LIFE OF THE PARTY

The Democrats seem rejuvenated by their new candidate. Why was it so hard to get one?

-  ANDREW MARANTZ

The buttons said “Frat Bros for Harris” and “Hillbillies for Harris” and “Banned Book Readers for Harris” and “Unity 2024.” The stickers said “demo(b)rat” and “Existing in Context” and “F*ck Project 2025” and “Hotties for Harris.” The Washington State delegation wore “Cowboy Kamala” sashes and cowboy hats fringed with flashing lights. (“The Smithsonian already came by to collect one,” Shasti Conrad, the head of the delegation, told me.) Some pieces of merch seemed to have been printed in June—a T-shirt with images of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, but no Kamala Harris—and others were designed sometime between late July, when Biden left the race, and mid-August, when people started arriving in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. It surely wasn’t spontaneous when Biden finished his keynote speech and Harris told him, within view of the cameras, “I love you so much.” Still, stagecraft and all, it did feel a bit like Unity 2024. “Two months ago, it was impossible to contemplate that anyone other than Biden could unite the Party,” Peter Welch, the junior senator from Vermont, told me. “Then it was people tiptoeing around, going, ‘O.K., he’s not the best messenger, but we can’t address that without tearing the Party apart.’ Now that’s all ancient history.”

There are two U.S. senators from Vermont, one of whom is a household name. After Biden delivered perhaps the worst televised debate performance in American Presidential history, Bernie Sanders, the senior senator, became one of his staunchest defenders. A vast majority of voters told pollsters that Biden was too old to run, and there were widespread calls for him to drop out of the race. Yet Sanders insinuated that these calls may have been artificially orchestrated by élites—“a small group of people,” he called them, “not ordinary people.”