The deep political divisions in the United States are not only visible in the words of politicians. They are also embodied in the structure, the form, the tone of the national conventions of the two major parties — one being played out this week in Chicago for the Democrats, the other held in July in Milwaukee for the Republicans. Two events that tell the story of two distant worlds confronting each other in close combat on the same electoral stage.
Coconut Team c. injured ears
In the corridors of the United Center in Chicago, it has not been uncommon since Monday to come across delegates, most of them young, wearing a coconut-shaped badge or a t-shirt affirming their membership in the Coconut Teamthe coconut team.
The tropical fruit has become a rallying symbol behind Kamala Harris’ candidacy, drawing on a past statement from the vice president. It was on May 10, 2023, at the White House. The Democratic nominee spoke about her mother and the criticism she sometimes leveled at the impatient and often unreasonable youth of her time. “She said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said, letting out a characteristic laugh. “But you exist in the context of everything that came before you.”
A call for respect and reason to consider the future that now accompanies the spectacular rise of the first black woman presidential candidate for a major party.
The symbol was quite different in July in Milwaukee, where several Republican activists quickly showed up at the convention site with a bandaged ear, in support of their charismatic leader who had been injured a few days earlier — in the ear, as it happens — during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The subject had occupied the discussions of the week in Milwaukee, presenting the Republican candidate as much as a victim of political violence (which his statements have fueled for years) as a survivor protected by an occult force.
With the key being a call for resistance and revenge, but also to the strengthening of Donald Trump’s hold on his party following this tragedy.
Establishment c. radicals
The Chicago political high mass is not only an opportunity to celebrate Kamala Harris’ candidacy. It also honors the great figures present and past of the Democratic Party, several of whom were greeted with ecstasy and warm ovations from activists.
That was the case Monday for Joe Biden, who came to symbolically hand over the baton to his vice president to lead the charge against Donald Trump at the polls in November. On Tuesday, Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, captivated the audience by welcoming the wind of change and the “contagious hope” induced by the arrival of Mme Harris in the race. Other former presidents, in person or in spirit, have taken to the stage, including Bill Clinton on Wednesday night, but also Jimmy Carter, represented by his grandson Jason, and John F. Kennedy, briefly remembered by his grandson Jack Schlossberg.
Among the Republicans, in July, the convention was notable for the absence of big names from theestablishment and historical figures of the party. Donald Trump is one of the few presidential candidates not to have received the support of his vice president, Mike Pence. No George W. Bush or Dick Cheney on the schedule either.
Instead, the party paraded a lineup of radicals on stage, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, the voice of Trumpism and the conspiracy theories that fuel it, and Kari Lake, the failed candidate for governor of Arizona in 2022 (and aspiring senator from her state in 2024) who came to fan the flames of the unfounded accusations of voter fraud that Trump constantly claims to be a victim of. Lake also denounced the presence of the major television networks in the room, with the exception of Fox News, calling them “liars.”
Among the speakers who were greeted with thunderous applause was Peter Navarro, who took to the stage at the Republican convention after being released from a Florida prison that same day. The former White House adviser, a key player in Donald Trump and his entourage’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, spent two months there for contempt of Congress after refusing to testify and turn over documents to lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
Joy vs. bitterness
The roll call vote to confirm Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, held Tuesday night, gave rise to a series of statements from delegations from 50 states and 7 US territories, delighted by this new electoral equation. Several recalled the causes they intend to defend between now and November: the right to abortion, the fight against inequality, improving the living conditions of the middle class, defending the public education system, access to health care… but also the diversity that contributes to the country’s wealth.
Massachusetts remembered its contribution to American history as the first state to celebrate Thanksgiving, in Plymouth, and the first state to establish public schools. It also produced the first public library — “where we don’t ban books,” said Stephen Kerrigan, the state party chairman — was the first to end slavery, was the first to provide universal health care and fired the first “shots in our revolution,” Kerrigan said. “And we are proud, as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to make history once again.”
The spirit of “joyful warriors” — as Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, call themselves — is felt throughout Chicago’s United Center. It’s a far cry from the vengeful spirit that permeated the halls of the Republican convention in Milwaukee. There, the vote confirming Donald Trump as the nominee served primarily to celebrate his image, to fuel the cult of his personality.
On this Republican stage, it was the fear that had been exposed all week by guests who regularly brandished the threat of a massive invasion of immigrants, who spoke of an explosion in crime — in contradiction with statistics and facts — who rehashed the tragedy of an electoral defeat that they continue to wrongly attribute to electoral fraud, or who warned against an instrumentalization of justice by the Democrats. The convictions and accusations brought against Donald Trump for stories of fraud and his attempted coups are seen as political attacks, even if the verdicts were rendered by citizen juries and the cases were built by magistrates independent of the executive branch. And, paradoxically, it is this same justice system that several (starting with Trump) have called for using against their political opponents if they are elected in November.
“One party offers us a dark vision of the world and an invitation to turn back the clock; the other offers us an optimistic path to continue moving forward,” summed up Jacob Heydemann, a Texas Democratic delegate who came to Chicago this week to endorse Kamala Harris as her candidate. “We are entering an incredible period for Democrats. She finds herself facing a Republican Party that is now nothing more than the party of Donald Trump. And the choice is clear: it’s democracy or him.”
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-
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