CHICAGO — Last week, organizers of the Democratic National Convention proudly debuted the stage at the United Center they’d been working on for “over a year,” where the party will officially kick off the general election over the next four days.
The man they originally built it for will see it for a few hours, stand on it maybe a couple of times and then is expected to hastily get out of town, leaving it behind for someone else to build the next chapter of their career on.
Such is the melancholic undertone for day one of the massive party confab. President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak Monday and then depart for a vacation as Democrats toast his decision to step down and hand the presidential nomination over to Vice President Kamala Harris. It is the end-of-summer journey where Biden — depending on who you talk to — went from party standard-bearer to victim of party leaders to proud mascot of what it truly means to be a Democrat to convention footnote.