The empty room where it happened: Superlatives from convention Night 3

Democrats finally showed off the Delaware digs of their virtual convention Wednesday night. It had everything but the people.

Displaced from Milwaukee by the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats have brought the convention to former Vice President Joe Biden, setting up a podium with a lectern and more than a dozen American flags at an event space in Wilmington. When Kamala Harris concluded her speech accepting the party’s vice-presidential nomination, she looked out on a smattering of staffers, reporters and photographers.

Out past the rostrum, it looked like a convention floor — replete with those vertical state signs and, of course, Delaware and California in prime spots in the center. Democrats used the setting to introduce Harris on Wednesday, and it will be where they bring the convention home with Biden on Thursday.

Here are POLITICO’s superlatives from Night Three of Democrats’ convention:

Biggest nod to normalcy: Kamala Harris

The cliché that this has been “an unconventional convention” has been beaten into the ground. But the staging of Harris’ speech was conventional — eerily so.

On Monday, Michelle Obama spoke, seated, direct-to-camera for the night’s biggest speech, an emotional appeal from her living room as a 2020 version of a “fireside chat.” Just before Harris on Wednesday, former President Barack Obama’s speech from the Museum of the American Revolution did away with his usual scanning of the audience, instead speaking straight into a tightly focused camera.

But Harris’ speech felt like, well, a normal political speech — except without the cheering audience. The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee essentially recreated a convention hall at the Chase Center on the banks of the Christina River in Wilmington, and they dropped the running mate in there to test it out.

It suggests the party will use a similar setting Thursday night for Biden’s acceptance speech, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, is changed up after Harris’ appearance. The Zoom applause and Biden’s socially distanced congratulations for Harris afterward was a bit awkward, but it did underline the gravity of the moment.

On the substance, Harris may have been a prosecutor, but her history-making speech was not the searing indictment of President Donald Trump some were expecting. Instead, she introduced herself to the country and touted Biden as the next president, leaving the case against Trump to most of the other speakers.

Fewest punches pulled: Barack Obama

Obama’s speech on Tuesday was half-Trump-indictment, half-pep-talk for those disillusioned with the state of the country. He urged voters to turn out and send a rebuke, he said, to those that cynically want to convince them their votes don’t matter.

“This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes for them to win,” Obama said. “So we have to get busy building it up — by pouring all our effort into these 76 days, and by voting like never before — for Joe and Kamala and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for — today and for all our days to come.”

Obama hasn’t disappeared from politics as his predecessor, George W. Bush, did. But he also hasn’t been as active as Bill Clinton, who could recite the demographics of individual congressional districts after leaving the White House.

Obama did emerge during the 2018 midterm campaign to stump for select candidates. It’s unlikely he’ll be out on the trail much this year with the pandemic. But given the fervency of his appeal on Wednesday, it surely won’t be the last time Obama will campaign for Biden before November.

Biggest gender gap: The Wednesday night speaking lineup

Apart from Obama’s speech, the theme Wednesday night was clear: promoting and celebrating the party’s female leaders.

Hillary Clinton, the first woman major-party presidential nominee, spoke. So did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Out west, there was former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and former Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

The 2020 election is likely to feature a historic “gender gap” — the split between the Democratic tilt of the female vote and the GOP tilt of the male vote. And from Biden on down the ticket, any successful Democratic candidate’s coalition would be built on women voters. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Biden leading Trump by 21 points among women, but trailing Trump by 4 points among men.

Fountain of youth award: The climate-change activists

For a party whose supporters skew younger, it’s been a pretty old convention.

Democrats officially nominated a 77-year-old candidate on Tuesday. Major speeches have been delivered by the two previous Democratic presidents and their wives — along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was overwhelmingly the pick of younger voters in the primaries but will turn 79 next month.

Finally, organizers found a way to inject youth into the convention on Wednesday, and they chose an issue particularly salient for younger generations: climate change. Three young climate activists appeared during a prerecorded video and said Biden’s election was essential to heal the planet.

Their video was followed by the debut of a new song by 18-year-old musician Billie Eilish, another piece of outreach to young voters.

Largest glass of Chardonnay waiting off-camera: Hillary Clinton

Going into the conventions and the end of summer, the polls look good for Biden. No one knows more about that than Hillary Clinton.

Four years removed from what she has described as a crushing defeat that she tackled in part with wine, Clinton addressed the convention from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., imploring voters not to sit out this fall’s election.

“For four years, people have told me, ‘I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.’ ‘I wish I could do it all over.’ Or worse: ‘I should have voted,’” Clinton said. “Look, this can’t be another woulda-coulda-shoulda election.”

Later in the speech, Clinton — the popular-vote winner in 2016 who nevertheless lost the Electoral College in a historic split — made it clear she hasn’t forgotten what happened.

“And don’t forget: Joe and Kamala can win 3 million more votes and still lose,” Clinton said. “Take it from me. So, we need numbers overwhelming, so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”

In the prepared text of the speech sent to reporters by convention organizers, part of that quote read like this: “Take. It. From. Me.”

Strongest comeback: Gabrielle Giffords

Nearly 10 years after she was shot and critically wounded at a constituent event in Tucson, Ariz., former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords delivered her longest speech since the attempted assassination.

“Words once came easily,” Giffords, who founded an organization that pushes for stricter gun laws, said in the pre-recorded speech. “Today, I struggle to speak, but I have not lost my voice. America needs all of us to speak out, even when you have to fight to find the words.”

Giffords appeared briefly at the Democratic convention four years ago, joined by her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly. She gave this speech without Kelly, a top Democratic Senate candidate who’s the favorite to pick up a seat in Arizona in a special election this fall.

Expert programming: Convention organizers ensure nonstop coverage

This isn’t the first convention to lack drama and suspense, but the virtual nature of Democrats’ gathering has made it easier for TV networks — especially the broadcast networks, which are only picking up the convention for one hour a night — to pick and choose what they show.

There are talking heads who need to pontificate, after all, and ad breaks that need to be taken.

But Democrats smartly scheduled Obama’s speech right before Harris’ formal, historic nomination. Yes, it forced Harris to follow the party’s most renowned orator. But on NBC, for example, there was barely time for less than a minute of commentary about Obama’s address before the network was forced to go back to the DNC’s feed to show Harris officially getting the VP nomination.

That led into her slickly produced bio video, and then Harris’ acceptance speech. In all, it meant roughly a half-hour of essentially nonstop Democratic Party programming to broadcast viewers coast-to-coast. Republicans — who have a more adversarial relationship with the news media — will be taking notes for their convention.