Aug. 23, 2024, 1:14 a.m.
Democrats capped off a historic convention Thursday as Kamala Harris accepted her party’s presidential nomination.
In a month's time, she was able to unify the party behind her even amid fractures over Gaza and immigration. Democrats set forth a broad policy agenda as well. The Friday before the convention, Harris unveiled a series of economic proposals that convention speakers drove home all week: $35 insulin, an expanded child tax credit, building more affordable housing, and curbing price gouging for food, among other ideas.
Harris stressed economic solutions, saying that “a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success, [and that] building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”
But throughout the convention, as bold-name Democrats took the stage to blast former President Trump, tout Harris, and sell the Democrats’ plan for America, policies they didn’t mention—or mention much—stood out as much as what they did talk about.
Just as Republicans largely tiptoed around difficult issues such as abortion during their convention, Democrats downplayed some hot-button issues.
Scrutiny over Harris’ past positions on issues that divide Democrats increased after she clinched the nomination earlier this month. Broadly, she has tacked to the center since her short-lived 2020 presidential campaign, but that hasn’t prevented most progressives from backing her candidacy this time, as they are largely united in trying to defeat Donald Trump.
Medicare-for-all
On health care, Harris long ago dropped the Medicare-for-all mantle that she adopted during her first presidential run, and the convention reflected that shift. Few speakers, even among the most progressive, brought up single-payer health care. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t mention it in her Monday speech. Sen. Bernie Sanders, though, was an outlier, mentioning in his Tuesday speech the need to “guarantee health care for all citizens.”
“She was [for Medicare-for-all] and then she altered her position,” Sanders said of Harris during an interview with Politico on Monday. “She’s not for that now.”
Still, Sanders said he doesn’t find the reversal disappointing, chastising the media for focusing on Harris’ 2020 campaign and noting that neither Harris nor President Biden support Medicare-for-all now.
“And you know what? I think I’m right and they’re wrong, but what are you going to do?” Sanders said.
Former President Obama touted the “enormous progress that we’ve made through the Affordable Care Act” but added that “we can’t stop there.”
Fracking and fossil fuels
Like Medicare-for-all, Harris had long backed a ban on fracking, the controversial procedure to extract natural gas that critics say can contaminate local groundwater and cause seismic disturbances.
But in July, her campaign confirmed to reporters that she no longer backed a ban, as Republicans were blasting the administration for high energy prices and the costs of other essential goods.
Also, fracking projects remain a key economic driver in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which features the massive Marcellus shale formation, a major source of natural gas which generates less carbon than crude oil but still contributes to global warming.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, domestic energy production hit 13 million barrels per day in 2023—the highest level ever—according to a March report by the Energy Information Administration.
DNC speakers did pledge to clamp down on major oil companies, but there was little detail or legislative proposals. E&E News, an energy and environment trade publication, reported Thursday that climate activists were upset by the presence of oil and gas interests at DNC side events.
It was at an off-site event hosted by Punchbowl News where climate activists—including a DNC delegate—got their chance to make themselves heard, disrupting a panel discussion on energy sponsored by ExxonMobil.
Israel and Gaza
Foreign policy rarely gets a lot of attention at the major party conventions. This year, despite numerous wars unfolding across the globe, Israel’s war in Gaza was one of the only foreign policy issues that politicians mentioned multiple times from the stage.
That was thanks in large part to activists and protesters who have spent months pressuring the Biden-Harris administration to cut off military aid to Israel, and who haven’t shied away from withholding their political support for Democrats despite their dislike for the Republican presidential candidate.
Progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders continued to express their support for a cease-fire in Gaza during their speeches, despite many others tiptoeing around the contentious issue, which has the possibility to change the outcome in November.
Representatives of the Uncommitted movement, which has been calling for an end to U.S. military assistance to Israel, did not have the opportunity to take the stage during the convention. Activists decried the fact that the family members of Israeli-American hostages held by the militant group Hamas were allowed to give an emotional address but Palestinian-Americans were not given the same opportunity.
Meanwhile, other major foreign policy issues, such as how to address the war in Ukraine and ongoing competition with China, received little attention in Chicago this week. Sen. Mark Kelly briefly mentioned Harris’s support for Ukraine and NATO. Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger slammed Trump for his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During her speech, Harris pledged to stand with U.S. allies Ukraine and Israel. She said she and Biden are working to end the war in Gaza so the Palestinian people can realize their right to “self-determination” while Israel remains secure. She also pledged that, unlike her opponent, she wouldn’t cozy up to dictators.
Immigration
Speakers gave a few brief nods to immigration during the speeches. Sen. Chris Murphy said that, if elected, Harris would bring back the bipartisan border bill that died in the Senate after Trump asked Republicans to abandon it earlier this year. Harris confirmed this during her speech on Thursday, saying she would sign the bill into law. She also argued that it would be possible to secure the border and provide more legal paths to citizenship.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, who spoke Wednesday, similarly mentioned the now-defunct border bill and used the opportunity to slam Republicans. In February, Suozzi flipped the Long Island district held by ousted Rep. George Santos, in part by tacking to the center on immigration.
“Let’s be clear: The border is broken,” Suozzi said. “But this year, when Democrats and Republicans worked together to finally write new border laws, we were blocked. We all know who sabotaged us."
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore paid tribute to the six immigrants who died earlier this year when Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapsed as they were fixing potholes in the middle of the night. Moore said that the workers were born in a different country but knew “that America was big enough for them, too.”
References to asylum policy and humanitarian parole for migrants were largely absent from the speeches. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of the advocacy group Global Refuge, said she was “heartened by the more welcoming tenor” of this convention.
“Rather than hearing about plans of mass deportation, we have heard speakers tell their own immigrant stories and highlight how new Americans enrich our daily lives,” Vignarajah said.
But she noted that it’s important that both parties acknowledge a broken immigration system and look to reform it.
“We still see more opportunity to highlight the potential Harris administration’s pledge to seek more humanity and order in our immigration policy,” Vignarajah added.
Abolishing the death penalty
A nationwide ban on the death penalty has been a component of the Democratic platform for years, but the 2024 platform makes no mention of executions, nor did major speakers mention the issue, the Huffington Post reported Thursday.
Abolishing the death penalty remains a popular proposal within the party, though the Biden administration has not moved to end the practice at the federal level. While the vast number of executions in the U.S. happen at the state level, there are 40 federal prisoners on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In her time as a prosecutor and California attorney general, Harris opposed capital punishment, resisting calls to pursue the death penalty for a defendant accused of murdering a police officer.
Defunding the police
Four years ago, the protests over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police rocked the nation and left an indelible mark on the 2020 election. Among progressive Democrats, calls to “defund the police” took hold, even though more-centrist members called for a more pragmatic approach.
Talk of reforming policing to that extent was essentially non-existent at the 2024 DNC, which has put a premium on party unity.
Nowhere did the DNC speakers mention “defunding the police” this week. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a centrist who was a runner-up for the vice presidential pick, described “real freedom that comes when we invest in the police and in the community.”
The party platform, approved by delegates on Monday, noted that the Biden-Harris administration provided funding to communities to hire more police.
On Thursday, Genesee County, Michigan, Sheriff Chris Swanson spoke on stage to endorse Harris, noting how his department worked with the public to avoid violence during the unrest of 2020.
“And I can testify first-hand, where I come from crime is down and police funding is up,” Swanson said to applause from the Democratic crowd.
Gun control
The focus during the convention was more on acknowledging the toll of gun violence and the need to help victims than it was on touting specific gun-control measures such as assault-rifle bans or tighter background checks.
As vice presidential nominee Tim Walz gave his acceptance speech, the already charged emotional moment became even more emotional as he touched on gun safety for kids from his perspective of being both a dad and a veteran.
Referring to "your kid’s freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall,” Walz said: “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”
Rep. Lucy McBath, who lost her son to gun violence, spoke on the stage together with a group of women who lost family members during school shootings and other incidents of gun violence. Delegates in the audience chanted, “Not one more.”
But gun-safety talk did not go much further than this. Although many of the speeches provoked emotions, they did not touch on any specific legislation or policy beyond the need to keep kids safe in schools.
“We're having a lot of really inspirational speeches, but I think we need to highlight what we have done with gun violence,” gun-control activist David Hogg told National Journal. “We can't just go out there and take a political risk, take a controversial stance on supporting gun control. We need to talk about what it's done.”
Hogg highlighted the success of red-flag laws since the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, saying he wished that had been discussed.
