It was basically the Oprah Winfrey Show, with special guest Kamala Harris. And we happened to be there.
Through a series of happy circumstances, we were in the audience for last Thursday’s Unite for America livestream. There were 400 of us, and we were surrounded by what appeared to be thousands of people on screens, watching virtually.
We’d been told on Wednesday where to report, to a hotel parking lot half-an-hour from our house. From there we were shuttled to an “undisclosed location,” where we were met by metal detectors, body wands, handbag searches, the whole Secret Service thing.
Which was just fine with us. I have a vivid imagination when it comes to high-value terrorism targets, and this was, after all, Michigan, militia heaven. So while we never thought twice about being there, it was good to see the assault weapons on our side for a change.
The event was very much an Oprah production. Slick design, precocious video technology, it was as made-for-tv as a show could be. The aim was to recruit ground troops for the election, so it was more a rally than a town hall, and the rah-rah factor was palpable. Audience enthusiasm was an essential production element.
Much of it was more style than substance. There were larger-than-life guest stars, projected larger-than-life on the walls. Oprah and Kamala spoke with them — Bryan Cranston, Julia Roberts, Chris Rock, Tracee Ellis Ross, Ben Stiller, Meryl Streep — as if they were with us in the room.
Full disclosure, my own view of Kamala was of the back of her head, which, I can tell you, is well coiffed but largely expressionless. I had to watch the event the next day to experience the facial eloquence for which she’s now so rightly famous.
The designated “questioners” in the audience threw her softballs, which allowed her to get through her standard talking points. But as usual, she was best when she went off-script. Which she did when we got to the emotional core of the evening: two human interest stories, both real tear-jerkers, literally.
One was the family of Amber Nicole Thurman, who died after a nightmare in the Georgia healthcare system. You can read her story almost anywhere, but the gist is that she had taken abortion pills, which were her last option to terminate a pregnancy that she should have been able to end with no muss or fuss, had she not lived in Republican Georgia. She developed an infection that, again, could have been dealt with routinely, if only she hadn’t been in the hands of doctors who feared crushing legal reprisal for any action they took regarding a fetus, whether dead or alive.
Thurman’s was quite dead, and needed to be expelled immediately. Instead, she had to wait in agony as the infection spread. The doctors monitored her for twenty hours, until they could verify that her life was, in fact, threatened, which was some arbitrary bar she needed to clear. But by then, her organs were failing, and it was too late to save her. She died from an acute case of Georgia.
A totally preventable death, and as Thurman’s mother and two sisters told us the story, you could hear the sobs ripple through the audience.
This story has since been amplified, in what is clearly an abortion offensive being launched by the Harris team. It’s not just the commercials, which are everywhere. It’s also Kamala taking the message to Atlanta the next day, for a scorching speech calling out the “Trump abortion bans.”
It’s worth noting a significant change in the way Democrats are framing the abortion issue. The rhetoric used to be that abortion was a distasteful but sometimes necessary procedure, chosen for health reasons, or as a last resort in cases of rape, fetal nonviability, or marital infidelity. Mostly they didn’t want to talk about it.
Not anymore. Harris is speaking of abortion as today’s woman understands it — as a healthcare necessity, and as a crucial component of family planning. Women, she is saying, have the right to an abortion any time, and for any damn reason they want.
This is a real change in tactics, and it’s accompanied by a new wrinkle in the messaging. She’s now talking openly about “faith” in relation to abortion. She’s saying, in effect, that no matter what your religion tells you, there is no way the government should be involved in decisions this personal.
As it happens, darker forces are also making use of the Thurman story. To anti-abortion zealots, Thurman’s death is an example of the “dangers of abortion pills.” This is, of course, a total lie, and a particularly odious one. Thurman’s complication was extremely rare, and even so, it could have been mitigated by a simple D&C, a procedure readily available in any healthcare system that actually values health.
But back to the event. The Thurman story was followed by another atrocity, also from the benighted state of Georgia. This was about gun violence, and we had in the audience one of its latest victims, Natalie Griffith, 15, who was shot twice in algebra class at Apalachee High School, three weeks ago. Lucky to be alive — two fellow students and two teachers were killed — she told us about the horrors she saw that day, and showed us her tightly bandaged arm.
But it was her mother, Marilda Griffith, who broke down while telling us of the terror she went through that day, and of her desperation to find out what had happened to her daughter. It was every mother’s nightmare, gut-wrenchingly told in a Spanish accent, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Toward the end of the evening, Meryl Streep came on the big screen and asked Kamala the question I would’ve asked, had I gotten the chance. It concerned the integrity of the electoral process, and the stories of MAGA thugs doing what they can to gum up the works.
Streep called it “shenanigans,” I’d have called it “ratfucking.” As Trump continues to withdraw from actual campaigning, Republicans are falling back on the cynical manipulation of voting laws — not to mention intimidation and threats of violence — to put a criminal in the White House, no matter what.
But Harris basically ducked the question. She alluded to the corps of lawyers that are working round-the-clock, and she pleaded with us all to be alert to misinformation. But she said nothing to reassure us that the law enforcement establishment was on top of the situation.
I didn’t really expect a straight answer, and Streep probably didn’t either. There are good reasons not to reveal stuff like that — and Harris did not. We can only hope that what she’s not revealing is a robust multi-agency strategy for dealing quickly with people who break the law between now and January 6. We’ll see.
But all told, the event was satisfying, not so much for what I learned or had reaffirmed, but rather for the energy on display, and for the feeling that we were immersed in something important.
From what I’m seeing, Democrats are playing their strongest hand in living memory. In swing states, as well as not-so-swing states, there is abundant evidence that their messages are resonating, and that Trump’s — if messages are even what they are — are falling flat.
I think I speak for Oprah’s audience when I say that most of us came away slightly less stressed than we were going in. Looking at the next two months, that's about the best we can expect.
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