It is fitting that President Joe Biden was the opening night star at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He is the party’s past and present; and the policies he touted in his presidency, the appointments he has made, have shaped the future of the country.

The man from Delaware got his moment in the sun after offering a path to his vice president, Kamala Harris, putting his stamp on the 2024 ticket after outsmarting pundits and poohbahs. Those fantasizing about mini-primaries and an open convention while publicly and not so gently nudging Biden’s exit, stage right, got it wrong, underestimating Scranton Joe and not for the first time.

The president got his chance to place front and center the accomplishments of his administration, which are plenty. He must have smiled when Republican nominee Donald Trump recently tried to steal the spotlight by taking credit for a Biden administration cap on insulin prices. So, he set his record straight.

The Democrats’ convention has so far been a contrast to the Republican Party’s party in Milwaukee last month. The GOP’s gathering was united – yes – but only in support of a future defined and enforced by one man: Trump. The addition of Trump’s awkward and not-quite-authentic mini-me, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has not changed that dynamic.

The former president speaks mostly about himself, the size of his crowds and his very own appearance, judged, in his view, as “better looking” than the one reflected on the Time magazine cover devoted to Harris.

The Democratic Party has honored its members, elected officials and pioneers from every faction and generation. Speakers included Hillary Clinton, whose unsuccessful presidential run paved the way for Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia. Jesse Jackson received an ovation.

That’s a pretty big tent, albeit an occasionally unruly one.

Biden showed the resolve of a patriot, not a strongman, in passing the baton, probably one of the most difficult decisions in his life. “Her story represents the best American story,” Biden said of Harris. “She’ll be a president our children can look up to. She’ll be a president respected by world leaders. … She will be a president we can all be proud of. She will be a historic president who puts her stamp on America’s future.”

Another ‘happy warrior’

It is fitting that DNC 2024 is happening in Chicago, though after the chaos of the party’s 1968 convention there, marked by police violence that met Vietnam War protests, wiser heads might have crossed the city off its list in perpetuity.

It was then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, former Minnesota U.S. senator, who that year won the presidential nomination, a tainted prize. In a close race, surprisingly so for a candidate carrying and continuing the legacy of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s unpopular war policy and lingering images of skirmishes on Chicago streets, Republican Richard M. Nixon prevailed.

But how many remember Humphrey’s bravery when he led Democrats to endorse civil rights in its platform in 1948, saying at that year’s convention in Philadelphia: “The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” Sunshine was reflected in his “happy warrior” persona, through many political fights.

In 2024, another Minnesotan is carrying a similar moniker, exuding “joy” coupled with his own brand of heartland humor. This week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is introducing himself to America at large, as he signs on as vice president and partner to Harris.

The knives have been out for Walz, sometimes, it seems, with an intensity usually reserved for the top of the ticket.

Maybe, though, as with Humphrey, what’s confusing to some is the exterior image of affable Midwesterner, the guy next door you think you know, who uses the language of potlucks and Friday night football to make progressive policies, such as free school lunches and LGBTQ+ justice, as American as apple pie.

It’s incongruous only if you fail to connect compassionate words with deed, neighborliness with action.

In a return to Chicago, where memories for Democrats are hardly good ones, score another win for Walz if his style of campaigning and governing makes folks resurrect the complete if complicated legacy of another Minnesota politician who combined joy with conviction.

A Chicago suffragist and a pioneering candidate deserve a nod

It is fitting that Hillary Rodham Clinton lit up the stage of the Democratic convention on Monday night with a speech even her detractors, if they were being honest, had to admit was a moving call to action.

Looking forward, after glancing back at her own 2016 race, when she garnered the most votes but narrowly lost in the Electoral College, Clinton acknowledged the cracks she and those voters put in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” and said, “On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States.”

I recently saw Clinton’s name during a trip to New York, listed among the many producers of the Tony-award-winning Broadway musical “Suffs.” The show about the American suffrage movement focuses on the fight for and 1920 ratification of the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the vote.

While it is definitely entertaining, it can’t help but be political, especially now. In fact, Shaina Taub, who wrote the book, music and lyrics of “Suffs,” and stars as Alice Paul, joined Barbra Streisand and more than 32,000 celebrities, elected officials and activists on a recent Jewish Women for Kamala call. 

Watching “Suffs” was a reminder of how something taken for granted took years, many setbacks and hard work to achieve.

I was thrilled Taub included the stories of Black suffragists, leaders in a fight for a right they would often be denied. The character of Ida B. Wells, the author and activist, sings the show-stopping “Wait My Turn,” after she is asked to placate Southern suffragists by marching in the back of the movement’s 1913 Washington, D.C., parade.

She didn’t wait, instead joining the rest of the Illinois delegation as it passed.

Wells made Chicago her home after racist mobs reacted to her anti-lynching editorials by threatening her life and driving her out of Memphis, Tenn. Today, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett House in Chicago is a National Historic Landmark, one of the sites the city’s visitors may stop by this week, to honor history as they make it by nominating Harris.

Wells could take some of the credit for the rise of a Vice President Kamala Harris, though, knowing her story, I’m sure she would insist there is more work to do..

In truth, even the most enthusiastic DNC attendees would agree, knowing a lot can happen before and after November.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.