Politics

(CHICAGO) — The venues may have changed, and the planning and special events may have gotten splashier with younger VIPs, but for more than 40 years, there has been one constant at Democratic Party conventions: Bill Clinton.

The former president, who just turned 78, is scheduled to speak ahead of Gov. Tim Walz at Wednesday night’s gathering, marking his 13th time making remarks at the event.

Clinton’s address will be hopeful and aspirational, according to a source familiar with its contents.

In an excerpt released shortly before he was scheduled to speak, Clinton is expected to say, “Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the chance the American people gave me to be one of the 45 people who have held the job. Even on the bad days, you can still make something good happen. Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race with the vision, the experience, the temperament, the will, and yes—the sheer joy—to do that on good and bad days. To be our voice.”

The source also said it will include fiery, newsworthy jabs aimed at former President Donald Trump and will highlight the qualities that make for a responsible, qualified commander in chief in the nation’s highest office.

After the first night of the Democratic convention, Clinton ripped and decided to start from scratch following the energy and enthusiasm he saw in the arena, a senior adviser to Clinton told ABC News.

“After being here for an afternoon it was clear to him that, in the spirit of Mario Coumo, we needed more poetry, not prose,” the adviser told ABC’s Katherine Faulders.

Mario Cuomo gave the keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention.

“We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because surely the Republicans won’t bring this country together,” Cuomo said during that speech. “Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left out, into the royalty and the rabble.”

Clinton’s speech is expected to highlight the striking differences in vision, experience and temperament between Harris and Trump, the source said, underscoring the vice president’s story and what her candidacy means for the nation.

Wednesday’s speech is Clinton’s 13th

His timeline at the conventions showcased his rise through the party ranks to the top of the Democratic ticket and being enshrined as one of its most prominent historical figures.

After giving a brief speech at the 1976 convention, where he talked about the legacy of former President Harry Truman, Clinton was invited to speak at the 1980 convention when he was freshman governor of Arkansas.

The 33-year-old gave a brief speech, talking about his upbringing in Hope, Arkansas, and the dreams for his then 6-month-old daughter Chelsea.

Between that convention and the next, Clinton had lost one gubernatorial reelection and won another, earning the nickname “the comeback kid.” Speaking at the 1984 convention, representing the New Democrats movement, Clinton invoked Harry Truman in his pitch to the Democrats.

“He began the Democratic Party’s historic commitment to civil rights and brought the United States into peacetime cooperation with other nations,” he said.

Clinton was given a major speaking slot at the 1988 DNC with a primetime speech ahead of the nomination of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

The speech turned out to be memorable but in the wrong way. Clinton spoke for 35 minutes, much longer than his planned 15, boring the crowd.

In fact, one of the loudest responses came at the end when Clinton told the crowd, “In closing.”

He would get a different reception four years later at the DNC at New York’s Madison Square Garden when he accepted the party’s nomination for president.

‘The Man from Hope’

Before his speech, an autobiographical video was played titled “The Man from Hope,” a theme that Clinton emphasized in a 53-minute speech.

“I still believe in a place called Hope,” he told the roaring crowd.

During his speech at the 1996 DNC, Clinton flipped the message of his Republican opponent Sen. Bob Dole, who campaigned on the idea of being a bridge to the past.

“Let us resolve to build a bridge to the 21st century,” he said.

Clinton’s next appearance at the DNC came after rough four years at the White House. He became the second president to be impeached on perjury and obstruction of justice charges following an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Senate later acquitted him on those charges.

Clinton entered the Staples Arena during the 2000 DNC with a camera following his path to the podium while the arena’s screen displayed his administration’s successes such as the first budget surplus in decades and declines in crime.

“My fellow Americans, the future of our country is now in your hands,” he said. “And remember, whenever you think about me, keep putting people first.”

In 2004, Clinton told Democratic delegates that he came as a “foot soldier” to help elect Sen. John Kerry.

He reminded the nation that was in the midst of two wars in the Middle East following the Sept. 11 attacks of more peaceful times.

When Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama

In 2008, Clinton began the campaign season championing Sen. Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Democratic nominee, even taking jabs at her competitor then Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton showed no animosity towards Obama during his speech at the 2008 DNC.

“Senator Obama’s life is a 21st century incarnation of the old-fashioned American dream. His achievements are proof of our continuing progress toward the more perfect union of our founders’ dreams,” he said.

Clinton would repeat this sentiment during his remarks four years later.

In 2016, Clinton took the DNC stage in another new role as the spouse of the Democratic presidential candidate. In his speech, he talked about their relationship and her resolve to help Americans.

“But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known,” he said.

Like other speakers, Clinton’s appearance at the 2020 DNC was done virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In just video message recorded from his Chappaqua, New York home, Clinton reassured voters that former Vice President Joe Biden was the best candidate to lead America back.

“It’s Trump’s “Us vs. Them” America against Joe Biden’s America, where we all live and work together. It’s a clear choice. And the future of our country is riding on it,” he said.

ABC News’ Gabriella Abdul-Hakim contributed to this report.

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(CHICAGO) — The parents of one of an Israeli-American hostage brought many Democratic National Convention delegates to tears on Wednesday as they recounted 320 days of anguish and pushed for a cease-fire deal to bring their son home.

Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were greeted with huge cheers and chants of “Bring them home,” as they spoke on stage, fighting back tears. The 23-year-old was at a music festival in south Israel celebrating his birthday on Oct. 7.

“That was 320 days ago. Since then, we live on another planet,” a teary-eyed Goldberg said.

Many in the crowd, who wore “Bring them home” bracelets were in tears as she described her son’s situation and the struggle of not knowing his whereabouts or status. Family photos showing him smiling and happy with his family were displayed as his parents spoke.

Polin told the crowd that the return of the hostages was not a political issue but a “humanitarian issue.”

Polin said that he and his wife have met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris numerous times at the White House.

“They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and cease-fire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home. And we’ll stop the despair in Gaza,” he said to cheers.

Polin went on to note that there “is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East and a competition of pain.”

“There are no winners,” he said.

Polin stressed that the cease-fire deal is “the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region.”

“The time is now,” he said to cheers.

Before they left the stage, Goldberg sent an emotional message to her son.

“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you. Stay strong, survive,” she said.

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(CHICAGO) — Oprah Winfrey will speak at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, multiple sources familiar with the program confirmed to ABC News.

CNN first reported the development.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered his latest campaign trail remarks protected by bulletproof glass and multiple visible counter snipers on top of nearby buildings – his first outdoor campaign event not at his properties since a gunman attempted his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.

It was his third counterprogramming event of the week against the Democratic National Convention, continuing with the series of events in battleground states focused on key election issues this year.

In Asheboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump focused on national security, attacking the Biden-Harris administration on ongoing foreign conflicts, the Afghanistan withdrawal, American hostage deals and other issues.

Contrary to his intimate and small counterprogramming events in Pennsylvania and Michigan earlier this week, this was his biggest campaign event so far this week. Trump – with the American flag in the backdrop just like in Butler – speaking in an open field in front of thousands of supporters, including some who told ABC News they were at the Butler rally and said the set up in Asheboro reminded them of the Butler rally.

As ABC News previously reported, the U.S. Secret Service has ordered multiple sets of bulletproof glass panels to be stored around the country so it can be trucked to wherever it’s needed, sources said. While the measure is typically reserved exclusively for sitting presidents, the Secret Service has made an exception following the attempt on Trump’s life.

The Secret Service had recommended that Trump stop holding outdoor rallies last month after a gunman in Butler fired at him from a rooftop 400 feet from the stage, nicking his ear and killing a spectator in the crowd.

Since July 13, Trump has held nearly a dozen campaign events, all of them indoors.

Claiming the United States was respected during his administration, Trump repeatedly painted a grim picture of a possible Kamala Harris presidency, saying, “If Comrade Kamala wins this November, World War three is virtually guaranteed to happen. Everything she touches, she destroys.”

Escalating his attacks on the sitting vice president, Trump began to directly blame Harris for the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, even falsely claiming that Harris met with Russian President Vladimir Putin days before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out.

“Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine? She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked,” Trump falsely claimed. “How did she do it? Think she did a good job. She met with Putin to tell him, don’t do it. And three days later he attacked. That’s when the attack started.”

In reality, there’s no public record of Harris meeting with Putin. Instead, she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a security conference in Munich five days before the war broke out.

Trump also suggested Harris was responsible for the way U.S. troops left Afghanistan, saying “she was the last person in the room with Biden when the two of them decided to pull the troops out of Afghanistan.”

“She had the final vote; she had the final say, and she was all for it,” Trump said, later promising to hold the Biden-Harris administration accountable by asking for the resignations of “every single senior military official who touched the Afghanistan disaster.”

Trump also claimed he would have handled the Afghanistan withdrawal better, claiming he has had conversations with the head of Taliban and that he “respected” him.

“Our adversaries knew that America was not to be trifled with when I was your commander in chief,” Trump said. “… But since the Afghanistan catastrophe, it’s been open season on America and our allies.”

Trump also railed against “woke” military generals throughout his speech, claiming, “I know the good ones, the weak ones,” praising his former military officials like Gen. Keith Kellogg.

Offering a glimpse of what his second term would look like, Trump declared “the days of blank checks for the weapons systems” are over and said he will build “a great Iron Dome” and give it to other countries like Israel.

“We will increase funding, but at the same time, the days of blank checks for the weapons systems over the past are over. I tell you what we will build, we’re going to build a great Iron Dome over our country so that we don’t have to get hit. We give it to other countries, we help Israel and other countries,” Trump said.

Trump also said he would “aggressively” shift funding to “keep American on the cutting edge, investing in drones and other technology, saying he wants to invest “heavily” in “drones and robotics and artificial intelligence and hypersonics.”

Even as he focused on policies, Trump dismissed the idea of stopping personal attacks on Harris – at one point, mocking his advisers for suggesting he should stick to policy and stray away from personal attacks. He then said that many speakers at the Democratic National Convention personally attacked him, referencing Barack and Michelle Obamas speeches last night.

Trump then polled the crowd to see if he should “get personal,” followed by many in the crowd cheering. Prior to Obama’s speech last night, Trump spoke highly of the former president, but quickly shifted his tone saying he was “nasty.”

“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night? He was taking shots at your president. And so is Michelle. They always say, please stick to policy, don’t get personal. Yet they are getting personal all night long, these people. Do I still have to stick to policy?”

“I try and be nice to people, you know, but it’s a little tough when they get personal,” Trump said.

“He was very nasty last night. I try and be nice,” Trump said about former Obama’s speech at the DNC Tuesday night.

“Should I not get personal? he asked the crowd. After few agreed, Trump quipped, “I don’t know — my advisers are fired.”

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(CHICAGO) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will have his big moment at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night, where he will deliver the keynote speech and accept the party’s nomination for vice president.

Walz has been in the national spotlight for just two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate pick earlier this month. With his prime-time speech at the DNC, Walz plans to introduce himself to America, according to the Harris-Walz campaign.

In his remarks, the Midwesterner plans to share his biography — from growing up in a small town in Nebraska to working as a high school social studies teacher and football coach before he was elected to Congress in 2006. The convention plans to showcase his impact as an educator in a video earlier in the night featuring five of his former students, according to the campaign.

Another former student of his, Ben Ingman, will nominate Walz along with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, according to the campaign. Walz coached Ingman in basketball and track in the seventh grade, the campaign said.

Walz’s time as a football coach has become a major part of the image the Harris campaign is painting of him, handing out signs that read “COACH!” at rallies since he joined the ticket.

Walz will also talk about his military service, which has come under scrutiny following his selection at Harris’ running mate.

Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17 and retired 24 years later, prior to running for Congress. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has alleged Walz is guilty of “stolen valor” for the way the Democrat has referred to his service. On the campaign trail, Walz has fiercely defended his service, saying at a rally last week that he is “damn proud” of his military record.

Earlier in Wednesday’s programming, the DNC will play a short video highlighting his service in the National Guard and his commitment to improving the lives of veterans, according to the campaign. The video will include remarks from Sgt. Al Bonnifield, who served with Walz in the Minnesota National Guard, and Cpl. Mike McLaughlin, an Iraq war veteran who worked with Walz when he was in Congress on the “Forever GI” bill, which expanded veterans’ education benefits, according to the campaign.

In his DNC speech, Walz also plans to address what he will bring to the White House and what Harris will do for working families, according to the campaign.

It is unclear if Walz will bring up reproductive rights. The father of two has often talked on the campaign trail about his and his wife Gwen’s fertility struggle. He has connected their experience to the bans on in vitro fertilization (IVF) put in place this past spring in Alabama and attacking Republicans over reproductive rights restrictions. He has frequently talked about their fertility journey generally, referring to IVF and treatments “like it.”

In new comments this week, Gwen Walz revealed for the first time publicly that the fertility treatment they used was intrauterine insemination, or IUI — not IVF, as had been broadly assumed.

The detail that Gwen Walz did not use IVF, but rather a different treatment, quickly led to another attack from Vance, who said that the governor “lied” and should know the difference, having been involved in the process.

In response, the Harris campaign called Vance’s attack “just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare.”

Gwen Walz did address their fertility journey in a biographical video released by the Harris-Walz campaign earlier Wednesday.

“Of all the things he’s done, Tim loves being a dad,” she said. “We struggled to have kids and fertility treatments made it possible. There’s a reason our daughter is named Hope.”

Gwen Walz also highlighted the governor’s time in the military.

“His dad served during the Korean War and that meant a lot to Tim,” she said. “And so he enlisted right after his 17th birthday and served 24 years in the National Guard, rising to command sergeant major.”

The video also touched on his years as a public school teacher, coach and founding faculty adviser to a gay-straight alliance.

“His focus has always been helping working people like those he grew up with,” she said.

ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Will McDuffie and Isabella Murray contributed to this report.

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(CHICAGO) — When then-Sen. Barack Obama took the stage on Aug. 28, 2008, to accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not mention the historic nature of his run. While he gave a nod to his midwestern middle-class upbringing and his Kenyan roots, the man who became the first Black president of the United States urged voters to unite and declared that the campaign was not about him.

“I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you,” Obama said.

Fifteen years later, when Obama took the DNC stage on Tuesday night, he delivered a resounding endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Obama struck a similar tone. He did not explicitly discuss Harris’ racial identity as a Black and South Asian woman or her gender identity like Hillary Clinton did on Monday night when the former Democratic nominee passed the torch to Harris with a reference to breaking the “glass ceiling.”

“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems – she’ll be focused on yours,” Obama said.

Harris, who embarked on a historic run of her own, would become the first female president and second president of color if elected in the 2024 general election.

She has spoken with pride about her Jamaican and Indian heritage, and when she ran for president in 2020, her campaign logo was modeled after that of Shirley Chisholm – the first Black woman to run for president – and when she addressed the DNC as vice presidential nominee, she paid tribute to the women of color in politics who came before her.

It is unclear if Harris will focus on her historic run when she delivers her own acceptance speech at the DNC on Thursday. But according to experts who study race, politics and the White House, Harris has so far not made her identity a central part of her 2024 campaign like Clinton did in 2016 and like Harris did in 2020 and has instead, taken a page out of the playbook that propelled the first Black president to the White House.

“[Like Obama], Harris is letting other people talk about her identity. So you’re putting out the surrogates,” Nadia Brown, a professor of government at Georgetown University who studies Black women in politics, told ABC News. “She’s not shying away from her identity, but she’s not centering this entire race and campaign on her identity.”

But is this a winning strategy?

‘Not more of the same’

Since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last month, there has been a surge in “enthusiasm” for the Democratic ticket that crossed “generational boundaries,” according to Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who studies race and the American presidency. This shift in energy was evidenced by the $310 million fundraising haul that her campaign raised in July alone, Rigueur said.

This surge in enthusiasm is reflected in an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, which found that 50% overall say they’d be enthusiastic or satisfied if Harris were elected, compared with 36% who said that about Biden in early 2023.

According to Rigueur, the shift in “energy” is not merely a reflection of voters being excited about the historic nature of Harris’ run, but also indicative of the dissatisfaction with another matchup between Biden and former President Donald Trump – “a race between two really old white guys.”

“I think there is a real kind of excitement about the possibility of what Kamala Harris’ presidency represents,” Rigueur told ABC News. “And I think it’s also fair to say that it’s not simply that she is a woman or that she is Black or that she is Indian that is driving this enthusiasm, but instead the sensibility that … she’s refreshing; that she is new; that she is young, and that she’s not more of the same.”

But on the other hand, Brown said that like Obama, Harris has to strike a “balance” because in working to build the “rainbow coalition” she needs – one that includes independents and Trump-leaning voters – Harris is also navigating racism and the reality that some Americans are “not comfortable” with having a woman of color as president.

While “not more of the same” appeals to some voters, Brown said that for others, “it could be alienating.” This, according to Brown, is part of what informs why Harris has been focused on policy in her wider pitch to battleground state voters and has not centered the conversation around her own identity.

In her stump speeches and campaign ads so far, Harris has touted her middle-class roots – much like Obama did in 2008 – in an effort to connect with voters and make the case that she knows what it’s like to work hard, Brown said.

“She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom and she worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree,” a Harris ad that touts her goals to lower health care costs and make housing more affordable says. “Being president is about who you fight for and she’s fighting for people like you.”

According to Rigueur, Harris’ strategy to focus on policy and the people, instead of the candidate, is guided by an understanding that there “is a burgeoning of a movement that sees Kamala Harris as its vehicle, not its endgame.”

“There is something novel about Kamala Harris, and it’s something that she has chosen not to emphasize in her campaign,” Rigueur said. “And I actually think that’s a smart decision [that] she’s chosen not to emphasize it, and she doesn’t need to emphasize it because it’s so apparent – it is the elephant in the room.”

‘The Obama effect’

According to Rigueur, Harris is also navigating a political landscape where “the Obama effect” is at play, where there is “an emotional difference” between new generations who grew up with a Black president, “as opposed to, say, my grandmother, who never thought that she would live to see a Black man become President of the United States.”

“I think this comes out too, in attitudes towards what people think about [when it comes to] change and progress,” Rigueur said.

Brown echoed this notion.

“People put their hopes and dreams, I think, unrealistically, on Obama, because there just wasn’t a large civic understanding about how politics works,” she said. “Just the symbolism of having the first Black president was enough for many people that they didn’t question or look into his policy preferences. And I think the difference today is, yeah, people, know.”

And this is what Brown, who is conducting research at the 2024 DNC this week, found through interviews with protesters about how they feel about a Harris presidency and whether her racial or gender identity is something that inspires them.

Brown said she was “surprised” by how many young people of color expressed that they “don’t care” about Harris’ identity and are instead concerned with her politics, particularly her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

“There’s a large number of people I’ve been surveying – talking to, here – who really disdain these boxes, right? They don’t want to, you know, identify as voting for a woman because they are a woman, and they want to talk about policy,” Brown said.

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sunday, 38% of Americans say that having a woman serve as president would be a good thing for the country, far more than the 14% who see it as a bad thing. The rest, 47%, say it makes no difference.

The poll also found that support from Black people has swung by 12 points in Harris’ direction, from +60 for Biden in July to +72 for Harris now. But Brown said having a Black candidate is not enough – particularly in a post-Obama world.

“Black voters want more,” she said, adding that Harris’ strategy has shifted and she is “going down a different path” in 2024 than she did during her 2020 presidential campaign by making more efforts to speak authentically to Black voters.

“Being in communities with Black people like going to HBCUs, showing up at these Black civil rights organizing spaces, talking about black maternal health,” she added. “Some of these things are showing it’s not that I’m Black, but I actually am part of these communities.”

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(MOSCOW) — Ukrainian forces have yet to set up defensive lines as they continue their operation into the Kursk region of Russia, a U.S. official told ABC News on Wednesday.

While this might reflect Ukrainian confidence in further success for the offensive, there is concern among some American officials that failure to dig in soon could leave its troops vulnerable to a coming Russian counterattack.

“Russia didn’t take it very serious at first,” the U.S. official said. On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. had seen only a “small number” of Russian forces heading to Kursk.

But the U.S. now sees a significant second wave of Russian troops preparing to reinforce the region, coming from positions in both Ukraine and Russia, according to the official, who said some units could arrive within days, with the majority of reinforcements expected within two weeks.

It could be a costly tradeoff for Ukraine to seek incremental gains in the region at the expense of shoring up its defenses, according to Mark Cancian, former Marine colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They should draw the most defensible line inside this enclave and dig in … and then try to hold that,” Cancian said.

This advice is in line with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s stated goal of creating a “buffer zone” inside Russia.

“When you’re on the attack, you tend to take more casualties,” Cancian said. “And it would be fine if that opens up the front for some follow-on movement, but that’s doesn’t appear to be what’s going on. It looks like they’re just sort of plodding forward.”

Despite the danger posed by incoming Russian forces, and risks of being overextended, having foreword units cut off, or leaving other areas of the front undermanned, experts say Ukraine’s initiative in Kursk has already succeeded in forcing Russia to make hard decisions about how to allocate its finite resources; in boosting confidence in the Ukrainian military both domestically and with key allies; and in obtaining territory that could be used as bargaining leverage later on.

The Kremlin was by all accounts taken off guard by Ukraine’s incursion, but Kyiv might itself have been surprised by its quick gains.

“It was initially intended for psychological purposes, similar to the Doolittle Raid after Pearl Harbor, but it has evolved based on its success,” said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor who served as a CIA paramilitary officer and deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Ukrainian forces have now been in the Kursk region for more than two weeks.

“Over the next couple days, we’ll see what the Ukrainians do and whether they keep this strategy of just nibbling away, whether they go on to the defensive, whether they try to make a big attack, which I think is unlikely, but not impossible,” Cancian said.

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(CHICAGO) — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night where she will throw her support behind Vice President Kamala Harris — after appearing to play a significant role in President Joe Biden’s exit from the top of the Democratic ticket.

She’ll back Tim Walz, making his acceptance speech on Day 3 of the Democrats’ gathering, knowing him from his time as a congressman before he became Minnesota’s governor.

Pelosi, who last month endorsed Harris to be the party’s nominee for president, did not publicly call on Biden to withdraw from the race. Instead, Pelosi, in a July 10 interview, declined to directly answer when asked if Biden had her support in his reelection bid after his ruinous debate performance.

At the time, Biden had already committed to running for reelection, writing in a statement congressional Democrats days earlier that he was “firmly committed” to staying in the race.

Her comments blunted any progress Biden was trying to make persuading congressional Democrats that he was up for the job. And Pelosi’s ambiguous public comments instead created space for rank-and-file Democrats to pressure the president to drop out.

She and other leading members of the Democratic Party raised concerns that his staying in the race could have a negative impact on Democratic candidates down-ballot.

Ultimately, those pressures helped lead Biden to leave the 2024 race just a few weeks later.

Despite turning over the reins of the Democratic caucus to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries in 2023, Pelosi still has significant influence over members given her unmatched fundraising prowess that’s shaped Democratic politics and candidates for decades.

As the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, she has said her support for Harris is “official, personal and political.”

“Officially, I have seen Kamala Harris’s strength and courage as a champion for working families, notably fighting for a woman’s right to choose,” Pelosi said in her endorsement of Harris. “Personally, I have known Kamala Harris for decades as rooted in strong values, faith and a commitment to public service. Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”

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(CHICAGO) — When Kentucky state Rep. Rachel Roberts was first running for her seat, she was advised to not use a word common in political campaigns: “values.”

Roberts, now the only Democrat representing northern Kentucky in the state legislature, was running in a 2020 special election in competitive region of the state just outside of Cincinnati at a time when Republicans had a stranglehold on rhetoric on “freedom,” “patriotism” and the American flag.

“I’d get hammered,” Roberts said she was told. “The Republicans would say Democrats aren’t the party of values.”

Walking around the Democratic National Committee this week, things couldn’t be more different.

The word “freedom” is on seemingly on the lips of every attendee and speaker — and the name of Beyonce’s hit song and now-campaign anthem. Audience chants of “USA!” puncture speakers’ remarks as they wave signs saying the same. Camo hats bearing the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pockmark the crowd. And musician Jason Isbell performed the country hit song “Something More Than Free.”

The convention marks a culmination of decades of Democratic efforts to take back patriotism after years of Republicans owning messaging around “freedom” and the American flag.

For years, the party lamented the domination Republicans held on symbols of patriotism, a monopoly that started in during the Reagan presidency and that Democrats couldn’t break.

“You had a Republican Party that in the 80s and 90s, seized the freedom mantle using guns. The Second Amendment was America’s first freedom,” said Jim Kessler, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. “Right to life was a version of freedom, too.” Where Democrats supported freedom was a license to behave poorly, like burning a flag.”

Now, after having been ceded to Republicans for decades “freedom” is the word bouncing off the walls of Chicago’s United Center. And Democrats are reveling in the reversal of their messaging fortunes.

“Reclaiming the flag and reclaiming freedom and democracy, I think that was a feeling broadly. But I think within the last several cycles, it became clearer how to do that in a way that had broad appeal and resonated with people,” said one Democratic strategist with ties to Harris’ team.

After decades being shut out from leaning into patriotism, Democrats said they were handed an opening by their sworn enemy — former President Donald Trump.

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, spurred by Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and led by his supporters, jolted the transfer of power from the former president to his successor. And the Supreme Court decision scrapping constitutional abortion protections allowed Democrats to go on offense on a culture war in which they’d long been in a defensive crouch.

All the sudden, Democrats said, democracy was teetering. Women’s bodily autonomy was at risk. And the battle for “freedom” was on.

“The Dobbs decision all of a sudden gave Democrats the opportunity for a reset button on that issue, on patriotism. And I think Donald Trump gave us the opportunity on Jan. 6 to start retaking those themes,” former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, D, said, referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“The combination of Trump and January 6 and the Dobbs decision gave Democrats an opportunity to reset and say, ‘this is really what freedom means. That is not freedom, folks, that is oppression, that is autocracy. Freedom means liberty, and this is what we stand for.'”

Democrats didn’t storm the gates right away.

With President Joe Biden still as the party’s standard bearer, he and his campaign focused on a fight for democracy, while also pushing for codification of abortion protections — two issues that weren’t consistently and explicitly linked in campaign messaging.

But after the president ended his campaign and Harris rose as his replacement atop Democrats’ tickets, the messaging changed.

“Freedom” became her rallying cry — the climax of a push by Harris and the party at large.

“Democrats had been concerned about Republicans taking over these quintessentially American words for a while, ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,'” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director in the vice president’s office. “The Democrats were trying to figure it out. The vice president was very focused on how Democrats can recast this word.”

Now, “freedom” is being used as a catchall.

Beyond freedom to access reproductive health care and a democratic process, the message is being used by Harris to push for everything from freedom for students to go to school without being shot to freedom to “get ahead” economically and more.

“Are we fighting for freedom? That’s what I thought,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s women’s caucus. “Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job…Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies.”

To be certain, Democrats aren’t dominating the war over “freedom.”

Republicans still lean hard on patriotism, adorning their rallies and suit jacket lapels with American flags and turning Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” into a conservative hymn. And the party still is able to say it wants more funding for the military than its Democratic foes in Congress, who insist on matching boosts in Pentagon spending with rises in funds for other domestic priorities.

But for Democrats, just being in the fight for one of the most potent symbols in electoral politics is a breath of fresh air.

“I think the narrative has taken some of those words and said that they belong to Republicans, just like, apparently, red trucker hats only belong to Republicans,” Roberts, a delegate to the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic leader in the Kentucky state House, told ABC News. “And we are demanding, no, these are universal words.”

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(CHICAGO) — As the economy tops lists of voter concerns ahead of the 2024 election, some speakers at the Democratic National Convention have sought to emphasize how much the economy has improved under President Joe Biden.

When Biden took office in early 2021, the U.S. was in the midst of the “worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Tuesday. Back then, the economy was “reeling,” said former President Barack Obama later in the night.

The claims contrast with Republican depictions of the downturn in 2020 and the ensuing recovery. Former President Donald Trump has faulted COVID-19 for derailing the nation’s economy, while saying the U.S. had recovered in some areas by the time Biden took office.

“Nobody’s ever seen an economy [like ours] pre-COVID, and then we handed over a stock market that was substantially higher than just prior to COVID,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention last month.

An accurate picture of recent economic performance defies the narratives put forward by both parties, economists told ABC News.

The economy had already emerged from the pandemic-induced recession and begun to recover by the time Biden took office, experts said. However, the U.S. remained well below pre-pandemic levels in some key measures of economic health, including employment. Biden faced the difficult task of revitalizing the economy and getting Americans back to work, they added.

“There are kudos to be given to all the different sides,” Frederick Floss, an economics professor at Buffalo State University, told ABC News. “It’s very complex.”

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the economy performed robustly by some important measures. In February 2020, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5%, matching its lowest level in more than 50 years. Inflation-adjusted gross domestic product increased at a solid annualized clip of 2.1% over the final three months of 2019.

The onset of the pandemic — as well as ensuing shutdowns across much of the U.S. — plunged the economy into a recession. On March 12, 2020, the S&P 500 plummeted nearly 10%, registering its worst single-day performance in more than three decades. The following month, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to almost 15%.

In March 2020, Trump signed into law a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package, including direct payments of $1,200 and expanded unemployment insurance, among other measures. Months later, in December, Trump enacted a second $900 billion round of government support.

Over the period, much of the economy reopened and business activity returned to something resembling normal.

In turn, economic growth soared over the second half of 2020. The unemployment rate fell to 6.7% by the end of the year, nearly double pre-pandemic levels but well below the peak reached right after the outbreak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 ended the year at record highs.

The COVID-induced recession lasted two months in the spring of 2020, the shortest U.S. recession ever recorded, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-profit organization that serves as the recognized authority on economic downturns.

Economists disagreed over the extent to which Trump deserves credit for the initial recovery, saying it resulted from a mix of federal support that he had enacted as well as the withdrawal of restrictions imposed by state and local governments.

“It was a very short-lived recession,” Matias Vernengo, a professor of economics at Bucknell University, told ABC News. “That obviously happened under the Trump administration.

Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, added: “It’s faster than we’ve ever seen in any previous crisis but no other recession has had that form where we locked everybody up. It’s much easier to get it back when demand is still there.”

Despite its improvement over the latter part of 2020, the economy remained far from healthy when Biden took office, especially on the all-important issue of employment, economists said.

The U.S. lost 21.9 million jobs in March and April of 2020, U.S. government data showed. At the outset of the following year, the economy still stood about 10 million jobs short. In addition, pandemic-induced bottlenecks continued to snarl supply chains, restricting economic output worldwide.

“A fair statement is that the economy at the end of 2020 had recovered substantially but there were still millions of job losses that the economy hadn’t recovered from,” Dennis Hoffman, an economist at Arizona State University, told ABC News.

Rothstein, of the University of California, Berkeley, said the economy remained in peril at the outset of the Biden administration in early 2021.”I think calling it an economic crisis is totally fair,” Rothstein said.

Still, Rothstein added: “We did some right things in 2020 and we did some right things after 2020.”

In March 2021, Biden signed a $1.9 billion economic stimulus package of his own, including another round of $1,400 direct payments as well as an expansion of the child tax credit. The following year, Biden enacted the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $280 billion CHIPS and Sciences Act.

Over the course of the Biden administration, the labor market expanded at a rapid pace while economic growth quickened. By 2022, the economy had recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic. In January 2023, the unemployment rate fell even lower than where it stood pre-pandemic.

Economists who spoke with ABC News credited Biden-backed government stimulus for the reemergence of U.S. economic strength, but they differed over whether the spending had contributed to a severe bout of inflation experienced during that period.

“We were able to recover as an economy and job creation has been pretty remarkable,” said Hoffman, of Arizona State University. “That became a very successful program — it also brought inflation.”

Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated that Biden’s American Rescue Plan added between 1 percentage point and 4 percentage points to the inflation rate in 2021, Roll Call reported. Michael Strain, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, estimated that the legislation added 3 percentage points to inflation.

Vernengo, of Bucknell University, disagreed, attributing the bout of inflation to an imbalance of supply and demand that arose in the aftermath of the pandemic. “Inflation has more or less vanished,” Vernengo said, saying the moderation of prices indicates that the problem owed primarily to a temporary economic shock.

Price increases have cooled significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains nearly a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.

Vernengo, of Bucknell University, said both major parties have offered up misleading accounts of the 2020 economic downturn and the recovery that took hold afterward. “The story is somewhere in the middle,” Vernengo said.

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