NEW YORK (AP) — The family of George Floyd, the Minnesota man whose death sparked a national awakening on racial injustice, led a moment of silence Monday night in the early moments of the Democratic National Convention.
One of Floyd’s brothers, Philonise, stood alongside another brother, Rodney, and praised the sweeping protests that followed their brother’s death.
“People of all races, all ages, all genders, all backgrounds, peacefully protesting in the name of love and unity is a fitting legacy for our brother,” he said. “George should be alive today.”
The early focus on racial equity came as Joe Biden introduced the breadth of his coalition to a divided America on Monday night, progressive Democrats joining conservative Republicans and a billionaire CEO to deliver an urgent appeal for voters to unite against President Donald Trump regardless of political ideology or party.
Former first lady Michelle Obama vouched for Biden’s empathy and experience, while the extraordinary ideological range of Biden’s many messengers on the opening night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention was perhaps best demonstrated by former presidential contenders from opposing parties: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who championed a multi-trillion-dollar universal health care plan, and Ohio’s former Republican Gov. John Kasich, an anti-abortion conservative who spent decades fighting to cut government spending.
“My friends, I say to you, and to everyone who supported other candidates in this primary and to those who may have voted for Donald Trump in the last election: The future of our democracy is at stake. The future of our economy is at stake. The future of our planet is at stake,” Sanders declared.
Kasich said his status as a lifelong Republican “holds second place to my responsibility to my country.”
“In normal times, something like this would probably never happen, but these are not normal times,” he said of his participation at the Democrats’ convention. He added: “We can do better than what we’ve been seeing today, for sure.”
The unified message, outlined in excerpts of prerecorded speeches, came as Democrats launched the first presidential nominating convention of the coronavirus era. The all-virtual affair was the first without a central meeting place or cheering throngs. And there were real questions about whether the prime-time event would adequately energize the disparate factions Biden hopes to capture.
Republicans face a similar challenge next week.
Trump sought to undermine the Democrats’ big night by hosting a political rally in Wisconsin, where Biden’s party had originally planned this week’s convention. He called the Democrats’ event “a snooze” before it even began.
“You know when you hear a speech is taped, it’s like there is nothing very exciting about it, right?” the Republican president said.
Democrats abandoned their plans for an in-person gathering in Milwaukee because of the pandemic. The unprecedented gathering is not only testing the bonds of the diverse Biden-Kamala Harris coalition but the practical challenges of running a presidential campaign in the midst of a pandemic.
Among a series of national crises, speakers planned to address bipartisan concerns that Postal Service changes will make it hard for voters to be sure their mail-in ballots are received in time and counted. Ballot access is a particular concern for people of color, whose communities were disproportionately forced to wait in long lines to cast primary votes earlier in the year.
At this moment, Biden sits in a stronger political position than Trump, who has struggled to expand his political coalition under the weight of his turbulent leadership and prolonged health and economic crises. But 78 days before votes are counted, history is not on the Democratic challenger’s side. Just one incumbent president has been defeated in the last four decades.
Polls also suggest that Biden, a 77-year-old lifelong politician, is on the wrong end of an enthusiasm gap. His supporters consistently say they’re motivated more by opposition to Trump, who is 74, than excitement about Biden. Democrats hope to shift that dynamic beginning with the convention.
Biden will accept the nomination Thursday night in a mostly empty ballroom in his home state of Delaware. California Sen. Harris, the first Black woman on a national ticket, speaks Wednesday.
Michelle Obama, whom Gallup determined was the nation’s most admired woman last year, described Biden as a “profoundly decent man” in a video excerpt of her remarks recorded at least six days earlier.
“He was a terrific vice president,” she said of the man who served for eight years as her husband’s No. 2. “He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic and lead our country.”
The former first lady appeared in a video sitting alone in a quiet room with a sparsely decorated shelf, a burning candle and a small blue Biden sign behind her. With no live audience for any of the speakers, convention organizers were forced to get creative in their high-stakes quest to generate enthusiasm.
The campaign hosted drive-in viewing stations in six states, much like drive-in movies, where viewers could watch on a big screen from the safety of their vehicles. There were also many online watch parties featuring celebrities and elected officials to make the experience more interactive.
The scheduled Monday speakers included plenty of Democratic politicians: Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who is the highest ranking African American in Congress; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer; Alabama Sen. Doug Jones; Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and two former presidential contenders: Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sanders.
And beyond Kasich, there were three high-profile Republicans backing Biden who got speaking slots: California businesswoman Meg Whitman, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman and former New York Congresswoman Susan Molinari.
Biden’s team also shared the stage with several average Americans, including Kristin Urquiza, who lost her father to COVID-19.
“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life,” she said in an excerpt released by the campaign.
It was impossible to fully gauge America’s interest in the all-virtual format on the first night. Broadcast TV networks are showing the final hour each night live, cable news is showing both hours and many viewers plan to stream from the rivals’ websites or on social media.
Trump, as he often does, was ensuring he’d be a part of the conversation.
The Republican president made two swing-state campaign appearances on Monday, first in Minnesota and then in Wisconsin, which was to be the location for the Democrats’ convention before the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump said he had “no choice” but to campaign during the convention in order to address voters in the face of what he described as hostile news media.
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” Trump said in Wisconsin, raising anew with no evidence the specter of significant voting fraud.
WHAT TO WATCH: Democrats open a new kind of convention
ATLANTA (AP) — The Democratic Party will convene, sort of, amid a pandemic that has upended the usual pomp and circumstance of presidential nominating conventions.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez will be in Milwaukee, which he’d chosen as the 2020 convention host city. But presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, won’t be. Nor will the 57 state, territorial and international delegations, the party activists and the media hordes that would have filled a downtown arena to see Biden and Harris nominated to take on President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in November.
Instead, Democrats will put on essentially an all-virtual convention, broadcasting two hours of prime-time programming starting at 9 p.m. EDT, much of it pre-taped, Monday through Thursday. No crowds. No hullabaloo. And no balloons.
What to watch on opening night Monday:
THE MESSAGE: The theme is deliberately vague, “We the People,” and the lineup doesn’t fit neatly into any box. Viewers will hear from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who finished second to Biden in the nominating contest, and Republican John Kasich, the former Ohio governor and 2016 primary rival to Trump. To underscore the gap: That’s a self-identified democratic socialistwho wants a “political revolution” and a conservative Republican who was once a budget hawk in Congress and fought labor unions in the Ohio statehouse. And both will pitch for Biden.
That reflects a key reality of Biden’s candidacy: It’s always been more about Trump’s moral and competence than about the particulars of Democrats’ policy fights. Hence Biden’s campaign pledges to “unify the country” and “restore the soul of the nation.” Yet he has spent the last several months trying to shore up relationships with the party’s left flank, which remains skeptical about him. He has a lengthy policy slate he touts as the most progressive of any modern Democratic nominee.
The convention’s opening night will test how seamlessly the Biden campaign can spend the next 78 days casting such a wide net across a splintered American electorate.
SANDERS’ TONE: The Vermont senator is a two-time runner-up for the nomination but by Biden’s own admission has done as much as any losing presidential candidate to shape a major political party. Four years ago, Sanders was at the microphone to nominate Hillary Clinton on the floor in Philadelphia, but the bitterness between their camps was apparent, and it wounded her against Trump.
There’s no convention floor to have a fight on this year. No way for viewers at home to hear delegates jeering at anyone on stage they dislike or disagree with. There are other key differences: Sanders and Biden are personally more friendly to each other than Clinton and Sanders were; Biden sewed up the nomination earlier, giving Sanders less leverage this year; and, of course, Trump isn’t a hypothetical president as he was in 2016. He is the president, and Sanders has made clear that he sees 2020 as an existential election for the country.
Given all that, the question becomes how Sanders balances his own ideological fervor — which highlights distinctions between himself and Biden — with his personal affinity for the nominee and their shared mission to defeat Trump.
OBAMA. NOT HIM. HER: Perhaps any intrigue about Sanders and Kasich will fall away once the evening’s headliner, Michelle Obama, makes her case. Polls suggest the former first lady is even more popular than her broadly popular husband, who will speak Wednesday night. She managed that, in part, by steering clear of the most obvious fault lines in politics. Remember her speech in Philadelphia four years ago. “When they go low, we go high,” she said, without even mentioning the caustic Republican nominee who years before had helped drive the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t constitutionally eligible to serve as president.
Days before the convention’s opening gavel, Trump recycled the same tactic against Harris, a daughter of immigrants who is the first Black woman on a major party’s presidential ticket and is also of Asian descent. In her case, Trump said he didn’t know if she was eligible but wasn’t pursuing the matter.
Michelle Obama is uniquely positioned to talk about Democratic ticket. She knows Biden and his wife, Jill, as genuine friends from Biden’s eight years as vice president. The Obamas also know Harris well — but in an example of what can be lost with a virtual convention, Mrs. Obama recorded her address before Biden named Harris his running mate last week. Unless there’s a late edit, that means the nation’s first Black first lady will miss an opportunity to speak in personal terms about what it means to see the first woman of color nominated by a major party for national office. Compare that to her recollections four years ago in Philadelphia. “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves,” she said at the 2016 convention, “and I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent Black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”
HOW TO WATCH: The convention will air from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time. The DNC will provide the official livestream online and on its social media channels. CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC and PBS will air the full two hours. ABC, CBS, Fox News Channel and NBC will air the final hour, from 10 to 11 p.m. The event also will be available via Twitch, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV.
RATINGS: Perez, the DNC chair, has promised an “inspiring” convention. But people must watch to be inspired, and no one knows what kind of audience will tune in. Conventions have declined in relevance for years. So, in one sense, the pandemic has given Democrats a license to experiment with what amounts to a slickly produced party infomercial. But lost are the rare big, even viral moments when a nominee, a party luminary or an up-and-comer, perhaps even veering off the teleprompter, makes a searing connection with both the party faithful in the arena and the millions watching at home.