This story first appeared at Newsmaker with JR.

The Democratic speakers portrayed the election as a duel between hope and fear and, on the first evening of their party convention, addressed themes such as freedom, patriotism and optimism for the future that would have made Ronald Reagan blush.

“I mean, they rewrote the script, right?” said Kamala Harris biographer Dan Morain at the convention venue at the United Center in Chicago.

In a long, oratorical night that spotlighted some of the Democrats’ most influential political talents, speaker after speaker appropriated an optimistic, patriotic rhetoric once typical of the pre-Donald Trump Republican Party.

Although the long series of speeches pushed President Joe Biden’s long-awaited farewell address on the East Coast out of prime time, Democrats largely focused on an inclusive message of unity and hope, alternating with sharp attacks on Trump and his legal troubles, as well as the controversial, right-wing “Project 2025” plan that the Heritage Foundation had drawn up as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Morain, who was present at the meeting to provide material for a soon-to-be-revised edition of “Kamala’s Way”, The first comprehensive and complete biography of Harris states that the patriotic speech began hours before the official presentations that evening.

For example, Morain attended the LGBTQ Caucus morning session and was surprised by the contrast between what he had heard at the previous session and what he had heard this week:

“I don’t think they did that the last time I was at a Democratic convention,” he said, smiling. “But (the chairman) stands up and talks about freedom and that makes the crowd go ‘USA! USA!’ OK. Pretty interesting.”

Biden capped the evening with a speech in which he presented the achievements of the Biden-Harris administration in the most positive light possible. With the first words of his farewell speech to the party in which he had been influential for six decades, he further set the tone of the evening.

“Are you ready to vote for freedom?” Biden said, “Are you ready to vote for democracy in America?”

A few hours before the president spoke last night, Morain checked in on Newsmakers from his seat in the back row, where he had just watched Biden review his speech.

“It’s such an extraordinary story,” he said in our conversation. “Just think about how Vice President Harris was pilloried in 2021 by the right, but also the left. She had little luck that first year, and now it’s her party.

“I don’t know if she’s going to win — she’s still an underdog,” Morain told us. “If the election were today… would it be a jump ball? He’d probably win… but she clearly has momentum.”

“The mood is … full of energy. They are definitely full of energy … no one is saying they are going to win, but they are feeling pretty good,” he added.

Morain was in Las Vegas last week to watch his opponent and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz deliver a rousing rally in front of thousands of cheering supporters in dangerous heat.

“I saw her on stage and she seemed really… free – she lets it rip,” he said. “She’s having fun. She’s smiling, she’s laughing. Of course she makes a point and she can be pretty pointed. She’s trained as a prosecutor and she’s prosecuted a case. We’re all her jury, so to speak.”

In our conversation, Morain also talked about “

• Chicago’s hospitality efforts include a very large police presence, which seems more than sufficient for the so far peaceful thousands of demonstrators who have gathered to protest the government’s pro-Israel stance on the war and Gaza, as well as many other issues. “There is a large police presence in Chicago. They don’t want to have to make arrests, but they are obviously willing to make arrests.”
• The city’s efforts to impress the tens of thousands of delegates, journalists and other scribblers: “Chicago is incredibly beautiful… the city just keeps growing… it’s really clean – I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ve done with their homeless, but I don’t see many of them here… and there’s been a lot of planting.”
• The dramatic and radical changes in the media landscape make Team Trump seem rather outdated in its attempt to avoid controversy over Harris’s previous failure to hold a lengthy press conference or make herself available for an in-depth interview while her team operates at a high level on social media: “You can look at this as trivial journalism, but it is certainly communication and they are connecting with people in new ways.”

Watch our conversation with Kamala Harris’ biographer Dan Morain on YouTube or via Click on this link, or listen to the Podcast version here.