A recap of Tuesday at the DNC

Plus, Never Trump Republicans are spotlighted at the DNC. But what is their utility in winning votes?

The second night of the Democratic National Convention featured thunderous speeches from Democratic leaders like Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), former First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama.

The higher profile speeches took place after all 50 state Democratic parties honorarily pledged their respective delegates to Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (the actual roll call happened virtually earlier this month.) Prominent leaders like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), as well as celebrities like Sean Astin, Spike Lee and Lil Jon took part in the roll call where Harris was officially nominated as the presidential nominee.

After the roll call, the screens at the United Center displayed Harris officially accepting the nomination during a rally in Milwaukee.

Sanders took the stage to promote campaign finance reform and universal health care, two prominent policy ideas form his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs.

“For the sake of our democracy, we must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move toward public funding of elections,” Sanders said. “We need to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a human right, not a privilege.”

Pritzker also emphasized economic reform, advocating for the policies announced by the Harris campaign last week.

“More than anything, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want a country where we can all live with a little serenity,” Pritzker said. “The serenity that comes with a balanced checkbook, an affordable grocery bill, and a housing market that has room for everyone.”

Pritzker also took a jab at former President Donald Trump for his six bankruptcies.

Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama rounded out the evening to deafening applause during their respective speeches. Barack took jabs a Trump for his “cult of personality” and obsession with crowd sizes, while praising Walz for his genuine wardrobe choices.

This year’s DNC will feature the last thing you’d expect from the convention: A substantial roster of Republicans. Indeed, from former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan and former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, to “The View’s” Ana Navarro and one-time Trump advocates like Rich Logis, a significant number of defecting conservatives will appear on the stage and in media spaces to voice their opposition to Donald Trump. 

This participation by former rivals fits into a broader strategy to attract disaffected Republicans to vote Democrat — potentially for the first time in their lives. Earlier this month, the Harris campaign launched “Republicans for Harris,” which sought to emphasize support for the ticket from key “Never Trump” GOP members like former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger. The rollout of the strategy seems designed to target key swing states like Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. 

At the actual convention, members of The Lincoln Project — the epicenter of the Never Trump movement — are ever present at the convention and spoke with Heartland Signal’s own Joan Esposito on Tuesday. But Kinzinger, who will speak at the DNC on Thursday, is probably the most notable Republican proponent of Harris: He famously was one of two Republicans (the other being former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney) who served on the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. 

In a recent post to his Substack, Kinzinger explained why he’d be addressing the DNC. 

“The Republican Party I once knew was one that championed limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a strong national defense,” Kinzinger wrote. “But today, it has been hijacked by those who prioritize loyalty to a single individual over loyalty to the Constitution. This is not the party I joined, and it is not a party I can support in its current form.” 

“By addressing the DNC, I am reaching out to Americans across the political spectrum who share my concerns. We may not agree on every issue, but we must agree on the fundamental principles that underlie our nation. This is a time for coalition-building, not division.”

And former members of the Trump-Pence regime, like Oliver Troye, are attempting to bring even more conservative politicians who Trump has scorned into the fold. 

Will this strategy pay off? It’s hard to say. Polling from the Republican primaries showed that anywhere from a third of all New Hampshire Republican voters to one-fifth of Iowa’s primary participants were upset by Trump’s decisive victory. But given that only 8% of Republicans voted for Biden in 2020, it seems to be a pretty fickle constituency. After all, it was Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who famously said during the 2016 race that "for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia." 

And polling on issues like the legitimacy of the 2020 election — some two-thirds of Republicans think it was stolen from Trump — might suggest the GOP and its supporters completely bought into the MAGA movement a long time ago. The vaunted moderate Republican may very well be going the way of the dodo, landlines and TV dinners. But that won’t stop the Democrats from trying to ring every ounce of support from the most vocal anti-Trump conservatives.