Here’s What You Need to Know Before the Democratic National Convention Begins

This week in Chicago, thousands of Democrats and their supporters — as well as tens of thousands of demonstrators planning huge protests — will meet in Chicago, Illinois, for the quadrennial Democratic National Convention.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has already become the official candidate for the party through a virtual roll call vote, will formally accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States, becoming the first Black woman and the first Asian woman to be a major party’s candidate for that office.

Harris replaces current President Joe Biden, who, up until a few weeks ago, was the presumed nominee for Democrats after winning the vast majority of delegates through largely unopposed state primary and caucus elections earlier this year. But upon a disastrous debate performance in late June following which his mental acuity and age became the main focal points of discussion — as well as sagging polling numbers against Republican candidate for president Donald Trump — Biden was pressured by fellow party members to drop out of the race, after which he endorsed Harris to take his place.

Delegates were quick to fall in behind Harris who obtained almost all of Biden’s delegates within a matter of days after he dropped out. Since taking over as nominee, Harris has for the most part reinvigorated Democrats’ enthusiasm for the election, and largely reversed the trajectory of the election. Whereas Biden was lagging behind Trump, an average of polling data compiled by FiveThirtyEight demonstrates that Harris is ahead of him in national surveys, although by just a 2.7-point margin as of Monday morning.

Harris is also outperforming Trump in key swing states. According to polling data shared with the news site Semafor, Harris is ahead of Trump by 7 points in Michigan, 6 points in Nevada, 3 points in Wisconsin and 1 point each in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Trump leads by 1 point in Arizona and 4 points in Georgia.

The shakeup evidently rattled Trump, too, with the GOP presidential nominee flailing on social media following Harris’s ascendancy to nominee status. Subsequently, Trump’s public appearances and comments have raised a number of eyebrows — including one where Trump questioned Harris’s race in front of a group of Black journalists.

Trump continues to face difficulties in formulating a message against his Democratic opponent, using hyperbolic red-baiting tropes and other questionable lines of attack against Harris that are more likely dissuading voters from backing him rather than helping to make his case for president.

“He’s coming apart,” said former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski, responding to dozens of posts Trump has made online over the weekend.

The rolling out of both parties’ vice presidential candidates has also been starkly different. Whereas voters have been more receptive to Harris selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her choice for second-in-command, they have been less so with Trump’s choice of Sen. J.D. Vance (R), a far right firebrand who once called Trump “America’s Hitler” but who has in recent years become a staunch loyalist to the former president. Other past comments from Vance — including misogynistic tirades against women who don’t comply with his vision of right-wing “family values” — have also resulted in a disastrous reception of him as Trump’s vice presidential pick, making him the worst choice for a presidential running mate in the modern era of presidential elections.

Notably absent from Harris’s rollout as the still-new Democratic nominee for president has been specifics about her proposed policies. While she has broadly stated that she supports protections for reproductive rights and vigorously defending democracy, these general statements are ordinarily coupled with a platform on a campaign’s website — but thus far, no such platform is evident on KamalaHarris.com.

Harris has, however, started to provide glimpses into her policy agenda as of last week. She has proposed, for example, a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newly born children. She has also promised to address the issue of medical debt, proposed a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers, and has said she will ban price gouging on groceries and other food items.

The Democratic National Convention provides an opportunity for Harris to be more specific about her policy agenda. So far, even without a policy platform, the Democratic party apparatus has coalesced around the Harris campaign since Biden dropped out. Several progressive organizations and voters, however, have expressed their dissatisfaction with her unwillingness to address the issue of Israel’s continued genocidal war against people living in Gaza, which has resulted in over 40,000 Palestinian deaths since October 2023.

That death toll is likely much higher, with thousands of Palestinians still trapped under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israel’s strikes, and thousands also dead from disease or starvation who are not included among the list of casualties of Israel’s war.

Large-scale protests, likely featuring tens of thousands (if not more), are planned for the convention week, including two marches planned by the Coalition to March on the DNC, which represents more than 150 pro-Palestinian and anti-war groups who are calling for a permanent ceasefire agreement and an end to U.S. funding of Israel’s war, as well as its supplying of weapons to that country to use against Palestinians.

On Sunday evening, a coalition march representing reproductive rights groups, LGBTQ rights organizers and supporters of Palestine marched through Chicago’s downtown area for several hours, chanting in support of Palestinians who are being killed by Israel and in support of a more vigorous defense from Harris on personal rights issues than has been seen by the administration so far.

“When we talk about justice, we’re talking about justice for everybody and we’re talking about real actions for everybody, and not just, you know, some empty words here and there, but policy, material reality and not ideologies,” said Palestinian rights activist and political commentator Nour Odeh, speaking to the Chicago-based ABC News affiliate station.

Truthout will be on the ground at the Democratic National Convention this week, covering both the protests that occur and the political action and speeches happening inside the United Center, where the convention is set to happen. Keep following Truthout for more news and analysis regarding the DNC.