Maybe it was all those flags which were everywhere last night, waving in time with the music, responding to good lines in what were three great speeches with exuberant sweeps of approval and standing motionless at the most solemn moments, but last night the Democratic National Convention finally came alive. With every delegate and those in the galleries holding a flag it seemed to symbolize the Party coming together. The set designers finally even seemed to get it, hanging a giant flag–which had been absent the first two days–over it all and even managing to get shimmering red, white and blue waves onto those silly Vegas-like neon stage props.

Maybe having a flag in their hand finally reminded the delegates of what’s at stake. Maybe having a flag in their hand finally reminded the delegates of why they were all there. Maybe having a flag in their hand finally had them truly believing that they together they could remake America, pulling it out of the deep hole it had fallen into under the Counterrevolution. Maybe having a flag in their hand reminded them of the heritage of their own Party and the history of the nation, of what one had built and the other had overcome. Maybe having a flag in their hand just flat out made them proud to be Americans again.

Whatever they did for the delegates, those flags must have given a huge boost to the Democratic Party, for there they were in front of millions of viewers and those verbose pundits (it is time to retire Mark Shields, James Carville and David Gergen) the Democratic Party took back the flag. It was the key symbol of a memorable evening. In American living rooms across the country the Democratic Party again became the Party of America and Americans. For each time those flags fluttered in response to a remark made by a speaker it sent a message that rather than being out-of-touch and anti-patriotic, this Democratic Party was there for the entire country.

No matter what the speakers said–and what they said was powerful–when the cameras panned out over that audience triumphantly waving Old Glory a bit of old glory returned to the Democratic Party. For decades it had seemed Democrats were afraid to pick up the flag. Some of them even bought into the misguided notion put forward by the Counterrevolution that old-fashioned patriotism was passe, something for Rush’s dittoheads. Not last night. Every delegate enthusiastically waved their flag. When the cameras frequently showed Michelle Obama waving her flag as exuberantly as the delegates on the floor, at times even seeming to act as head cheerleader, it reinforced the message even more strongly.

What made this flag-waving so powerful was that it was not the lock-step, robotized, doctrinaire flag-waving of the Republican Counterrevolution–a flag waving that high-jacked Old Glory as if it belonged only to one Party, one way of thinking, one vision of America and everyone who did not subscribe to that vision had no right to wave the stars and stripes.

The GOP’s flag obsession–for that is what it was–came from the dark side of American patriotism, the one that perversely equated segregation with the flag, the one that perversely equated McCarthyism with the flag, the one that perversely equated waterboarding with the flag, the one the perversely equated rich corporations with the flag, the one that perversely equated religious fundamentalism with the flag, the one that perversely equated putting government in our bedrooms and fundamentalist Christianity in our classrooms with the flag, the one that perversely equated a distorted view of executive privilege and Presidential power with the flag,the one that perversely equated Guantanamo and sending innocent people to Syrian torturers with the flag, the one that perversely maintained wiretapping and violations of civil liberties with the flag.

It was as if only certain people with certain ideas were privileged enough to wave the flag. Last night the Democrats blew those false assumptions away with every enthusiastic, spontaneous wave they made, for we saw people of color, people wearing union jackets, gays, straights, old, young, able-bodied, disabled, short, tall, lean, portly, bald, gray-haired, bearded, mustached, short-haired, long-haired all waving the same flag. With each wave they said, “We are all Democrats and all Democrats are Americans who love their country, for our flag is broad enough to include all these people and all their ideas.”

Last night the delegates were the true stars of the convention, even on a night of extraordinary rhetoric. Those cameras kept coming back to them, more than it had the first two nights. It captured two gay women dancing together and waving their flags. The cameras showed the guy in the suit and tie and the guy in the flannel shirt. They showed the women in knock-out dresses and the women in blue jeans. They showed folks proudly wearing some part of their state or their local community. They showed t-shirts proclaiming political messages to free Iraq and support our troops, to stop global warming and put an end to torture. They showed folks with contradictory views written on them like billboards dancing together waving their flags. They showed feed caps, cowboy hats, Uncle Sam hats, hats custom-designed in someone’s living room, servicemen and women’s hats.

Together they said THIS is America, not that white-washed, ersatz image purveyed by the slingers of vitriol, the Bill O’Reilly’s who somehow have the hubris to believe they could speak for the flag they way certain preachers believe their God only talks with them.  Networks, keep a copy of the tapes of those images and next week rerun them and contrast them with what you will see on the floor in St. Paul where there will not be as many diverse faces and certainly no gay women dancing. Next week you will have to look hard to find anyone who might have calluses on their hands and dirt in their fingernails.

In the contrast of the images of the delegates at the two conventions you will see two different Americas and in those two Americas you will see what is at stake this fall. John McCain seems to come shrink-wrapped in red, white and blue, courtesy of the media who have elevated those years in North Vietnam to mythic status. Perhaps George W. Bush will show up in his flight suit or will he exhibit the erratic behavior he showed at the Olympics?

After last night we will finally see the Counterrevolution as sunshine patriots who like a magician who covers his tricks with a sweeping cape tried to cover the most radical remake of this nation in its history with a wave of the stars and stripes. Clinton, Kerry and Biden ticked off the relevant statistics: the growing inequality, the high price of gas, the lack of respect from the rest of the world, the growing unemployment and falling wages, the worst health care system of any advanced democracy, the murders in Philadelphia and the loss of gains made by people of color, and most of all, Katrina, the greatest human-caused disaster in our history, which years later no Republican dares to visit because not only did they cause the problem they lied about fixing it. And there is a certain bridge in Minneapolis, a symbol of budget cuts traded for tax cuts traded for what amounts to government homicide.

But the real stars at the podium were the parade of vets. For once having many people testify made sense, for each had their own story and each story was powerfully told by those who had been to Iraq, from the three-star general to the wife of a soldier currently on duty to the wounded veteran who was somehow pulled from a burning helicopter.  But maybe the most moving moment of all was when the cameras turned on Barack Obama’s uncle, a wizened old white man who liberated Buchenwald and, who like all vets who have seen things that cannot be talked about, showed that mixture of surprise, humility and pride that was only reinforced when Michelle Obama embraced him in tears. For a moment black and white, past, present and future hugged.

In those flags waved at the Democratic Convention lies a vision of both an old and new America, an America spelled out in the best trio of speeches to grace a one night of a political convention in memory. They reminded us that the Democratic Party honors the best of its past, as Bill Clinton pointed out, that the Party offers a realistic view of the present, as John Kerry reminded us, and that it has a fresh vision for the future, as Joe Biden reminded us.

Seeing all the flags last night made me feel optimistic again, made me feel “yes we can” is not just empty campaign rhetoric. Most of all it gave me hope. I hope that every delegate and spectator who was waving a flag last night will take it home and stick it in their lawn or hang it by their front door or tie it to their car antennas. And each of them will say, “It’s time to take back America.”

As I watched those flags I could only think of Whitman, the gay poet who would not even be allowed in the GOP convention, writing in “I hear American Singing:”

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

Afterward

I wrote on the first night and the second about the absence of the flag. I don’t know if they heard me and others or already had it planned, but maybe, just maybe, the Party will not get the idea to make the level playing field the center of their campaign, for that is what this is all about.

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