Every four years, for almost two cen­turies, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of the Unit­ed States has gath­ered in one of the coun­try’s major cities to nom­i­nate can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent. It’s an event that brings togeth­er tens of thou­sands of del­e­gates, jour­nal­ists, and office­hold­ers from around the world.

This year, for the first time in his­to­ry, no such assem­bly is tak­ing place.

Instead, due to the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the par­ty is gath­er­ing remote­ly and hold­ing the world’s first ful­ly dis­trib­uted nation­al par­ty con­ven­tion, with speak­ers appear­ing from across Amer­i­ca in a mix of live and taped segments.

Tonight was the first night of the most uncon­ven­tion­al nation­al polit­i­cal con­ven­tion the coun­try has ever seen. There was no are­na packed with cheer­ing, sign-wav­ing del­e­gates, no net­work tele­vi­sion sky­box­es with bright lights, and no con­stel­la­tion of satel­lite events at Mil­wau­kee’s finest venues.

The 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to be on held on Amer­i­ca’s fresh coast, on the shores of Lake Michi­gan, in Wis­con­sin’s largest city. Those plans had to be scrapped in the inter­est of peo­ple’s health and safety.

Bit by bit, the con­ven­tion was scaled down until all that was left was a stage in a con­ven­tion cen­ter and an appa­ra­tus for man­ag­ing the feeds being dis­trib­uted to tele­vi­sion net­works. Not even Joe Biden is mak­ing the trek to Milwaukee.

Repub­li­cans have been forced to adopt a sim­i­lar for­mat for their con­ven­tion next week. But where­as they tried to delude them­selves into think­ing that a tra­di­tion­al con­ven­tion would still be pos­si­ble up until ear­ly this month, Democ­rats con­clud­ed weeks ago that they need­ed to plan for and pull off a ful­ly dis­trib­uted convention.

Tonight was the moment of truth for con­ven­tion offi­cials, who had the respon­si­bil­i­ty of deliv­er­ing their first two hours of prime­time programming.

For Day One, the DNCC adopt­ed a theme of “We the People”.

Actress Eva Lon­go­ria served as the evening’s mas­ter of cer­e­monies, pro­vid­ing an intro­duc­tion to each major new seg­ment from a tele­vi­sion studio.

Leon Bridges, Mag­gie Rogers, Bil­ly Porter, and Steven Stills performed.

(Porter and Stills’ per­for­mance was unfor­tu­nate­ly cut off by PBS, CNN, and MSNBC in their rush to put their own per­son­al­i­ties back up on screen, but it did air on C‑SPAN and on the con­ven­tion’s offi­cial video feed.)

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Ben­nie Thomp­son, Gwen Moore, Jim Clyburn, and Cedric Rich­mond offered remarks, as did Gov­er­nors Andrew Cuo­mo (New York) and Gretchen Whit­mer (Michi­gan). Many of Joe Biden’s for­mer cam­paign rivals (includ­ing our own Jay Inslee) appeared in a video to to pro­mote his candidacy.

A group of Repub­li­cans head­lined by John Kasich appeared to declare their sup­port for Joe Biden’s can­di­da­cy from across the aisle.

And, in the final half hour, Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders and for­mer First Lady Michelle Oba­ma deliv­ered a pair of pow­er­ful speech­es for Biden.

Sanders, Biden’s last remain­ing rival in the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nat­ing con­test, gave one of his best speech­es ever. He denounced Trump’s big­otry and thug­gery, as expect­ed, but also took the trou­ble of explain­ing what he and Joe Biden have in com­mon with respect to pol­i­cy. (It’s more than many peo­ple might think.)

As exam­ples, Sanders cit­ed Biden’s sup­port for a min­i­mum wage of fif­teen dol­lars an hour, low­er­ing the eli­gi­bil­i­ty age of Medicare from six­ty-five to six­ty, cre­ate twelve weeks of paid fam­i­ly leave, end­ing pri­vate pris­ons and cash bail, and launch­ing a tran­si­tion to one hun­dred per­cent clean energy.

Sanders also neat­ly tucked a dev­as­tat­ing one-lin­er into the mid­dle of the speech.

“Nero fid­dled while Rome burned. Trump golfs,” Sanders deadpanned.

“My friends, I say to you, to every­one who sup­port­ed oth­er can­di­dates in the pri­ma­ry and to those who may have vot­ed for Don­ald Trump in the last elec­tion: The future of our democ­ra­cy is at stake. The future of our econ­o­my is at stake. The future of our plan­et is at stake,” said Sanders. “We must come togeth­er, defeat Don­ald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris as our next pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent. My friends, the price of fail­ure is just too great to imagine.”

Then it was Michelle Oba­ma’s turn.

The for­mer First Lady is one of the nation’s most admired Amer­i­cans, and she demon­strat­ed why she is wide­ly revered by deliv­er­ing a speech that may well be ref­er­enced in his­to­ry texts a hun­dred years from now.

“I am one of a hand­ful of peo­ple liv­ing today who have seen first­hand the immense weight and awe­some pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy,” Oba­ma said.

“And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-head­ed judg­ment, a mas­tery of com­plex and com­pet­ing issues, a devo­tion to facts and his­to­ry, a moral com­pass, and an abil­i­ty to lis­ten — and an abid­ing belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this coun­try has mean­ing and worth.”

Oba­ma — who has a gift for fram­ing and explain­ing what pro­gres­sive val­ues look like in action — made empa­thy a major theme of her speech. Along with mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, it is one of the val­ues that most defines progressivism.

“Empa­thy: that’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing a lot about late­ly,” she said. “The abil­i­ty to walk in some­one else’s shoes; the recog­ni­tion that some­one else’s expe­ri­ence has val­ue, too. Most of us prac­tice this with­out a sec­ond thought. If we see some­one suf­fer­ing or strug­gling, we don’t stand in judgment.”

“We reach out because, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ It is not a hard con­cept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children.”

Empa­thy is both a val­ue and an abil­i­ty. It may not be hard con­cept for pro­gres­sives and bicon­cep­tu­als to grasp, but it is not a val­ue that Trump’s cult believes in. They have con­vinced them­selves that empa­thy is a bad thing, and the poi­son that right wing per­son­al­i­ties spew on their talk shows is proof of that.

How­ev­er, empa­thy is in truth one of our finest tra­di­tion­al val­ues. It is as Amer­i­can as base­ball and apple pie. The best Amer­i­cans in every era of our his­to­ry have been peo­ple who cher­ished and prac­ticed empathy.

“Like so many of you, Barack and I have tried our best to instill in our girls a strong moral foun­da­tion to car­ry for­ward the val­ues that our par­ents and grand­par­ents poured into us. But right now, kids in this coun­try are see­ing what hap­pens when we stop requir­ing empa­thy of one anoth­er,” Oba­ma said.

“They’re look­ing around won­der­ing if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we tru­ly value.”

We may be at a low point, but we are not doomed, she stressed.

Elab­o­rat­ing on her pre­vi­ous con­ven­tion speech­es, she argued that Democ­rats can only win by going high. But that does­n’t mean tol­er­at­ing evil and injustice.

“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 moun­tain top,” Oba­ma said.

We have to go high because Amer­i­ca can­not afford to stay low, she reiterated.

“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.”

“If you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things can­not pos­si­bly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this elec­tion,” she warned. “If we have any hope of end­ing this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

She’s absolute­ly cor­rect. If 2020 has taught us any­thing, it’s that things can get worse. Much worse. Each of the past few years has been worse than the last. The elec­tion is per­haps the coun­try’s last chance to escape the col­laps­ing pit it’s in.

Giv­en the events of the past few years, Michelle Oba­ma’s speech struck a very dif­fer­ent tone than her 2012 and 2016 speech­es. It was raw and steely and pas­sion­ate. It fit the moment, per­fect­ly, as did Sanders’ speech.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic activists and del­e­gates from the Pacif­ic North­west were pleased with the open­ing night pro­gram, with many telling NPI it res­onat­ed with them.

“Great speech­es, con­cise and to the point,” said Joan Tier­ney of Seat­tle. “Michelle Oba­ma was utter­ly amaz­ing and reached the hearts of vot­ers. Bernie was a uniter and appre­ci­at­ed. John Kasich and Meg Whit­man took a brave stance. I real­ly enjoyed every speech and the chil­dren singing touched my heart.”

“I thought they did a good job of using the per­son­al sto­ry angle to real­ly high­light the mas­sive dif­fer­ence in char­ac­ter between 45 and Biden,” said Zen­da Boss-Hall.

“I was skep­ti­cal about Kasich but I think his talk, along with the numer­ous life-long Repub­li­cans was a good touch. (I hope it works.) I would have loved if they had been even more spe­cif­ic about the decades long war on the Post Office (although the Democ­rats are guilty on that front to some degree) and men­tioned the sev­en­ty-five years of pre­pay­ments imposed for future retire­ment ben­e­fits, as well as the con­flicts of inter­est with Mike Dun­can and Louis DeJoy.”

“Over­all, I think it was bet­ter than watch­ing a typ­i­cal convention.”

“I loved how Michelle point­ed out the exam­ple we are set­ting for our chil­dren if Trump is reelect­ed,” said Chris McCul­lough. “The exam­ple he shows them every day. Is this what we want our chil­dren to believe our coun­try is?!”

“I’ve thought that for three years. She put it into words!”

The 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion con­tin­ues tomor­row with appear­ances by Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez.