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      Tim Walz’s Unexpected Rise Has Minnesota DNC Attendees Overjoyed

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      The Georgia delegates danced with the rapper Lil Jon at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday. The Wisconsin delegates cheered in their Cheesehead hats.But across a party gathering where the word “joy” has become an unofficial mantra, perhaps no one exudes it more than the Minnesotans.After nearly four decades without representation on a presidential ticket, the sudden, stunning elevation of Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, has prompted a surge of excitement among the state’s Democrats. Minnesota attendees are celebrating Mr. Walz as a beloved state export on par with Prince or Bob Dylan.“The Minnesota delegation is, like, buzzing,” Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat from the state, enthused in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s like they can’t even complete a sentence because they’re so excited about what this means for their friends Tim and Gwen, and also what it means for the country.”Mr. Walz, whom Vice President Kamala Harris chose as her running mate, is set to address the convention on Wednesday. It will be his most prominent appearance yet as he continues to introduce himself to a nation that was overwhelmingly unfamiliar with him until this month.But Minnesota Democrats have long known Mr. Walz as a folksy former football coach who speaks a neighborly language of moderate Midwestern pragmatism even as he pushes a sweeping agenda of liberal priorities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris Holds Rally in Milwaukee, 80 Miles From DNC, in Show of Force

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      Democrats managed to be in two places at once on Tuesday night, holding a ceremonial roll-call vote at their Chicago convention to celebrate Vice President Kamala Harris as their party’s nominee, while she herself rallied supporters roughly 80 miles north in Milwaukee.Ms. Harris’s choice to appear in Milwaukee, the largest city in a crucial battleground state, was intentional and pointed: She stood onstage in the same arena where former President Donald J. Trump accepted the Republican nomination last month.For much of the evening in Milwaukee, the Harris campaign used the arena’s Jumbotron to pipe in the events taking place in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. But after Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced his state’s votes for Ms. Harris, ending the roll call of 57 states and territories, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, marched onto the stage in Milwaukee.For a moment, she was speaking to two packed arenas at the same time, celebrating the roll-call vote in front of tens of thousands of people, with millions more watching on screens. The two-city rally represented a significant flexing of Democratic muscle with the presidential election just 76 days away.“We are so honored to be your nominees,” Ms. Harris said. “Together, we will chart a new way forward.”The Milwaukee rally was just the latest event at which the Harris campaign filled a major arena with Democrats. For more than a year, they had largely stayed away from events featuring President Biden, who drew crowds only in the low thousands.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Grandchildren of John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter Help Open DNC Night 2

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      Grandchildren of two Democratic presidents — John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter — helped to open the second night of the Democratic convention on Tuesday by presenting Vice President Kamala Harris as a natural heir to the legacy of both of these former leaders.“Today, J.F.K.’s call for action is now ours to answer,” said Jack Schlossberg, 31. He is the only grandson of Mr. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. “Because once again, the torch has been passed to a new generation.”Jason Carter, a 49-year-old lawyer and politician, said that his grandfather, who is 99 and in hospice care, “can’t wait to vote for Kamala Harris.”“Kamala Harris carries my grandfather’s legacy,” he said. “She knows what is right, and she fights for it.”Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are attending the party’s convention in Chicago. Mr. Carter could not. His grandson said that Mr. Carter was “holding on” and that although the former president’s body was weakening, “his spirit is as strong as ever.”Jason Carter said that Vice President Kamala Harris carried the legacy of his grandfather, Jimmy Carter. “She knows what is right,” he said, “and she fights for it.”Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThe remarks by Mr. Schlossberg and the younger Mr. Carter reflected the effort by Democrats to wrap the party’s legacy around Ms. Harris, who is 59 years old. Mr. Obama was expected to speak later on Tuesday night, and Mr. Clinton on Wednesday.Mr. Schlossberg portrayed Ms. Harris as a leader who reflected the spirit of his grandfather’s call to the American people.“She believes in America, like my grandfather did,” he said, “that we do things not because they are easy but because they are hard.” More

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      Minyon Moore Helped Kamala Harris Rise. Now She’s Leading the D.N.C.

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      When Vice President Kamala Harris takes the convention stage to formally accept the Democratic nomination on Thursday, it will mark the culmination of decades of public and behind-the-scenes work to make the party more reflective of its multiracial base.Off the convention stage, the moment is particularly meaningful for a group of Black women in Democratic politics who have long championed Ms. Harris’s political rise. And in a serendipitous intertwining of events, one of them is running the whole show.Those who know Minyon Moore, the veteran Democratic strategist and chair of this year’s Democratic National Convention, say she is accustomed to operating behind the scenes. She helped lobby President Biden to select Ms. Harris to be his running mate in 2020. She later left a job in the private sector to help coordinate the effort to support Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination.“You could probably take a bag of rocks and throw it in the air at the D.N.C. convention and they’re going to fall on somebody who’s going to tell you a story about the time that Minyon Moore quietly helped them, quietly pushed them, quietly accelerated them to a place where they now are now yielding influence in a very powerful way,” Jotaka Eaddy, a veteran Democratic organizer, said.Ms. Moore’s role overseeing the convention has required her to depart from the private meetings and side phone calls that have been features of her professional career. It may also test the coalition-building skills she has spent nearly four decades honing. Thousands of demonstrators are expected in Chicago this week to protest the convention and Democrats’ handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the war between Israel and Hamas.Some of those tensions are on display within the event itself. A group of delegates representing the Uncommitted movement, which has protested the Biden administration’s Israel policy, have joined some of the demonstrations and are hosting separate programming.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      AOC, Once an Outsider, Takes Center Stage at DNC

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      Four years ago, Democrats allotted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York a scant 90 seconds to speak at their convention. She used it to symbolically nominate Senator Bernie Sanders for president and never mentioned Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s name.So when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took the convention stage on Monday night in Chicago shortly before Hillary Clinton, her prime-time speaking slot offered a vivid display of how far the Democratic Party and the leader of its progressive wing have moved to embrace each other since 2020.Greeted with chants of “A-O-C,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who made her name by taking on the Democratic establishment, delivered an affectionate tribute to Mr. Biden, laced into Donald J. Trump and forcefully endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as a champion of working Americans.“We know Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing palms of his Wall Street friends,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life.”She added: “The truth is, Don, you cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business.”The thunderous applause that followed would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. At their last convention, Democrats seemed more comfortable spotlighting Republicans supporting Mr. Biden than a young leftist like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, whose policies and rhetoric they feared would alienate moderate swing voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At DNC, Hochul Says Trump Lacks ‘New York Values’

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      Two years ago, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York took outsize blame for a lackluster election night in her state that helped cost Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives.This week, she arrived at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago determined to prove her political acumen and demonstrate that she could help the party win back the House and the presidency in November.Over breakfast with fellow New Yorkers, she highlighted her efforts to rebuild the state’s Democratic Party. In a meeting with a women’s group, she emphasized the impact of policies enacted by the Biden administration. And in a capstone speech on the convention floor, Ms. Hochul made a forceful case that Vice President Kamala Harris was best positioned to lead the Democratic Party and the nation into the future.“We have kids to feed. Roads to build. Jobs to create. Real problems to solve,” Ms. Hochul said. “And we need leaders who can get it done.”She continued: “Trump talked big about bringing back manufacturing jobs. But you know who actually did it? President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”The roughly five-minute speech was one of the most high-profile moments of Ms. Hochul’s career. A political journeywoman, she assumed the governorship three years ago after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, and won a full term in 2022 by a narrower-than-expected margin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      6 Things to Watch For at the Democratic Convention

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      The Democratic National Convention, which opens Monday in Chicago, will be a test for the party and its new standard-bearer, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has never been so center stage. The next few days should signal how Ms. Harris intends to define her candidacy, and will help determine whether the party can remain unified despite deep divisions over issues including the war in Gaza.Here are six things to watch for this week.Harris presents herself: Ms. Harris’s acceptance speech on Thursday offers her a chance to introduce herself to what will likely be, along with her debate or debates with Mr. Trump, one of the biggest audiences she will have before Election Day. Her challenge, Democrats say, is to balance loyalty to Mr. Biden and assuming control of her party.Her speech is an opportunity to show the extent to which she intends to carve out her own political identity and demonstrate how a Harris presidency would be different from a Biden presidency. Not incidentally, it is also a test of whether the sitting vice president will present herself as the candidate of change or as the incumbent, running on the record of the past three years.Party unity: Democrats are hoping for four days of party-building, well aware of the dissension-free convention staged by Mr. Trump and the Republican Party last month in Milwaukee. That might be tough.The convention will be shadowed by demonstrations over the Biden administration’s strong support of Israel in the war in Gaza, a policy opposed by a sizable contingent of Democratic delegates. Protests on the streets could spill into the convention hall. Should that happen, Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said Ms. Harris would need to separate herself from “the fringe of her coalition.” He added: “This is important in terms of defining her as both strong and mainstream.”A handoff from a Clinton: Hillary Clinton is set to speak on Monday night, and thoughts about what might have been will not be lost on anyone in the hall. In 2016, Mr. Trump defeated her in her bid to be the first female president, a loss that some Democrats argued was at least in part a sign of Americans’ unwillingness to elect a woman to the nation’s highest office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Unveil Convention Platform With Familiar Themes

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      Democrats released their party platform on Sunday, unveiling a document that offers plenty of political comfort food for a newly energized party ahead of its convention in Chicago.As a sign of what Democrats believe will mobilize their forces — and the head-spinning transformation that has remade their presidential ticket — the document mentions former President Donald J. Trump’s name 150 times.Vice President Kamala Harris, the new nominee who has brought her party back together after a bruising internal fight over President Biden’s candidacy, is mentioned by name just 32 times.The platform seems intended to avoid stirring any controversy that could derail that fresh feeling of unity.At the top of the list of issues that could threaten the party’s cohesiveness is the war in Gaza. Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are descending on Chicago, and roughly 30 delegates representing the Democratic primary voters who opposed Mr. Biden, mostly in protest over Gaza, will attend the convention, which begins on Monday.The platform repeats a traditional Democratic message supporting Israel, condemning the brutal Oct. 7 assault by Hamas and backing “an immediate and lasting cease-fire deal” that will return hostages still being held by the terrorist group and address “the displacement and death of so many innocent people in Gaza.”Democrats will vote to approve the platform on Monday evening. It was passed by the party’s platform committee, a group of party insiders, with wider input from “community leaders from coalitions across the Democratic Party,” according to the Democratic National Committee.On other issues, the platform represents a predictable collection of Democratic policy priorities, including calls to make investments in infrastructure and manufacturing; to cut taxes on working families while making big corporations and the wealthy “finally pay their fair share”; and to fight climate change.Another section addresses efforts to lower costs on everyday items like food, housing and health care, in similar terms to the economic agenda that Ms. Harris rolled out last week. And there are also calls to protect abortion rights, restore democratic norms and combat gun violence.On the other side, Mr. Trump took a direct hand this summer in reshaping — and shrinking the size — of the Republican platform, which focuses more on his own priorities than on a traditional laundry list of policies.The Democratic platform says that Mr. Trump’s vision for the country is one of “revenge and retribution,” a reflection of the party’s attempt to make the 2024 election a referendum on the former president.The party’s former presumptive nominee, Mr. Biden, is mentioned by name 287 times.Lisa Lerer More