What to watch for at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago

By Gregory Krieg and Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats are primed to celebrate their Kamala Harris-inspired renaissance in Chicago this coming week, less than a month after the vice president’s ascent lifted the party’s election hopes and injected fresh and even happy vibes into a campaign once beset by dread over President Joe Biden’s dismal prospects

When Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for their convention last month, many supporters of former President Donald Trump were predicting a landslide victory in November. But Biden’s decision to “stand down” just days after the GOP event ended has turned the race on its head. Harris, with newly minted running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, have brought the race to a virtual deadlock, with no clear leader in the most recent CNN poll of polls — and that’s before an expected post-convention bump.

Enthusiasm bordering on exhilaration has gripped Democrats as the party’s leading lights blow into the Windy City, with a suddenly beloved Biden — at least among liberal partisans grateful for his decision — slated to begin the hoopla by passing the torch to Harris, the first Black woman to become a major party nominee, who has flown out of the gates with a populist economic message and a renewed commitment to protecting reproductive rights.

For all the excitement, though, the campaign and convention planners still face a handful of knotty questions.

Israel’s war in Gaza, even as ceasefire talks continue, is now in its 10th month following Hamas’ October 7 attacks. The civilian death toll is staggering, and antiwar activists are infuriated. Protesters are expected by the tens of thousands in the streets outside the convention’s security perimeter — which could create a bizarre split-screen if party leaders all but ignore the matter onstage.

Trump lingers, too. He has appeared deeply unnerved by the late Harris-for-Biden swap and largely failed, so far, to mount much of an effective attack on the new Democratic ticket. Democrats have abetted him, Harris in particular, by keeping relatively quiet and allowing the increasingly frustrated former president to write his own bad headlines.

But for this week, at least, the spotlight is on the Democrats. The party and its candidates need to make their case to the country and, as Harris and Walz describe it, sell their newly “joyous” politics to the undecided or disengaged voters who are expected to decide the election this fall.

Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee and former secretary of state, is also scheduled for the opening night. Former President Barack Obama will headline Tuesday’s festivities, and Walz is the main attraction on Wednesday. Thursday night’s finale will belong to Harris.

Oh, and Beyoncé and Taylor Swift — if the speculation is right — could be there, too.

Here are six things to watch for — and listen to — this week during the Democratic National convention:

Harris’ biggest stage yet

In the month since Harris became her party’s standard-bearer, she’s effectively erased the polling and fundraising gaps Biden faced — a reality that reflects voters’ desire for a different choice than the one they’d faced in 2020, but also underscores how quickly Harris has hit the ground running.

She has delivered a clearer and more forward-looking message than Biden had been able to articulate — one that highlights her history as a prosecutor, repackages Biden’s economic agenda and frames battles over abortion rights and more as a battle for freedom, all in a relatively concise stump speech. She also broadly satisfied most Democrats with her choice of Walz as running mate, avoiding the sort of progressive backlash that other contenders could have triggered.

But the Democratic National Convention will be Harris’ biggest stage yet. She’ll close out the four-night affair on Thursday with a prime-time speech accepting the party’s presidential nomination and framing the race against Trump as the two move toward at least one debate in September and the start of early voting in some key states soon afterward.

Biden’s send-off

Democrats are getting perhaps the most awkward part of their business out of the way on the first night of the convention: sending off Biden.

The 81-year-old president’s decision less than a month from the convention to exit the 2024 race scrambled planning for Chicago — but his hand-off to Harris also delivered Democrats a huge shot of enthusiasm and a boost in the polls. Now, many of the same Democrats who were publicly and privately urging Biden to drop his reelection bid will celebrate his legacy.

It’s not just about Biden, though. Harris has reshaped the Democratic message for 2024 into one that is more forward-looking and focused on themes of freedom. But the core planks of the populist economic platform she rolled out last week largely build on Biden’s record. Framing that record — one that Republicans have said is to blame for inflation — is a building block for Harris to sell her own agenda.

While Biden will receive a hero’s welcome Monday night, Democrats acknowledge that this convention will look much different than it would have if they were instead sending him into a second matchup with Trump.

“You’re talking about something completely different, right?” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “This is a candidate who’s energized the party in a way that I haven’t seen, certainly since ’08. … I’ve not felt this kind of energy and electricity at any convention other than the one for Barack Obama.”

Trump’s shadow

Omnipresent in Chicago will be Trump — the one force that unifies the Democratic Party’s disparate and often-competing factions.

Though Trump has disavowed it, Democrats have framed the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” a conservative 900-page playbook for a second Trump administration drafted in part by six of Trump’s his former Cabinet secretaries and at least 140 people who worked in his administration, as the former president’s agenda.

The party will also dig into Trump’s history of incendiary actions — including his full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five,” five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in the rape and beating of a White woman in 1989. One of those men, Yusef Salaam, was invited to speak at the DNC.

The biggest job Democrats face this week, though, could be insulating Harris from Trump’s attacks — many of which he’s already previewed by portraying her as one of Washington’s most liberal Democrats and a flip-flopper who has disavowed the positions she took in 2019 as a presidential candidate.

Introducing Walz

The twice-elected governor and former congressman was little-known to Democrats outside Minnesota just a month ago. Now, with Labor Day on the horizon, Walz is the party’s vice presidential nominee and one of its most effective political messengers.

Even during the vetting process, Walz cut a lower profile than some of the other potential picks, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and others all entered the fray with larger national profiles. Then something “weird” happened.

Walz’s attacks on Trump, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance and the MAGA movement, often describing their personalities and policies as strange and off-putting, caught the attention of grassroots liberals. Progressives swooned over his cutting, populist-tinged criticism and moderate Democrats appreciated his plain-spokenness. Republicans have attacked his military record, arguing he overstated it, but it does not seem yet to have taken the shine off his star.

Walz has also emerged, much like Harris, as a pop culture figure. His taco preferences have set off a torrent of mostly pleasant debate on social media and his fly-on-the-wall videos with Harris have been disarmingly effective.

Now, though, it’s crunch time. Walz will speak in prime time on Wednesday under the kind of scrutiny he never knew during his time in Congress, the first term of his governorship or during all the years he spent as a high school teacher, as a football coach and in the National Guard.

Former presidents’ pitches

A stark difference from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where aside from Trump, no former presidents or vice presidents took the stage, is the roles Barack Obama, on Tuesday, and Bill Clinton, on Wednesday, will play.

Harris is seeking to make history, just as Obama did in 2008 when he delivered his Election Night victory remarks in Grant Park, less than four miles east of the United Center where Harris will accept the Democratic nomination.

And she’s doing so with a campaign increasingly staffed by Obama veterans, including senior adviser David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Obama and Clinton are still hugely popular, but both have largely taken a backseat during the 2024 race. That could change down the stretch — but the convention, with millions watching, will be the most significant moments the former presidents play in the 2024 campaign.

Two former first ladies, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, are also scheduled to speak at the DNC. Clinton, the former secretary of state and New York senator, was the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee, in 2016.

Michelle Obama is making good on the pledge she made in a video alongside her husband in which the two endorsed Harris. “We got your back,” she said.

How do Democrats handle Gaza protests?

For all that’s changed since the party traded Biden for Harris, the grinding, bitter debate over the administration’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza remains just that.

For months, protests over Israel’s war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attacks have led to large-scale demonstrations around the country calling for an immediate ceasefire. Some of those demonstrations have been blatantly antisemitic, with some protesters voicing support for Hamas, drawing condemnation from Biden and Harris.

Outside the convention this week, the forecast is for clear skies and, according to organizers, tens of thousands of protesters against the Biden administration’s support — most notably via weapons sales — of the Israeli military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What will happen inside the United Center is more difficult to predict. The Uncommitted National Movement, which grew out the effort to turnout protest votes against Biden during the primaries, has issued a series of demands to convention organizers. Above all else, they want a speaker (or two) to describe firsthand what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

That request could, though unlikely, could still be accommodated. But the demand for an arms embargo to Israel is a non-starter with Democratic leaders, who will all be keeping one eye trained on the negotiations unfolding now in the Middle East — and hoping upon hope for a convention week breakthrough.

There have been no shortage of facile comparisons to 1968, when Chicago police viciously cracked down on anti-war protesters in the parks and streets. It’s a different world now and, more importantly, much different city leadership in Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former union activist who, in an interview with Mother Jones, said, “What’s happening right now (in Gaza) is not only egregious, it is genocidal.”

But for all the planning and politicking around the optics this week, uncertainty is the word of the hour.

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