framing Trump as a shadow that never cleared even after left the White House.
Monitoring the speech and posting on Truth Social in real time, Trump hit back at Harris: “She didn’t mention China, she didn’t mention fracking, she didn’t mention Energy, she didn’t mention, meaningfully, Russia and Ukraine, she didn’t mention the big subjects of the day, that are destroying our Country. There are 60 million people in poverty in the U.S., under their watch, and she doesn’t even talk about them!” (According to the federal government, the number of people living in poverty in the United States is closer to 40 million.)
The former president’s name was invoked in so many Democratic speeches in Chicago that his campaign kept a daily tally of the references to him. In the Trump campaign’s telling, the convention was a slick Hollywood makeover of Harris’s record—a creation of an alternate reality like something out of Nineteen Eighty-four.
“We heard Steven Spielberg helped produce the Democratic National Convention, but it looks more like a George Orwell production,” said Trump campaign adviser Brian Hughes.
As far as brass tacks go, few would argue with the Harris approach. In a tight presidential campaign, it’s better to be perceived as the candidate of change; to make it a choice, not a referendum. It’s a stark contrast—both rhetorical and strategic—to how the race was being run prior to her becoming the nominee.
To drive the message home, lawyers and activists who had sued and fought Trump got speaking slots just to bash him on Thursday night. Comedian D.L. Hughley told a few Trump jokes (“Kamala’s been black a lot longer than Trump’s been a Republican”). And members of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five took the stage with the Rev. Al Sharpton to criticize Trump for calling for their execution in 1989 before they were even charged.
“Forty-five wanted us unalive,” said Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilor.
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, insisted that “we’re not obsessed with Trump.” But, he said, there’s a simple reason he was constantly mentioned and attacked: “He’s a jerk and he deserves it.”
THE ATTEMPT TO RECAST TRUMP AND REPUBLICANS as the incumbents has not meant a complete obfuscation of Harris’s own record or history. Her personal story has been a main feature of the convention, including in her speech on Thursday. But often, her record as vice president is treated as a smaller biographical tidbit than her time as a district attorney, her record as California’s attorney general, and even her short stint as an employee at McDonalds. Aside from a video showing her casting tie-breaking votes in the Senate, what she’s been up to over the last four years has been conspicuously unstressed this week.
In emphasizing her time as a DA and California AG, Harris drew an implicit but obvious contrast between herself as a prosecutor and Trump as a convicted felon. Her only client was “the people,” she said, but the court-plagued Trump as president would “serve the only client he has ever had: himself.” She called the ex-president a wannabe autocrat and accused him of intending to ban abortion nationwide and limit access to abortion pills (positions that some Republicans hold but that Trump himself does not).
Pledging to institute a middle-class tax cut, she also sought to outflank Trump on his right by calling his tariff plan a “Trump tax hike,” and she criticized his tax-cut plan as a giveaway to the rich that would lead to more debt.
Harris outlined places where she would continue the policies that the Biden administration pursued. She used her address to emphasize the need for international leadership. And her pledge to defend Israeli security while acknowledging the plight of the Palestinians was not substantively different from Biden’s own, even if it was delivered with far more polish.
But the vice president and the other presenters largely spoke in generalities and deployed classic Americana tropes. Three speakers on Wednesday night referenced their military service, as did three more on Thursday: Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly; Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Senate candidate; and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the handful of Republicans to speak this week. A high school football team was brought on stage to celebrate their coach. There was talk of delivering casseroles to one’s neighbors and of how good a shot Tim Walz is.
Carlos Trujillo, a Trump surrogate in Chicago and former ambassador to the Organization of American States, said that the Democrats’ emphasis on generic Americana was an indication that Harris struggles when it comes to top issues like the economy and inflation—issues on which, polls show, Trump remains stronger.
“She finally recognizes that she can’t run on the failed policies of the past three and a half years, their economic policy, their migration policy,” he said. “So in true fashion and with the lack of sincerity that she has, she has to recreate herself as a person who distances herself from the same policies that she spent three and a half years championing.”
But Harris has also been able to chart this path because Trump has allowed it. One reason Democrats spoke throughout the week about valuing freedom and cherishing democracy is because those terms, once taken for granted as boilerplate, have become concepts whose importance and even meaning the two parties disagree on.
Of course, circumstances have benefited Harris too. Joe Biden’s departure from the ticket reset the race. And Trump’s decision to not retreat from the political landscape after his presidency ended—recall that he announced his 2024 run way back in November 2022—has made it feel as if he never truly left us. Indeed, he hasn’t.
“This is absolutely a referendum on Trump. People are sick of him,” said Dan Daley, a Florida delegate and state representative. “Donald Trump had his four years and then stuck around. We saw what a disaster he was. So why the hell would we want to go back to that?”
You say Trump does not ascribe to a national abortion ban or limiting the abortion pill. Have you ever heard of Project 2025? These policies are very much within these pages. And since Trump actually has no convictions or policies of his own and is easily led, usually by the last person to have his ear, you are the only person who thinks these policies would not be enacted.
KH reminded us that we can still be proud of our leaders, representatives, presidents. And she credibly and honestly presented herself as a person who americans could take pride in. To feel good about. Thank you, Kamala. We needed that.