Editorial: At the DNC, Chicago and the Democrats rebranded

There was no mystery guest on the final night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The organizers tacitly encouraged the hype, betting more people would catch their nominee’s acceptance speech if they thought Taylor Swift might jump out of a custodial cart at any moment. But in the end, despite breathless online reporting of the “arrival” of her plane at Midway and even her entry into the United Center, there was no Beyoncé sighting on Madison Street.

After Stevie Wonder, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Pink, she would have been celebrity overkill, always a danger for Democrats. Better to stick, as they did, with Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and the red, white and blue.

And, of course, with Chicago, which had one of the best weeks in its history — if not since the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, then at least since Barack Obama declared victory in his race for president of the United States in Grant Park in 2008.

The weather cooperated. The police did a superb job. Even the CTA didn’t fall apart despite some early issues. Many imagined nightmare scenarios for Chicago — 100,000 protesters, 1968-like mayhem in the streets, a fleet of buses from Texas timed to turn the Harris narrative from “She gets us,” back to “failed border czar” — all fizzled like the Beyoncé balloon.

Whatever your political views, there can be no question the Democrats conceived a formidable, multiday television show, all the more impressive for how well it worked in the arena itself, especially since the prior content had to be discarded just four weeks before opening night and a whole new production crafted with a fresh star.

We sat in the seats all night, all week long and had not seen the like. At least not since the final, celebrity-packed episode of Winfrey’s long-running TV show, which we watched in 2011 at this same venue and clearly provided a blueprint.

Be they human or technical, DNC hiccups were few and far between even though we witnessed otherwise at the Republican National Conference in Milwaukee. The DNC’s biggest problem was too many attendees trying to get in and watch its Thursday climax. That’s not a real problem at all.

The branding was deft indeed: Democratic marketers attached the word “freedom” (“of,” “from,” “to”) to most of the party’s longtime signature issues, mostly retiring prior talk of defending democracy (wise, given how they arrived at their nominee) in favor of the optimism of an “opportunity economy,” a most appealing platitude.

Simple slogans were repeated endlessly so as to enter the subconscious: “We’re not going back.” “When we fight, we win.” And Project 2025, actually the wonkish product of an independent, right-wing think tank, became this year’s Willie Horton. Revenge for Democrats with long memories was sweet.

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Divisive, “woke” politics was left at O’Hare baggage claim as speaker after speaker one-upped each other with the “unlikeliness” of their success given the universal humbleness of their backgrounds, real or imagined. Harris’ parents both were elite academics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, but they were evoked as impecunious graduate students. Walz is the governor of Minnesota, but the signs in the arena read “Coach Walz,” a cuddlier, more comforting term, suggesting a Mr. Deeds of the Upper Midwest, lips perennially puckered around his supportive whistle.

The faction of the party that wants to see an arms embargo against Israel, and more direct humanitarian intervention to prevent the deaths in Gaza, got little in return for making themselves hoarse on Chicago’s streets. Their hoped-for convention speaker was denied, their banner on the floor snatched ignominiously away and, in fact, Harris delivered a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s right not just to exist but to defend itself.

Coming in a relatively short speech otherwise light on specifics, that was, in fact, one of the convention’s very few genuine surprises. Surely, a calculation had been made that projecting an image of a strong commander in chief standing by allies while maintaining a fully equipped and “lethal” military force had a greater electoral payoff than attaching Israeli blame to Gaza’s lost lives, sympathy therefor notwithstanding.

If Palestinian activists were hoping Harris would open up some air between her future administration and the current one of which she is a part, they got no evidence in Chicago of that. First we win, they clearly were being told.

The antagonist of the week was, of course, an easy target.

By devolving into a party subservient only to one egotistical and unstable man, the Republicans made the DNC’s job far simpler than in previous cycles. When speakers suggested Donald Trump and his toadies had lost their minds by not allowing sick women to get lifesaving abortions and standing in the way of a struggling couple’s fertility treatments, it wasn’t hard for reasonable Americans to agree. No longer fearing jingoism, the Democrats rediscovered the power of patriotism, stealing it from Republicans not just by chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” but by branding Trump as the walking antithesis of e plurubus unum.

This was an establishment ground and air attack against what Democrats wanted America to believe was a ragtag bunch of weird fools. Democrats include lots of rich folks in their tent now. Their massive production budget was not embarrassing, as once would have been the case, but a point of pride and strength.

Chicago was also in dire need of a rebrand and the circus that came to town obliged.

We longtimers forget that each generation has to discover Chicago’s beauty, friendliness and distinctive identity and that for Gen Z, at least, the city had to fight back against its recent starring role as a Trumpian punching bag. Much of the social media positivity these past few days was born of previous ignorance of that which we take for granted.

The economic impact of the event was in plain sight: the fleets of buses and caterers, the profiteering cab drivers, the army of Chicago support workers with overtime and much work to do. But the biggest benefit of all came from Chicago’s reemergence as a place for content creation as well as a source of great material.

Many media names — Stephen Colbert, Seth Myers, Jordan Klepper, Winfrey — cut their teeth here, and the convention meant they could revisit old haunts like Wrigley Field or Demon Dogs and thus re-push the consummate Chicago brand: authenticity.

No wonder the elite party venue of choice was The Salt Shed, a seemingly gritty, actually plush venue built for this kind of event, with its big, populist floor for partyers and the ability to hide away ultra-VIPs so they could enjoy John Legend without reporters knowing they were even there.

Politicians, indulging as they like to do in their ubiquitous rock-star fantasies, just couldn’t resist saying “Hello, Chicago,” into the mike, over and over again.

Not “Hello, delegates.” Not “Hello, America.” Time and again, it was “Hello, Chicago,” two repeated words worth a fortune in tourist and convention dollars.

So confident became JB Pritzker, who pivoted back to the solid ground of being governor of Illinois, that he even seriously pitched the idea that the Democrats should come back again in four years, as if the DNC was Lollapalooza, coming off the road for good and parking itself permanently in Sweet Home Chicago.

Hardly likely. But for us partisan Chicagoans, anyway, it feels in the afterglow of this civic triumph like a great idea.

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