CHICAGO \u2014 Barack Obama mocked Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cweird obsession with crowd sizes\u201d at Democrats\u2019 convention here while making a suggestive hand gesture \u2014 a throwback to Trump\u2019s old squabbling with a GOP rival about the measurements of his hands and other anatomy.<\/p>\n
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) declared Trump \u201cfubar,\u201d using a crude military acronym to label him an unsalvageable candidate, while Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker suggested Trump was inflating his wealth and said, \u201cTrump is rich in only one thing: stupidity.\u201d<\/p>\n
And multiple speakers delighted the crowd by alluding to the fabricated viral claim that Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, wrote in his memoir about having sex with furniture. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t trust them to move my couch,\u201d Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the GOP ticket on the final night. \u201cI know a couch commando when I see one,\u201d Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said minutes later.<\/p>\n
The jabs were just part of a more expansive case against Trump that Democrats laid out over four nights in Chicago. But they reflected a broader shift in tone for Democrats toward a no-holds-barred kind of rhetorical warfare many in the party once eschewed. Eight years after the Philadelphia convention cheered Michelle Obama\u2019s famous line \u201cWhen they go low, we go high\u201d \u2014 and with Trump still waging a campaign full of personal insults and baseless accusations, after years of invective that has at times been racist and sexist \u2014 some Democrats said they are tired of being polite.<\/p>\n
Charlene Ligon, 75, a delegate from Nebraska, said when asked about Obama\u2019s crowd size line: \u201cI think that we\u2019re getting in Trump\u2019s head.\u201d She said she talks to many younger Democrats who want a sharper tone against Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really like the idea of taking it back to the opponent,\u201d Ligon said.<\/p>\n
Democrats have long wrestled with how to go after Trump, trying strategies ranging from ignoring or dismissing him, as some tried to do early in the 2016 race, to President Joe Biden\u2019s argument that he presents a threat to democracy. This year\u2019s convention culminated recent efforts to needle Trump on topics known to strike a nerve in the former president.<\/p>\n
That shift is evident in prominent Democrats repeatedly calling Trump \u201cweird,\u201d an attack vice-presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz helped popularize; the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the party\u2019s presidential nominee, embracing a fight with Trump over crowd sizes; and prominent Democrats, including Walz, referencing the false couch story about Vance in speeches and internet memes, after years of their party decrying the spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n
Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement that Harris is \u201crunning from her years of failed and dangerously liberal policies in the White House that have hurt our country\u201d and that Trump \u201chas an America First agenda to secure our border, restore a thriving economy to make life affordable again, and use peace through strength to bring back stability around the world. \u201d<\/p>\n
For her part, Harris took a somber tone against Trump in her Thursday night speech, at times directly challenging his character. She called Trump an \u201cunserious man\u201d and said, \u201cthe consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.\u201d She noted Trump\u2019s role on Jan. 6, his fraud conviction in New York and a jury finding of liability for sexual abuse and steered clear of anything crass \u2014 as Trump mocks her name and laugh and baselessly questions her racial identity.<\/p>\n
But other convention speakers were \u201ckind of hitting below the belt more than usual,\u201d said Simona Jones, 29, an employee at a racial justice nonprofit who attended with colleagues. \u201cRepublicans do it all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re calling him weird,\u201d she added, \u201cbut they\u2019re not, like, body-shaming him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She paused and rethought her remark. \u201cI guess Obama kind of did!\u201d she said. Next to her, a colleague burst out laughing.<\/p>\n
Democrats advanced a multipronged case against Trump at the convention designed to energize their base, win persuadable independents and peel off some former Republicans. They cast him as focused on himself rather than the country and called attention to his record on labor issues; the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters; and his nomination of Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. Harris and her allies have been spotlighting those themes in paid advertising, contrasting her positions on those topics and promoting her as a steward of personal freedoms.<\/p>\n
Former first lady Michelle Obama said Harris\u2019s opponents were \u201cdoubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas\u201d and criticized Trump more bluntly than she did in her 2016 and 2020 convention speeches. She alluded to Trump\u2019s years-long, false suggestion that the first Black U.S. president was born in Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happened to be Black,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing small is never the answer,\u201d she said later.<\/p>\n
But some convention attendees said they detected a willingness to go after Trump in new and less dignified ways, after years of Biden mostly sticking to sober criticisms of Trump\u2019s behavior, especially his disregard for democratic norms.<\/p>\n
Trump made clear this week that he was listening to Democrats\u2019 jabs. At a Monday rally in Pennsylvania he repeated his objections to Democrats labeling him and Vance \u201cweird,\u201d saying, \u201cI think we\u2019re extremely normal people.\u201d At another rally on Wednesday in North Carolina, he brought Obama up and called his comments \u201cvery nasty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you see Barack Hussein Obama last night, taking little shots?\u201d Trump said, returning to his habit of using Obama\u2019s middle name in what many view as a dog whistle meant to falsely portray Obama as foreign. He added, \u201cThey always say, sir, please stick to policy. Don\u2019t get personal. And yet they\u2019re getting personal all night long.\u201d He polled his own crowd: \u201cDo I still have to stick to policy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNoooo!\u201d they shouted.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, Trump called in to \u201cFox & Friends\u201d with thoughts on Walz\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to listen to a lightweight like this get up and absolutely lie,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n
Democrats made fun of Trump throughout the convention. They joked about his repeated references to the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, the suggestions that he fell asleep during his criminal trial (Trump vehemently denied it) and the diagnosis that exempted Trump from military service in Vietnam. \u201cI don\u2019t have bone spurs,\u201d Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said after recounting how he joined the Army.<\/p>\n
The audience broke out in some chants of \u201clock him up!\u201d \u2014 a reference to the \u201clock her up!\u201d chants that Trump supporters aimed at then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was a gleeful reference to Trump\u2019s conviction this spring on 34 felony counts; he has yet to be sentenced and faces many other outstanding charges. Harris has brushed aside occasional \u201clock him up!\u201d chants at her rallies, saying, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna let the courts handle that\u201d \u2014 but Clinton gave a smile when they popped up during her speech this week.<\/p>\n
Former president Bill Clinton took aim at Trump\u2019s age, a topic where Democrats were once on the defensive with Biden. \u201cI\u2019m still younger than Donald Trump!\u201d the 78-year-old said. The crowd loved it.<\/p>\n
Trump spent the week trying to wrest attention away from Chicago with appearances in battleground states. On Thursday, the final day of the convention, he live-posted through Harris\u2019s speech on social media.<\/p>\n
The former president and his advisers suggested that Democrats are focused on Trump at the expense of other issues such as inflation. Democrats said say they are doing two things at once \u2014 making a case against Trump but also laying out a positive vision.<\/p>\n
Still, Democrats acknowledge that few things unite the party like opposition to Trump. \u201cDonald Trump has served as one of the best motivators for the Democratic Party and our base and activists,\u201d said Joe Caiazzo, a delegate from Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
But not everyone felt compelled to focus on him.<\/p>\n
At a Wednesday afternoon gathering for delegates under 35, speakers barely mentioned Trump, focusing instead on their policy dreams for the party \u2014 on housing costs, health care, climate change and the Israel-Gaza war.<\/p>\n
Sungkwan Jang, a 34-year-old New Jersey delegate who helped organize the event, borrowed a line from former Republican House speaker Paul D. Ryan later in an interview: \u201cI think we all understand that we\u2019re not an opposition party, we\u2019re a proposition party.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did note something that made him especially angry: Trump\u2019s repeated mispronunciations of Harris\u2019s first name, which some Harris supporters see as racist and demeaning.<\/p>\n
Jang said he is \u201ctrying to channel\u201d that anger.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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