This is the First Convention of the Post-Trump Era

And VP Harris and Gov. Walz are Brilliantly Making Theirs the First Post-Trump Campaign in Almost a Decade

Bah humbug.

I have to be upfront with you. After all, we spend a lot of time together. If we can’t be honest with each other, then who can we be honest with?

I hate conventions. Not just political conventions. I hate all conventions. I don’t like big crowds of people. I hate group activities like chants and holding signs in the air. I hate public displays of festivity. (That’s right, I don’t like New Year’s Eve or July Fourth or drunks in little green hats on Saint Patrick’s Day.) I hate the feeling of when people are chatting with you but scanning over your shoulder to see if there is someone more important to whom they should be talking.

I don’t like the feeling that the action is always somewhere that I am not. (I remember once talking to Steve Case, the former CEO of AOL, at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said he was sure that the rumors were true and that big deals were being struck somewhere in the little Alpine village but that it was always somewhere he was not.) Even now that I am old and vaguely insidery I still hate it. One of the immutable laws of Washington is that no matter how high you rise, there is always a meeting somewhere that you are not important enough to be invited to.

Surely, that can’t be true if you are president, you may ask. Well, all I can say (gently) is Joe Biden knows the truth about that.

As someone who has spent most of the past thirty years planted squarely on the outer edge of the inner circle, that means there are many many meetings that I do not get invited to. I hated it when I was a senior official in the government. I hate it now. It always makes you feel like an eighth grader sitting along the wall at a dance watching the other kids have fun and wondering what’s wrong with you. (Always. No matter how high you rise. I once was deeply comforted by the dear and wise Madeleine Albright explaining to me that everyone even at the highest levels in Washington has impostor syndrome…except the ones who were truly impostors.)

I have been to multiple Democratic National Conventions and having felt all these things in the past, I long ago decided that I was not going to go to the convention this year in Chicago. (That’s the one that began today.)

And as so often happens when my instincts strongly tell me one thing, I now regret it.

Because what started happening in Chicago on Monday night is one of those rare instances of political syzygy where all of one’s deeply held beliefs and hopes and aspirations end up aligned. It is not just that the Democrats are there to celebrate a candidate that I have actively admired and supported for a decade. It is not just that she holds views that are very closely in sync with my own on economics, social justice, foreign policy, the rule of law, and what kind of future America should have. It is not just that she has picked a running mate who shares those views and can deliver them like the woman at the head of the ticket without apology, forcefully but also full of joy and evoking hope.

It is not just that she will, I believe, take the exceptional record she helped craft during the Biden-Harris years and build on it, expand it, double down on the core values that are the true antidote to Trump and Trumpism, that are the one way to turn a political campaign into a movement. It is not just that she will become the first woman president when so many of us have felt for so long that if we were a true democracy our majority population needed representation in our top political job. It is not just that as a woman of color and a daughter of immigrants she embodies perfectly the kind of inclusive society that has always been the best of America and, even when we were not our best, has been a promise that inspired us.

It is not just that by embracing policies that seek to combat inequality, guarantee crucial rights and freedoms, promote opportunity and justice, she is actually more than any president in my lifetime advancing the ideas that I have thought should guide us since I was a kid first getting interested in politics. Did Biden do that with his focus on the middle class and his rejection of neo-liberal economics and his strengthening of America at home and abroad? Yes. Did Obama do it by breaking barriers and working to provide healthcare to tens of millions of Americans who previously could not afford it? Did each of them and prior administration do so by becoming more diverse, seeking to protect the environment, seeking to end racism and sexism, seeking to defeat the enemies of democracy? Yes.

But she is, thus far, the best embodiment of all of those movements and will be, I am certain, their greatest champion. I have seen her up close. I have watched her deal with issue after issue with great knowledge, sensitivity, insight and vision. I don’t want to overstate it. Those occasions have been rare privileges. But I believe in her personally more deeply than any political leader I have supported in more than 30 years of work in Washington DC.

And this week in Chicago is going to be a celebration of all that. It is going to be a display of unity of the entire Democratic Party and many Republicans and Independents. It is going to be a moment of surpassing and well-founded optimism. It is going to be a moment of light after years in the darkness.

That is not to say that the exceptional presidency of Joe Biden did not provide reasons to cheer. It did. Often. More often and to a greater extent than we had any reason to expect. But the big difference between the Biden Era and the Harris Era to come is that the Biden Era took place in a moment in our history when the specter of Trump and MAGA and the end of democracy and a national movement founded in hate and division was always near.

You will have heard references to Trump on Monday night from Biden and others. But part of the genius of Harris’ approach to this campaign 2024 is that she has chosen to turn the page, to look to the future rather than to respond to Trump. While her opponent in this election is Trump and MAGA, she is running this campaign as the first post-Trump, post-MAGA campaign almost a decade.

And this is the first post-Trump convention in that period. Old, tired, devoid of ideas, burdened by his horrific record and his many crimes, Trump is faint orange shadow of his former self. There is no doubt he must be stopped. But it is clear that the Vice President and the Governor of Minnesota understand that the way to stop him is to deny him the chance to set the terms of the election, to stop letting outrage at his antics and more grave threats be the core Democratic message and to say, “Enough. We will lead. We will set the terms. This is between us and the American people. We will not let extremists hijack our elections or threaten our system any longer. We will win by tapping into the idea of America that is shared by the vast majority of Americans. We will win by charting our own course.”

It is satisfying to see a candidate who you believe in be celebrated. But I think it will be hard for anyone who is under say 40 or so to understand how deeply gratifying and reassuring it is to see the hopes and dreams you had for the future seemingly be restored, to see a reality you had only imagined come into focus, to be within reach.

That is why though I will be watching the convention from the comfort of my home in Northwest Washington, DC, I will feel close to all those in the rooms, be channeling the vibe and, I’m certain, be deeply moved by it all more than once. This can be the country we always wanted it to be. And this week in Chicago, we are all taking a giant step toward that long promised land.