Philadelphia
During the 8:00 p.m. hour Monday in the the Wells Fargo Center, an 11-year-old child of illegal immigrants addressed the crowd and the cameras about her fears that her parents may be deported. "I'm scared that at any moment, my mom and dad will be forced to leave," said Karla Ortiz, who was born and raised in Nevada. But her mother, Francesca Ortiz, was apparently not too scared to appear on national television. She stood behind her daughter and then briefly spoke in Spanish.
It was an odd scene. Trotting out children as political props is always a risky bet, and the effort to portray illegal immigrants as victims living in fear was undermined that by the fact that an illegal immigrant was standing on stage in Philadelphia and addressing the delegates and a national audience watching on television. As Jonathan Last wrote this weekend, Democrats would likely fall into the trap of virtue signaling instead of trying to disqualify Trump.
Sure enough, the first few hours of night one of the convention was a parade of identity politics and Democratic virtue signaling. Former pro basketball player Jason Collins talked about how he was a proud gay man, and a state senator warned that Donald Trump would enact "heinous bathroom bills" that would "strip away the rights of transgender Americans." (Trump initially said North Carolina's law keeping men out of women's bathrooms and showers was discriminatory. He later said he backed it, but no one believes Trump cares about social issues.) New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand spoke of the need for "equal pay for equal work" (the theme of Ivanka Trump's speech last week). After Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez warned that no one should have to fear being shot in a nightclub, he said that "we will take on the NRA with Hillary as president of the United States." Gutierrez did not mention ISIS.
Whether or not any of this matters remains to be seen of course. The night is young, and Donald Trump managed to get a convention bounce despite the fact that the first few nights of the Republican National Convention seemed to be a flop.