By Petula Dvorak / The Washington Post
It was unconventional for a convention, but the speeches may have been the most accurate look at our nation’s future.
The 17 faces that together created the Democratic Convention’s atypical keynote address Tuesday night are what America really looks like. They are the white valedictorians and war veterans, yes, but the party’s rising stars are also gay, Latino and Black legislators, single women, an immigrant and the president of the Navajo Nation as well as the children of single moms, poor parents and refugees. No monochromatic, male monopoly here.
They are, quite simply, America.
While the rest of the convention’s lineup looks like the warmed-over offerings of a nostalgia steamtable buffet — with Clintons and Carters, Kennedys, Kerry and Cuomo — the video mash-up of young leaders who pieced together the evening’s keynote speech by recording themselves in their living rooms, at their desks or in city parks was a refreshing jolt of American reality.
Of the 17 speakers, 11 were people of color. And that wasn’t an overrepresentation.
America is diversifying at a breathtaking rate. Today’s white 14-year-olds are now minorities, making up 49.9 percent of children under 15. Contrast that with their pre-boomer white grandparents — the folks who are Joe Biden’s age — and their 78 percent majority in that generation.
The nation is changing, and the downballot races of the past few years show that the change is coming from the ground up.
Three years ago, the nation saw its first openly transgender statehouse rep in Virginia’s Danica Roem; Hoboken, N.J. elected Ravi Bhalla to become among the few Sikh mayors elected in U.S. history; and Montana’s capital city elected a Liberian refugee, Wilmot Collins, to become the state’s first Black mayor.
The Democrats who spoke in that keynote Tuesday night — most of whom are younger than MTV, Rubik’s cubes and CNN — are continuing the transformation of American leadership.
With their very presence, they gave high hopes to all those ants trying to move political rubbertree plants across America in this coming election.
Yes, it’s possible for a Democrat to not only unseat a three-term incumbent Republican in the Georgia state legislature — that’s right, Georgia — but it was done in 2017 by Rep. Sam Park, 34, the openly gay son of Korean immigrants.
Yes, a 19-year-old raised by a widowed mom can unseat a New Hampshire State House Republican; Rep. Dennis Ruprecht did it in 2018 while he was a sophomore in college.
“We ran for office because we know the struggles American families are facing because we’ve lived them,” Ruprecht said in his part of the speech.
“That’s why we ran for office, even when people counted us out,” they all said in unison.
“Even when there had never been a Latina in the Nevada state senate,” said state Sen. Yvanna Cancela, 32, whose commuter bike hanging off the hallway wall behind her was pitch-perfect millennial decor.
They’re not the scions of wealthy dynasties or the heirs of political privilege. The diverse and deep bench the Democrats showcased Tuesday night come to politics from intimate experience with the issues.
“We’ve lived the insecurity and the indignity of an eviction notice,” said Pennsylvania State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, 30, who grew up in a Philadelphia home filled with foster kids his biological parents added to their family.
“I, like many of you, have lived the frustration of paying off student loans,” Robert Garcia, 42, who is openly gay and an immigrant from Peru who became Long Beach, Calif.’s first Latino mayor.
“We have lived the grief of losing loved ones to gun violence and a criminal justice system that unfairly targets our communities,” said Randall Woodfin, Birmingham’s 39-year-old mayor.
“We have lived that feeling of helplessness when someone you love is very sick and access to health care is a matter of life and death,” said Park, the Georgia state legislator who ran for office after battling to access cancer treatments for his mother.
“This nation belongs to all of us,” said Stacey Abrams, a former presidential candidate who would have been a plausible choice to give the traditional keynote speech alone. Like presidents Clinton and Obama, she would’ve had the party nod as an anointed rising star by giving the address.
But because she anchored the team of diverse government workers in the speech’s final message about leadership, it became a jab at President Trump. It was a nod to the humble civil servant; more “Parks and Rec” than “The Apprentice.”
Civil service is naturally unsexy. It’s not supposed to be about messiahs and superstars. It’s state reps and ag commissioners, fisheries officials and city halls. It’s running for office because you’re fed up, outraged and moved to fix and futz until something is better.
“In a democracy, we do not elect saviors,” Abrams said. “We cast our ballots for those who see our struggles and pledge to serve …”
And in that, she challenged America to rethink leadership, to look forward, not back, to look around and not above ourselves for the people who will heal our nation and make America’s future great again.
Petula is a columnist for The Washington Post’s local team who writes about homeless shelters, gun control, high heels, high school choirs, the politics of parenting, jails, abortion clinics, mayors, modern families, strip clubs and gas prices, among other things. Before coming to The Post, she covered social issues, crime and courts.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
