Greatest Hits from the DNC

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As I watched the convention I came to realize nothing I could write could capture or match what I saw and heard. My words would be inadequate. I have never seen anything like this in my 40-years of being a political observer that even comes close to being as inspiring, joyful or electrifying as Harris and Walz rollout and the DNC convention in Chicago. We are witnessing something historic.

Unlike many of the talking heads covering the convention I’ll let the speakers speak for themselves.

Here are my favorite lines from the 2024 Democratic National Convention so far. I’ve saved my favorites for last. Enjoy:

1. “Someone should have told Donald Trump that the president’s job under Article 2 of the Constitution is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not that the vice president is executed,”-Rep. Jamie Raskin

2. “And by the way, JD Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the GOP ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor,”-Rep. Jamie Raskin

3. “Trump calls abortion bans across the country of beautiful thing. What’s so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?” -Hadley Duvall

4. “Crime is down on my watch and crime will keep coming down when we put a prosecutor in the oval office instead of a convicted felon.” – President Joe Biden.

5. “I saw Trump holding the Bible and endorsing the Bible as if it needed his endorsement. He should try reading it.” – Senator Reverend Warnock.

6. “After the results are tallied on election night, in the words of the great Steph Curry, we can tell Donald Trump ‘Night night’.”-Steve Kerr

7. “We deserve a president who shatters the boundaries of what’s possible, not the boundaries of what’s legal.” – Senator Laphonza Butler

8. “I’m here to do my black job.” – NAACP President Derek Johnson

9. “Lock him up.”-DNC response to Hillary Clinton remarks

10. “Harris became a career prosecutor, while Trump became a career criminal. With 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star to prove it.”- Representative Jasmine Crockett

11. “Take it from an actual billionaire, Trump is rich in only one thing: stupidity.”- Gov. J.B. Pritzker

12. “And if Americans are Black or brown, they want to get promoted at work without being derided as a DEI hire for the sin of being successful while not White. Let’s be clear, it’s not ‘woke’ that limits economic growth, it’s weird. These guys aren’t just weird, they’re dangerous.” - Gov. J.B. Pritzker

13. “Kamala Harris knows how to keep criminals off the streets. And come November, with your help, she’ll keep one out of the Oval Office.”- Angela D. Alsobrooks

14. “I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle. John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and we don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind. So let’s turn the page, let’s put the country first, let’s put adults in the room your country deserves.” -Mesa Mayor Republican John Giles

15. “My mother’s here. She is the only one in the world who thinks Kamala is the lucky one for marrying me.”-First Gentleman Doug Emhoff

16. “Most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.”-Michelle Obama

17. “Who is going to tell him [Trump] that the job that he is seeking might be one of those Black jobs,” -Michelle Obama

18. "Look, it's his same old con, his same old con, doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people's lives better. That tactic made Trump small. Going small is the opposite of what we teach our kids. Going small is petty, it's unhealthy, and quite frankly, it's unpresidential." -Michelle Obama

19. "We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.” — Michelle Obama at DNC

20. “Since it’s become popular, they don’t call it Obamacare anymore.”-President Barack Obama

21. “Join me in promising your whole heart to this effort, where my heart will be. I promise I’ll be the best Volunteer, Kamala Harris, and Tim Walz have ever seen” – President Joe Biden

22. “Let me know in my heart when my days are through:
    America, America, I gave my best to you.”-President Joe Biden

And finally, my favorite assessment of the convention, and Biden’s sacrifice, came from a print commentator, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, who wrote, “He didn’t so much pass the torch as set it ablaze.”

Well said.