At the end of the first night at the DNC, as President Biden finished his extraordinary speech, he was warmly embraced by Vice President Harris, who looked him directly in the eyes and said, “I love you so much,” while a packed arena continued their rousing sendoff for him.
After the last few turbulent months it felt like a full-circle moment, one where the President could be fully seen again: no longer obscured by the incessant mob mentality news cycle calling for his exit and the swirling storm of speculations about his fitness for the job, which now seem so long ago.
Their quiet exchange amidst the bombast and spectacle, was a beautiful expression of the genuine relationship of the President and his political partner of the past four years; a display of affection and humanity that we rarely see in politics but one in keeping with who Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are.
They are humans first, politicians second.
They are normal, well-adjusted adults, with close families and solid marriages and longtime friendships, who also happen to be the two of the most powerful people in America.
Just moments before, in between thundering squalls of spontaneous applause, the President spoke passionately and poignantly in the same “heart on his sleeve” manner in which he has lived his entire life and led so deftly. He expressed his scalding outrage at Trump’s perversion of the presidency, his steadfast belief in America’s future, and his unabashed love for this nation and its people.
And when he was finished, the VP was the first outside of his family to greet him.
And as the scene unfolded and as I watched Kamala Harris and Joe Biden sharing that incredibly personal moment on the platform, what I couldn’t help thinking was:
“Can you imagine Donald Trump inspiring or showing this kind of authentic human emotion—ever?”
Have you ever witnessed him in a moment of real tenderness toward his wife or appropriate affection with his children?
Ever watched him believably display friendship with a colleague?
Ever seen him comfort a hurting or grieving human being in a way that seemed like he’d done it before or wanted to be there?
Ever seen him laugh uproariously alongside someone or be moved to tears by the suffering in front of him?
I’ll willing to bet you haven’t and that fact should matter to all of us.
Character should not be negotiable for good people.
Somehow, voters on the Right (the vast majority of them, professed Christians) have managed to convince themselves that character no longer matters, that they do not need to respect their politicians to elevate them to power.
This of course, is a form of personal gaslighting, a moral loophole they created for themselves before the 2016 election to give them permission to vote for the “I moved on her like a b*itch”, “grab ‘em by the pussy,” serial predator, whose character they’d have openly condemned, had he not been running with an “R” next to his name.
It was a collective soul transaction they entered into and they’ve never the same since. From that moment on, they were impervious to his sociopathy, blind to his predation, accepting of his cruelty, justifying of his criminality.
The “God is love” choir suddenly stopped requiring love to be evident at all.
Earlier in the night, the Vice President surprised the arena with an unannounced walk-on, taking the stage to an explosion of unprompted adoration. And while tens of thousands around the arena were mouth agape and emotionally supercharged, the most touching reactions were that of Kamala’s husband Doug and her running mate Governor Tim, who beamed in a way that only happens when you see someone you care about having their moment.
It was another reminder that these are not leaders trying to make us believe that they are human, they are human beings who have chosen to lead.
They are people who have a life beyond the platform and outside of the campaign schedules.
This is something that can easily be lost in the important conversations about Project 2025, the screaming culture war rhetoric, and the necessary warnings of approaching theocracy: the need for a nation to be led with humanity, with empathy, with decency.
From where I’m standing, this isn’t even a contest.
I know I’ll never convince anyone who has deluded themselves into believing Trump is somehow God’s chosen one or that he actually loves anything or anyone beyond himself—that he is not worthy of stewarding this nation. They are, due to partisan media immersion or inherited prejudices or self-preservation, largely unreachable between now and November.
What I do hope, is that the humane middle here: tens of millions of rational people of every political affiliation and religious tradition are paying attention.
I hope they are seeing the deep humanity on display right now in the Democratic Party and realizing that, in addition to policy and philosophical alignments, we should have emotionally mature people leading us. These won’t be perfect people, of course, but they will be people who exist for something other than power and self-service.
I hope they will look objectively at the options in front of them and that they will choose to elevate something other than party, something greater even than national pride, that they will choose humanity first.
We’ve seen the cost of giving inhumanity run of the house. We’ve seen the way it becomes contagious.
It’s time we welcomed humanity back.
John Pavlovitz
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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