Page 31 of 107 Days
Tim and I left the convention that day to get back on the campaign trail. We couldn’t afford four days out of the battleground states, but the only night they could spare me was the night of Doug’s speech, which made me unhappy.
In a perfectly timed and choreographed piece of stagecraft, the convention producers pulled off a live feed between the rally and the convention. I walked out onstage in Milwaukee just as the roll call concluded in Chicago with my California delegation giving me their votes.
The roll call is alphabetical, other than the nominee’s home state, which is given the honor of being last. On the big screens in the Milwaukee stadium, I recognized all the beaming faces of the California delegates bunched around the microphone.
There were people who had been with me my whole career, some who had worked on my very first campaign, stuffing envelopes under my mother’s guidance.
It was an emotional moment for me. And it was wonderful to be able to thank those delegates and share the high excitement of the convention with the Wisconsin audience.
Flying back to the convention, we watched live on my iPad as Doug gave his speech. We were about to land as Doug wrapped up. The cabin erupted.
“DOUG! DOUG! DOUG!”
I was so proud of him. Before I became top of the ticket, Doug expected to have a minor role at the convention—a couple of minutes tucked in someplace. He was suddenly moved way up the roster.
“You’re going Tuesday,” he was told.
“Oh, okay, who am I on with?” he asked.
“Barack and Michelle. You three are the prime-time package.”
No pressure.
He’d worked hard, writing and practicing the speech.
“The words are good. I just have to do it justice, delivering it for her,” he’d told Cole and Ella.
He had written it with three main points: “I want people to know she’s a badass, that she’s spent her whole career working for the people, and I want them to know that she gives a shit. ”
He phrased it a little more delicately in the speech.
Other family members, including Ella, Meena, and my goddaughter, Helena Hudlin, also took to the stage to reminisce about my role in their lives.
The way the kids stepped up into these highly public roles with grace and aplomb made me so proud.
My baby nieces stole the show with their “tutorial” on how to pronounce my name.
(“ Comma , like a comma in a sentence, then la , like la la la.”)
Our creative Cole had directed and narrated a funny and touching video that ran before Doug spoke.
It had family pictures of Doug in his very ’70s oversized bow tie at his bar mitzvah, and as an athletic hunk at summer camp.
It had his official Employee of the Month photo from McDonald’s, and the photo of him wearing that ferocious expression as he grabbed the guy who’d rushed the stage at my event years earlier.
The video dealt frankly with the sadness of the divorce from Kerstin and told the story of how we met and the family we’d all built together.
Then Doug’s speech described to the world who I was to him—in our family and as he witnessed my work in the vice president’s office. It was an eloquent narrative and a bracing refutation of the ways I had been mischaracterized.
Doug’s an excellent trial lawyer. He knows how to keep his cool under pressure. No one wants a lawyer who is nervous in front of an audience. But stepping out onto that huge stage, facing a forest of DOUG signs, was a whole other level.
He took a breath, centered himself, and started his speech with a shout-out to “my big, beautiful, blended family up there”—Kerstin was sitting with Cole and Ella, Doug’s parents, his brother, sister, and our niece and nephew, Arden and Jasper—“and a special shout-out to my mutha ,” mimicking her Brooklyn accent, “the only person in the whole world who thinks Kamala is the lucky one, for marrying me .”
It was a speech full of humor, love, and passionate conviction.
Dougie had nailed it.