Chicago Bullish: A Report from the DNC Convention

Or... Scenes from Manny's.

So I’m in Chicago, the great American city that also fuels my endless “been voting here for decades” jokes on Hacks on Tap. (And of course, it’s a filthy lie. The only voter fraud I ever dabbled with involved Detroit, Washington DC, absentee ballots and my beloved if crafty Democratic Precinct Captain Mother. But that’s a story for another time.)

I’m here to serve the joint causes of Electric Cars and Irish political nostalgia. I was driving our (not Tesla) EV back from a late summer on the lake in NH when the sirens’ howl of politics lured me 85 miles from the Interstate north to the Windy City. Too many pol buddies and bars full of campaign hacks for me to easily ignore. So, like the old firehouse Dalmatian hearing the station bell ring, I took a right turn north.

I had, of course, other more ulterior motives. (Come on, I’m professionally in politics. If you are looking for Mahatma Gandhi 2.0 pal, you’re on the wrong blog. And I’m in the wrong city, in a glorious way.)

We’re about to make big election year news over at EVPolitics.org with a big EV Jobs = Good for America effort in Michigan and hopefully Georgia; vital states in a Presidential race.

We are an issues organization; we don’t endorse candidates but we sure do talk EV jobs and plan to tell the Michigan story — 20,000 good new manufacturing jobs created and more the come — that no voter knows. Yet. So, knowing conventions are chock full of mostly pro-EV mega-donors, I figured I’d show up and rattle my tin cup a little.

Plus NBC still has me on the payroll so there would be a cable hit or two and we had a Hacks on Tap pod to record. The idea of ditching zoom and doing Hacks together from legendary Chi-town political hangout Manny’s was hard to resist.

I got here Monday am. A few diary notes from my two days here.

Since no Democratic leader wants to fight the good fight for working Americans from a bad hotel, my first tricky call was which hotel to base camp to. The donor/pol/luminary nerve center here was split between the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. I chose the Ritz; mostly to save 100 bucks a night and they had free EV charging; so when it came time to blow town I’d be full up and easily get clear to Iowa. (When choosing EV friendly hotels it pays to think like Baby Face Nelson: quick getaway over the state line with a full tank).

The Ritz’s airy lobby bar was the political equivalent of the Star Wars Space Cantina. The true sport here is to sit in a good chair with a good drink and a deep bowl of salty snacks and catcall passing hack friends and the odd enemy. That usually triggers a worried look “who said that?”, a 180 degree spin toward the Voice, then a grin “it’s a peer! Another Hack!”, and depending on time available, a quick, or since conversation is the joyful dance of the politician, a longer sit down in the bar and a happy exchange of gossip. I got plenty of that. The mix in the hotel was amusing: Carville, McKinnon, Karl Rove, there are no parties or networks here.

The gossip is fun…

“Jennifer Aniston?!? No. I mean he’s so f-ing dead if that’s true.”

While this happens, the vast background platoon of fixers, fuglemen, hacks, pols, lobbyists on the make, journos, party arm twisters, donation shake down artists and the odd regular couple just in town for the sand and gravel association annual awards dinner watch the cable TV and political echo chamber wildlife bump into each other and chirp and chat. For them it must be like a trip to the zoo, or the hotel in Memphis where the trained ducks march across the lobby on the hour.

For us it’s an ego orgy. People ask for selfies and say hi and stare a little. I had a fun beat of that with Spike Lee who sat near me at the breakfast restaurant, and looked over a few times half recognizing me, but not quite able to sort out where he’s seen me before or who I was. Just… familiar looking. Like the weekend weatherman, I get that a lot.

Swimming through this tropical pool, like the brightly speckled star fish inside a lavish saltwater aquarium are the mega-donors. They are the big tuna here, courted from all angles by various cash hungry political organizations, eager now, in the ferocious height of the campaign to feed.

The DNC, the DCCC, pols planning their future rise, the SuperPacs… each outfit with a crafty squad of pro-fundraisers roaming about, eyeing each other warily. Some of these killers are independent contractors too, working on commission and intent on protecting their particular Very Big Tuna. High dollar fundraising can be a contact sport, with a sharp whiff of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to the whole thing

.The big power currency whispered between them is choice tickets to secret VIP donor concerts and the like, followed by convention tickets for the Big Finish on Thursday night in the arena. A floor shot at the historic moment being pure Instagram gold for the social media savvy mega-donor: I am a player!

Doing a few high-dollar meetings of my own, I bounced between the Ritz and the Four Seasons. I pitched our plan — it can help the climate cause, help us keep the Chinese from eating the entire U.S. Auto Industry in 15 years, and — right now — help a certain pro-EV candidate, um, win Michigan and the PRESIDENCY to a few smart donors. We’ll see what happens.

(We take smaller donations too btw)

The Cable Media Content Machine (CM2) also beckoned. Tuesday am I was up early to brave the security maze and do a Morning Joe hit. That mean a dawn Planes, Trains and Automobiles routine of Uber car to deserted corner, walk a few blocks, enter a chain link cage, walk more, enter a metal detector tent, walk a few more miles, cross parking lot to arena, cross the Himalayas, enter arena, walk halfway around it, take elevator to high sky suites, walk down a dark cable-filled hallway passing suite after suite of studio set ups, ABC, CBS, Daily Racing Form, etc. Everybody has a small, cramped suite. The crews start each day at 2am.

The morning hits are eerie since the place is deserted except for City of Cable News buzzing away up in the rafters. As you hustle down the hallway — ruthlessly efficient and professional Jamal from MSNBC is is going to get you in the Chair on time no matter the obstacle — you notice nearly everybody rushing past is a woman in a primary color dress wearing lots of make-up. It’s like an alien planet.

I did my hit and as I left Jamal was rushing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer down the hall, the Chair does not wait. She saw me, gave me a hug and a happy yell (our fathers used to work together at Michigan Blue Cross) only to be shushed by a command voice from inside the suite “we are on the air!” and G and I froze, then laughed like high school kids caught by the principal in mischief. Natty Jamal, having indulged this outbreak of humanity that disrupted the CM2 for 6 seconds, got back to business and shot me his highly effective don’t fuck with the Chair, we will taser you if we have to stare, and the Governor bolted off to sell the ticket while my old pal and co-opinionator Jonathan “JMart” Martin of Politico and I plotted to obtain a network golf cart — the KEY to convention survival if you are not just back from the Paris Olympics after medaling in the marathon — to power our escape to the final fence line. Thus began a cart zig-zag around the place with a slightly terrified NBC intern at the wheel as we barked out conflicting directions. “Right, left, back up, FLOOR IT!”

I even picked up a lost protest sign and practiced my infiltration skills, in case I need to go undercover as a Hamas-loving useful idiot…

She turned out to be journalism student (originally there for music and a top notch flutist) from Northwestern, who after deciding we were not trying to get her fired and then killed in a flaming golf cart vs USSS crash, asked JMart about breaking into journalism and got a priceless ten minute tutorial. She’s gonna do fine.

We got an Uber and escaped “the perimeter”. Jonathan jumped out at his hotel — the Blackstone; he’s staying there because that’s where party bosses made the deal in suite 915 to give the GOP nomination to Warren Harding in 1920 and the phrase “smoke-filled room” was coined.

Then time to record Hacks on Tap at Manny’s; a deli/cafeteria that has been an Axelrod favorite forever. The Strategy Group, a Dem consulting firm based in Chicago and Los Angeles, was holding a Hack party in the next room; half the fixers in the party were there to soak up gossip and deli food that will kill you but leave a smiling corpse. I walked in, looked around and suddenly regretted that I didn’t have a panel truck full of stolen big screen TVs to unload: it looked like a fence convention. Saw a lot of pals and had a ball. (I’m sure I’ll be voting in Chicago with Manny’s as my address for the next 40 years…)

So, dear reader, about now I assume you are thinking, “enough with all this atmosphere crap and what you had for lunch Murphy, what about the speeches, the politics, who’s up, who’s down?!?”

Alas the truth is, after attending many, many of these conventions — either as a Poobah at GOP conventions pre-Trump or as an opinion (read no facts really needed) journalist and TV pundit at Democratic conventions — I’m more interested in the rituals of my tribe of political professionals than on the details of which hustling pol got off which canned speech line. Like professional baseball, the mob, showbiz or for all I know dentistry… professional politics is a small world, secretive at the top even if it operates in the open and under the brightest of lights. Entrance is tough and earned and the way campaigns truly work is known only to those who have really worked inside it. These are my people and I enjoy being an old salt of being an old general of some reputation in this world. So I won’t go into lots of convention details. I post plenty of that on Twitter/X.

That said, a few final observations:

Night one. That was homework and chores night. Do the stuff you have to do, then gear switch for the next three nights to really sell the merchandise. I thought they did fine, but — as always at these things — too many tier-B pols giving flat speeches way over the allowed time. The one great star turn was Coach Kerr. Pitch perfect. But the rest of the ham n’ Eggers? Yawn. Just selfish clock murderers. I mean really, we are supposed to care about Kathy Hochul? (BTW, I award her the prized Excedrin Cup for honking out the single worst halting, clunky and relentlessly mediocre speech by a tier B speaker.)

The result of this over indulgence in needless droning podium babble was a bump of Joe Biden’s big swan dive out of core prime time, at least on the east coast. (No it was not in my view an evil plan to bump the POTUS to midnight, just a screw up.) I pity the poor staffer though who had to tell James Taylor, “sorry we are bumping you for Senator Chris Coons.” Still bumps had to be made and they should have chopped more members of Congress. And you could see on VP Harris’ stone faced look that Sen. Rapheal Warnock of GA — talented orator that he might be — made a sloppy error in going TWICE his allowed time and pushing the President even later. The Biden speech moved me, but it was an awkward mish-mash. As my pod partner Axelrod says, it was really two speeches jammed together. The torch pass he had to do and the recitation of administration victories he really wanted to do, as nominee. GRADE: B (C+ but for Kerr and the young women speaking about choice).

Night two was far better. No homework, just back on the mission. The Obamas brought sparkle and focus and were effective, but the star who I think most moved the numbers for Kamala was her likable and ultra authentic husband Doug Emhoff. America met a guy they are going to like, and most importantly, learned a lot more about Kamala Harris. This convention is all about defining her property before the GOP does and his speech did it very, very well. A home run, and the best intro video of the convention by a mile. GRADE: A

POST CONVENTION UPDATE: A word now on the whole enchilada. Nice job Dems. Yeah, it was stuffed with identity and left-wing silliness. But I don’t care about that right now. This conservative handwringing I now read now about Kamala and Walz bores me silly. Yeah, they are liberals. But they don’t hate Democracy. They are not crazy. (And Tim Walz strikes me, from appearance and what I know about him from pols on both sides who knows him well; is a 100% legit good guy who has lived a virtuous and patriotic life. He’s the class act of the entire field.). So this one is simple; elect the humans who care about America. Trump must be stopped. Simple as that. The Chemo must be endured because the Trump cancer must be eradicated. Post Trump we conservatives can build a sane center-right party again and get back to our natural business of fighting the Left the old fashioned way; with ideas, principles and policy. We can start to win the argument again, with patriotism and honor, instead the Vichy GOP’s current grim business of fluffing the racists, goons, Putin fan-boys, Pillow grifters, and all around dumb-asses and knuckle-draggers who have oozed out from the dankest corners of America.

Kamala Harris, by the way, is trying to meet us halfway. Her speech was smart and important, stuffed with dog whistles to center-right America. On National Security she’s moved loud and clear to the right of Trump; far closer to Reagan and Bush that he will ever be. She knows she will have, in a first term at least, a reconstruction Presidency. Our polis has much damage to repair. (And she and her people are smart enough to know the D’s are very unlikely to win the Senate; the next four years will be a balancing act between right and left enforced by voter fiat. So, as any Chicago Alderman knows, when in doubt be for what is going to happen anyway. I think team Harris gets this.)

So, the bottom line for me after three days in the Chi? The Dems are happy and bullish. They smell blood and see the path. A little too cocky right now, I think, the hard second look of late September is lurking in the forrest, sharpening its’ big fangs. That’ll be the test, for Kamala and for her campaign. Yet Trump is still weak, wounded and spiraling; that is a huge gift to the D’s. So it’s a race and so unlike the situation just a month ago, all the ingredients of a D victory are now within reach.

I won’t be here for the next two nights. I gotta get home to LA. But this morning? One more stop at Manny’s as a I head west. Some pols and journos, well, we want to eat and hang a little more.