It was a socko night for the Democrats as they opened a presidential convention like no other with a response like no other — cohesive, compassionate, commanding. From the opening of children from all 57 states and territories singing The National Anthem in red, white and blue T-shirts to Michelle Obama’s powerful, emotional closing remarks — love, love, love her — Day One depicted former Vice President Joe Biden as a man of empathy and strength who can bring this country together for the formidable challenges ahead. There wasn’t one dud of a speech in a night whose virtual format forced you to concentrate on what people were saying — from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus as metaphor for the larger illness plaguing America to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, at a crossroads (literally) to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ policy points and frank call for unity. The night, which used Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” and the words “We the People” as motifs, built to the moment when Michelle Obama — the woman who said she hates politics but does it so well — went high while excoriating President Donald J. Trump, turning his own limp words against him, “It is what it is.”
Yes, it surely is. But the best words in a night filled with great words belonged to Kristen Urquiza, the young Arizona woman who lost her 65-year-old father, Mark Anthony Urquiza, to the coronavirus. His only preexisting condition was believing Trump and the people she called “his mouthpieces.” So when Arizona opened up too early in late May, her dad went to a karaoke bar. Five agonizing days later, he died in the hospital with a nurse holding his hand.
When she casts her vote for Biden, Urquiza said, she will think of her father, she said. Many have talked about the divisions of this nation. But no one has framed them as starkly as Urquiza has.
‘The coronavirus has made it clear that there are two Americas,” she observed, “the America Donald Trump lives in and the America my father died in,”