The opening night of the Democratic National Convention might well go down as a strange digital artifact of an election year defined by pandemic-induced weirdness.
But there were no major technical glitches during the first few hours of the first-ever virtual party gathering — and Michelle Obama’s comprehensive takedown of President Trump left Democrats feeling relatively fired up and ready to go, albeit from their couches, ahead of Day 2.
The most-watched moment on Tuesday might come from one of the shortest time slots: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s minute or so of speaking time to praise her chosen primary candidate, Bernie Sanders.
Jill Biden, the nominee’s wife and an educator, will have a much more expansive role, as will Bill Clinton, whose second-day speaking slot speaks to a diminished influence in a party now defined by Joseph R. Biden Jr., former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who will address the convention on Wednesday.
Tuesday’s events will again run from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time. There are several ways to watch:
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The Times will stream the full convention every day, accompanied by chat-based live analysis from our reporters and real-time highlights from the speeches.
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The official livestream will be here. It will also be available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch.
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ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News will air the convention from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night. C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and PBS will cover the full two hours each night.
Here’s more information on how to stream the convention on various platforms.
Who’s speaking tonight:
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Jill Biden, Mr. Biden’s wife and the former second lady
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Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware
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Former President Bill Clinton
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John Kerry, the former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee
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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York
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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York
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Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general
Democrats opened the most extraordinary presidential nominating convention in recent history on Monday night with a program that spanned the ideological gamut from socialists to Republicans, and at times more closely resembled an online awards show than a traditional summer pageant of American democracy.
The two-hour event, truncated and conducted virtually because of the coronavirus crisis, was a vivid illustration of how widespread opposition to President Trump and the still-raging pandemic have upended the country’s politics.
Kicking off a four-day conclave during which they hope to both win over moderates who are uneasy with Mr. Trump’s divisive leadership and energize liberals who are unenthusiastic about their own nominee, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrats reached for the recent past.
They showcased the leader of the left and their reigning presidential runner-up, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont; a handful of Republican defectors, including former Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio; and the most popular figure from the previous administration — the former first lady, Michelle Obama.
With no arena, and no loudspeaker to introduce the presenters, Democrats turned to an M.C. of sorts, the actress Eva Longoria, who kept the evening moving between prerecorded and live video presentations. A lineup of political luminaries delivered remarks in rapid-fire format and only a few of them — Mrs. Obama, for one, and Mr. Sanders — possessed the sheer star power to linger in the perception of the audience.
“The past four years have left us, as a nation, diminished and divided,” Ms. Longoria said at the opening of the program, alluding to the pandemic, its economic devastation and much else.
After introductory segments, the program devoted attention to the protests against racial injustice. Appearing above the Black Lives Matter logo painted on the street across from the White House, the mayor of the District of Columbia, Muriel E. Bowser, recounted her anger over Mr. Trump’s deployment of federal troops against protesters this summer.
“I said ‘Enough’ for every Black and brown American who has experienced injustice,” Ms. Bowser said.
Perhaps the most searing critique of Mr. Trump came not from an elected official but from Kristin Urquiza, a young woman whose father, a Trump supporter, died of the coronavirus. Speaking briefly and in raw terms about her loss, Ms. Urquiza said of her father, “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life.”
The Democratic primary race began as a clash of ideas. But when the Democratic National Convention convened on Monday, the party assembled with a single aim: defeating President Trump.
From the progressive left to the moderate wing, Mr. Trump has served for months as the glue keeping the party from fracturing. And never has this détente been more obvious than in the wide-ranging lineup for the first night of the convention, when, in the name of unity, the virtual stage was open not just to Democrats of various persuasions but to Republicans as well.
The festivities conveyed one message from the Democrats. Whatever their ideological differences with one another or the Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden Jr., ousting Mr. Trump was the primary concern.
“We have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it,” said Michelle Obama, the former first lady.
The appeal came from other political leaders including former Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, a onetime Republican candidate for president; Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive standard-bearer; and also Democratic moderates including Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
The speakers made clear that unity does not mean total agreement. Mr. Sanders and Mr. Kasich were both explicit in saying that they disagree with Mr. Biden on some matters, but are behind him nonetheless.
“I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country,” Mr. Kasich said.
Michelle Obama, who anchored the Democratic convention Monday night, spoke longest, followed by Eva Longoria, the actress who hosted the event.
Four Republicans who stepped up for Joseph R. Biden Jr. — including the former Ohio governor John R. Kasich — spoke for a total of about five and a half minutes.
Monday’s lineup of speakers was intended to convey the broad ideological support for Mr. Biden — from Republicans like Mr. Kasich to Senator Bernie Sanders.
Heading into the four-day convention, the most closely guarded secret was how much time each speaker would get during the two-hour window each night.
Party officials said the average speech length would clock in at two minutes — after accounting for the five major addresses from the Obamas, the Bidens and Senator Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden’s running mate. Speakers spent recent weeks privately jockeying with convention organizers for extra time.
With so little time to divide among so many speakers representing the ideological, racial and geographic diversity of the party, convention planners have been careful not to advertise how much time each speaker received, to avoid causing hurt feelings in advance of the virtual event.
transcript
transcript
Trump ‘Is Clearly in Over His Head,’ Michelle Obama Says
Michelle Obama, speaking on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, addressed her distress over President Trump’s leadership.
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Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer? Going high is the only thing that works. Because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight. But let’s be clear. Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountaintop. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God — and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences. So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.
Casting aside her reluctance to engage in political combat, Michelle Obama delivered an impassioned keynote address to cap off the first night of the Democratic convention and offered a withering assessment of President Trump, accusing him of creating “chaos,” sowing “division” and governing “with a total and utter lack of empathy.”
Mrs. Obama, the former first lady, spoke emphatically into the camera and gave a scathing, point-by-point analysis of Mr. Trump’s presidency in an urgent summons for Democratic voters to cast ballots in any way they could, even if it meant waiting in long lines to do so.
She began by questioning the very legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, pointing out that he had lost the popular tally by “three million votes.”
She went on to attack the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and said that the strong economy Mr. Trump inherited from her husband four years ago was “in shambles.” She also said Mr. Trump’s divisive approach on race relations had emboldened “torch-bearing white supremacists,” and ripped him for a lack of “leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness.”
Mrs. Obama began all of this by declaring, “You know, I hate politics.”
Then she dove right in.
“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” Mrs. Obama said, offering a potent closing argument to a packed online program that seemed, at times, like an overpopulated Zoom call.
“He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is,” she added.