Bill Clinton Says Harris Is 'President Of Joy' We Need: Day 3 Analysis

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Polin acknowledged that there is a “surplus of agony” in the Middle East and no way to win a competition of pain.

“This is a political convention, but needing our only son and all of the cherished hostages home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” Polin said.

“We’ve met with President Biden and Vice President Harris numerous times at the White House,” he said. “They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and grandchildren home and will stop the despair in Gaza.”

After their remarks, some in the crowd chanted, “Bring them home,” but it failed to catch on.

Outside the arena, uncommitted delegates had begun a sit-in that would last into Thursday morning, demanding that a Palestinian American representative be offered a speaking spot on the convention main stage.

In a statement, representatives of the Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced it was disbanding itself, explaining it was unable to continue after Harris’s campaign rejected a request for a Palestinian American speaker.

“The family of the Israeli Hostage that was on the stage tonight has shown more empathy toward Palestinian Americans and Palestinians than our candidate or the DNC has,” it said.

Multiple pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and antiwar protests have taken place each day of the convention in Chicago, with one resulting in mass arrests. Another gathering to call attention to the tens of thousands of people killed by the Israeli military in Gaza is planned for Thursday. Demonstrators have been demanding the Biden administration cut military support for Israel and push harder on its ally for a ceasefire.

Inside the arena, attendees are provided another edition of the ongoing prop humor bit targeting the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda. This time, it’s longtime Saturday Night Live actor Kenan Thompson doing mock interviews with normal people on a dodgy teleconferencing line, continuing to emphasize the parade of horribles that Democrats hope to associate with a potential Trump victory.

Next we hear from a Javier Salazar, sheriff of Bexar County Texas, who attests that Trump does not care about officers in uniforms.

“Now, Kamala, on the other hand, has been fighting border crime for years,” Salazar said. “She’s gone down to Mexico and worked to stop the traffickers, and when the traffickers didn’t stop, she put them in jail.”

It was not quite an acknowledgment of Harris’s role as “leading the [Biden] Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras” (or, as her opponents have sought to characterize it, her time as “Border Czar”) but it was close.

The first night of programming ran later than a CTA Blue Line train, pushing President Joe Biden’s address well out of prime time.

But the second night rolled on like a German intercity express, with former President Obama taking the stage right on time at the top of the hour.

So for the third night, the man who preceded them both in the White House, former President Bill Clinton, told the teleprompter operator, “Hold my beer,” and proceeded to speak for more than twice his allotted time.

Clinton, whose speech went famously overtime in 1988, suggested it might be the last time he addressed a Democratic National Convention, an event he said he first attended back in 1972.

Mostly out of the public eye since the #MeToo movement, the 78-year-old took a shot at Trump’s age and declared that Harris would be the “President of Joy” that the nation needed.

The former president described a U.S. presidential election as the “greatest job interview for the greatest job in the world.”

Notably, it’s one where there’s really only ever two applicants who emerge from a questionable H.R. procedure, but that’s part of what makes it great.

“Every four years, we get to change the requirements for the job,” Clinton said.

“So, here’s what I’m thinking, because I try to apply this in every election, will this president take us backward or forward? Will this president give our kids a brighter future? Depends. Will this President bring us together or tear us apart? Will the president increase the peace, security and stability, and freedom, that we enjoy — and extend it to others, as we can?” he asked, hedging a bit.

“We the people, we have to make a decision about these kind of questions. And every four years, it’s a little different, because the people come at the candidates and they say, as they’re saying now, ‘Here are our problems, solve them,’ ‘Here are our opportunities, seize them,’ ‘Here are our fears, ease them,’ ‘Here are our dreams, help them come true.'” he said.

“A president can answer that call by saying, ‘I’ll do my part, but you have to help me, we have to work together,’ or you can dodge what needs to be done by dividing, distracting and diverting us.”

It’s true that a president can say things like that, can inspire a nation to work together. It’s also hard to remember it happening very much for the past dozen years or so.

That’s in part due to another point proffered by the off-prompter ex-president: that politics is a “brutal, tough business.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is given the speaking slot following the last man nominated for president at the United Center. He shouts about how Democrats are the party of “real freedom,” then the audience is shown a black-and-white short film of intimate interviews with various Americans to offer up different definitions of freedom and the American dream.

It’s a broad mix of ideas of positive liberty (freedom to do this or that) and negative liberty (freedom from constraints) but we hear a lot about certain freedom, and not so much about other kinds.

The night’s surprise guest is Oprah Winfrey, who elicits a big cheer from the delegations from each of the 10 states in which she has resided.

Winfrey describes the prior night’s speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama as “epic fire” and declared abortion rights advocates to be the “new freedom fighters.”

“Because if you do not have autonomy over this,” Winfrey said, referencing her body, “if you cannot control when and how you choose to bring your children into this world, and how they are raised and supported, there is no American dream.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore talks about how Harris called him after a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Bridge in Baltimore County in March.

“The unevenness of the American journey has made some skeptical, but I’m not asking you to give up your skepticism,” Moore said. “I just want that skepticism to be your companion, and not your captor.”

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He was followed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who like Shapiro, did not quite beat out the night’s headliner for top of the running-mate podium.

The former South Bend mayor juxtaposed the former Indiana governor and vice president with Trump’s pick for vice president during his third White House bid.

“At least Mike Pence was polite,” Buttigieg said. “J.D. Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life he has in mind for you, then you don’t count.”

Buttigieg — who secured 26 delegates during his own run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination four years ago in a campaign that lasted nearly four months longer than Harris’s — described politics as “a kind of soulcraft.”

“We get to choose our president, we get to choose our policies. But most of all, we will choose a better politics, a politics that calls us to our better selves and offers us a better everyday,” said the former McKinsey consultant.

In another scheduling masterpiece, convention organizers arrange for Buttigieg to be followed by another candidate for the 2020 nomination who was unmistakably unable to hide her utter contempt for him during that campaign — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

But first, John Legend, Shela E. and Stevie Wonder come out and perform a cover of “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince and The Revolution.

After Klobuchar does her bit to talk about how folksy Walz is and how he’s a “dad in plaid” from a “red district in a purple state,” she then gives a state-by-state shout-out to the Mississippi River.

There are biographical videos about the Minnesota governor. And there’s a speech from former student Ben Ingman, who says Walz helped him move a car out of a snow bank.

Then, in one of the sillier moments of the convention so far, jersey-clad former members of the Mankato West High School football team led the audience in a clap-along to marching band music in the style of a pep rally.

Walz’s speech closed the night by likening the campaign to a football game in the fourth quarter.

Under that metaphor, Harris is a second-half substitute, with starting captain Joe Biden having been yanked by a consensus decision from a coaching staff that included earlier convention speakers like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama.

As the crowd shook signs that said “Coach Walz,” the second-term Minnesota governor looked to contrast his party’s version of freedom with a Republican agenda that would limit personal freedoms and favor corporate interests.

Walz said the Republicans had drawn up a “playbook” in the form of Project 2025, warning that his opponents’ agenda would only serve “the richest and most extreme” people.

He also discussed his own family’s experience with infertility treatment in the context the reproductive rights that Democrats have looked to keep at the center of the campaign.

“We also protected reproductive freedom, because in Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make,” he said. “And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.”

The final night of the party’s four-night stand at the United Center is set to include a performance by the musical artist Pink and a speech from the nominee, as Palestinian solidarity protests continue outside.

There may be a surprise guest, but Harris is not expected to announce that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have reached a ceasefire deal and hostage exchange.

After Harris formally accepts the party’s nomination and picks up the baton of party leadership (at least until the end of the fourth quarter, or overtime, as the case may be) party activists will fan out around the country.

They will focus, of course, on the handful of states that have electoral college value. And they will hope that their treatment of those protestors who spent all night doing a sit-in outside the arena does not cost them the votes that end up deciding a toss-up election.

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