Obama defines the election as a choice between social Darwinism and citizenship.

Dems: This is How Dems Do It

HAROLD MEYERSON SEPTEMBER 7, 2012



The third and final night of this week’s Democratic Convention may have lacked the fireworks we saw on the first two. Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton were eloquent in different ways, and weren’t matched by Barack Obama or Joe Biden on the convention’s closing night. That’s not to say that the closing night wasn’t effective, however. By focusing above all on two of Obama’s decisions—to save General Motors and Chrysler and to send in the Seals to take out Osama bin Laden—Obama and Biden emphasized the two most politically potent contrasts, especially on the latter point, they could draw with Mitt Romney and used those contrasts to make their most telling attacks on Romney yet.

They also did more than that: They set up the election as a choice between a nation run on market principles and a nation subject to the dictates of fairness and inclusivity. Combine Obama and Biden’s speeches with Clinton’s the night before, and the party almost arrived at a governing credo: fairness and inclusiveness are not only right in themselves, they produce a more prosperous nation than a nation run on the narrow calculus that has shaped Bain Capital’s—and much of corporate America’s—priorities.

“Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive” is a pretty good campaign slogan, not just because it touts Obama’s most obvious successes but also because it enables Democrats to talk about the cramped, market-driven worldview of Mitt Romney, the Republican Party and (though Democrats pursue this delicately) American business. Here’s Biden contrasting Romney’s response to Detroit’s crisis to Obama’s: