The Democrats came out swinging at their national convention. It’s a promising start | Opinion

Last week’s Democratic Convention in Chicago was quite the contrast to the revenge-soaked Republican Convention with its hundreds of grievances all to pay homage to the Commander-In-Grievance Donald Trump. Instead of Republican cheers for the old man candidate, Donald Trump, it was the old man, Joe Biden, who took the stage on the first night and handed off the leadership of the Democratic Party to a new generation.

As tough as it must have been for Biden to find himself in this auxiliary role last Monday night, it’s to his credit that he and Jill Biden headed for a California vacation for a couple of weeks so Democrats can celebrate their new leader and give her full rein of the convention as she leaves the past behind and charts her new course for America.

This Democratic Convention charted a new course, with delegates young and old roused with a renewed sense of optimism and joy reminiscent of Barack Obama’s arrival on the scene. The innovative and musical approach to the roll call of the states to determine the official nomination of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz highlighted the diversity and youth of the party and bore no resemblance to the Republican Convention’s roll call announced by an aging delegate.

This was a party of diversity and not just of race, but of political affiliation as well. Trump’s former aide, Stephanie Grisham, took the podium to endorse Harris. Grisham, who quit her job the day of the Insurrection, shared what it was like to serve alongside Trump who she said “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth.” Among other Republican presenters, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona spoke to the TV audience of Republicans and Independents about how he could not support Trump and was endorsing Harris/Walz.

One of the most insightful lines of the convention was uttered by Obama who was preceded on the podium by First Lady Michelle Obama and joked that anyone who follows Michelle at the podium is stupid. He sure knew what he was talking about.

Michelle Obama ignited the crowd with observations about Trump and his supporters that rang true for this columnist who served as a Republican official for 18 years. She uttered just a few words that should cause many Americans to rethink the issue of affirmative action.

She told the delegates that “most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead.”

As a candidate and officeholder who sought campaign contributions from Republican donors, it offered me a new and personal slant on the issue of affirmative action. How many times, as I asked for campaign contributions from the monied class, did I hear the same old tripe about how no one should be allowed to cut in line and get special consideration?

Affirmative Action was the bogeyman Republicans trotted out for years. And yet it came from those whose kids were legacy admits at Ivy League schools and left debt-free, from those whose kids were poised to take over the family business or could network through their parents’ contacts for jobs, from those whose kids were fortunate enough to attend the finest public or private schools in the safest neighborhoods and receive the very best education this nation offers.

Those who oppose affirmative action — and I have no doubt from my experience that most are Republicans —serve a cold dish of hypocrisy without even understanding and acknowledging their unabashed arrogance in not thinking through the genetic advantages their kids have. That is precisely what Michelle Obama laid bare with her comment about the affirmative action of generational wealth.

The pundits thought more of former President Bill Clinton speech than I did. He just didn’t seem to arouse the same passionate audience response that others had. His presence at the Convention reminded me of his policies on international trade and how Hilary was skewered in her 2016 campaign for America’s job losses that headed for Mexico and China.

Trump hammered away at the Washington establishment that build NAFTA, a policy that began with President George H.W. Bush, but was enthusiastically promoted and signed by Clinton. It made sense for Bush Republicans to tout free trade with their devotion to free market economics. But as Max Cameron, the author of “The Making of NAFTA”, noted in an interview with Time Magazine, Clinton led the Democratic party down the road to free trade, seemingly more interested in competing with the Republican Party for the support of Wall Street instead of its usual priority of guaranteeing workers’ rights and trade unions.

What did America’s workers get for it? Americans lost at least 700,000 manufacturing jobs to Mexico because of NAFTA, according to Robert Lighthizer, the international trade expert who wrote, No Trade is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers. (Lighthizer also served as U.S. Trade Representative under Trump and was the architect of Trump’s China tariffs, which President Biden continued and then added some on electric vehicles.) Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, estimates the job losses from NAFTA at 950,000.

Then there was China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1998. Clinton’s plan was to integrate China into the global economic order by requiring tough conditions for its entry that would lead China down the road to economic and political reforms. Instead, China ignored WTO rules and employed massive subsidies for its industries and engaged in industrial espionage aimed at America’s tech industries. All of this lowered the cost of goods China sent abroad and undercut the value of American goods. Consumers who try to find something not made in China know about this firsthand.

Over the years since China joined the WTO in 1998, 3.7 million American jobs were lost as goods from China flooded the market as American jobs evaporated. This seems to have hit small town America particularly hard as factories shut down and jobs headed abroad.

From campaigning statewide in Illinois years ago, I still remember the factories on the edge of town after town providing a livelihood for its residents, but when those jobs dried up, Trump came along with his MAGA rallies. They were packed with those fed up with politicians who took their jobs away. Of course, there were other cultural issues as the Democratic Party drove its platform leftward with a woke agenda that contributed to Trump’s rise to power, but NAFTA and China’s admission to the WTO certainly played a role.

Harris’ choice of Tim Walz to join the ticket indicates she is aware of the need for Democrats to regain the rural America they lost over recent years. Walz comes from small town America, raised in rural Nebraska, lived for years in rural Minnesota and represented rural Minnesotans in Congress. He speaks fondly and joyously of rural people and the hard work they do to keep Americans fed. He rejoices in his neighbors and friends who he showers with praise. And he was not afraid as governor and a hunter to support and sign legislation to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

This column’s deadline missed coverage of Harris’ keynote speech on Thursday night. If the convention’s mojo through Wednesday is an indication, it will surely awaken the U.S. to a new day dawning for discouraged and disillusioned Americans frustrated by Trump’s version of a politics that has descended to the depths of Dante’s hell. Let’s hope when they fight, they win!