Democrats gone wild: What was unleashed with “Lock him up” — and where will it lead?

CHICAGO — That noise you heard emanating from the United Center on Monday night wasn’t just the exuberant chant of “Lock him up!” that erupted during Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention — no, technically speaking Clinton did not lead that chant, though she clearly enjoyed it — nor was it the faintly cringe, carefully orchestrated “We love Joe” chant that preceded President Biden’s speech. It wasn’t even the tiny outbreak of discord toward the back of the Florida delegation, a few dozen feet behind my seat, where a few activists unrolled a protest sign in Palestinian flag colors before being vigorously tackled.

No, it was the sound of the Democratic Party’s collective id — a genie squelched and suppressed for so long its very existence seemed apocryphal — escaping from the underground cavern where it’s been trapped for ever so many years. This building, which hosted numerous championship games for the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls, was literally packed to the rafters and bursting with explosive energy on Monday evening, something that never once occurred during the Republican convention a few weeks ago, 80 miles north in Milwaukee. 

Whether or not “Lock him up!” was entirely spontaneous, it felt entirely genuine: To be specific, it felt like a genuine desire for payback, a longing for revenge for the many large and small injuries inflicted on liberal vanity, the liberal conscience and cherished liberal certainties by the Trump movement over the last eight or nine years. Michelle Obama’s quasi-legendary “When they go low, we go high” speech from 2016 has been consigned to the oblivion of things that sounded like a good idea at the time. Whatever one thinks about the existential morality of either approach, what’s suddenly tangible at this convention is not just a desire to win, but a longing to crush the opposition into dust. That won’t quite happen, of course, but that brand of GOP-branded hunger is something new for Democrats.

To be clear, there are important lingering questions about exactly who and what the Democratic Party is, and whether its leaders and voters share anything close to a coherent agenda. Those remain unanswered and perhaps unanswerable, but in practical terms they’re also irrelevant to this moment and to the 2024 election, whose polarity has been so dramatically reversed by Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the perhaps not entirely accidental ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris. 

If elections are won on vibes, as we say these days, and if the Democrats’ only proximate task is to defeat Donald Trump conclusively enough that his minions on the Supreme Court and around the country can’t game the results, then they’re in a good place after day one of the Chicago convention. If we want to talk about policy or ideology, on the other hand, then I have no real idea what they stand for and neither do you. A political coalition that largely consists, these days, of affluent white folks and poor or working-class Black and Hispanic folks seems bound to come unraveled sooner or later. But “later” can clearly be postponed for a while, given that they’re united in opposition to an imaginary throwback racist republic presided over by JD “Crush With Eyeliner” Vance. (Who did not, to be clear, have sex with a sofa, a couch, an ottoman, a chaise-longue or any similarly denoted item of furniture.)

It’s certainly possible to imagine another script-flipping event before we reach the first week of November, and Republicans will struggle mightily to make that happen. I will leave it to Democratic apparatchiks to offer advice about the risks of overconfidence and the value of vigilance, dedication and hard work — although exactly what “work” is difficult to say, given that only around 20 percent of American voters will cast ballots that actually matter in the presidential election. But to coin a phrase, at the moment it seems that Donald Trump has fallen and he can’t get up. 

MAGA world is visibly struggling to adapt to Harris’ emergence as the Democratic nominee, and for the first time in his so-called political career, Trump’s ghoulish brand of insult comedy is failing him. This seems puzzling on its face since Biden’s impending bailout had been the subject of chatter for months and may have been the best-advertised “black swan” event in history. 

Trump’s campaign claims, of course, that it was prepared for Harris as a possible opponent, but there was no way to prepare for what actually happened, up to and including the near-boiling-point energy on the first night of this convention. Many observers (myself included) thought Biden’s departure might lead to a protracted leadership struggle or a “coronation” that sparked considerable resentment. Instead, all Democratic factions — many of which, in a political vacuum, would not have viewed Harris as their first choice — united literally overnight around a candidate seen as the last, best option for consigning Trumpism to the historical dustbin, and who then turned out to possess (to this point) unanticipated political aptitude.

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To get back to vibes and dime-store psychology — excellent tools for comprehending American political behavior — elections in our ludicrous binary system are often decided less by which party wants to win than by which one is not-so-secretly determined to lose. Eight years ago, Democrats told themselves that by being the nice, normal, sane people they couldn’t possibly lose to Donald Trump and demonstrated an almost magical ability to make that outcome possible. 

Heading into 2024, those Republicans still capable of introspection no doubt understood that their party was in a strange place and their candidate was damaged goods — unhinged, unmanageable and widely unpopular. GOP leaders visibly yearned for a more vigorous replacement, but oh well: They were pretty sure they’d win by default, since Democrats were demoralized, divided and married to their own visibly impaired candidate. Unless, that is, something big were to happen.