MILWAUKEE _ Democrats opened their four-day national convention Monday with relentless attacks on President Donald Trump's management of the coronavirus crisis, enlisting Republican defectors and ordinary Americans in an effort to broaden support for former Vice President Joe Biden in an event pushed almost entirely into cyberspace by the pandemic.
Party leaders ripped into Trump and extolled Biden on meticulously staged online videos, from offices and homes around the country, that were alternately poignant and awkward.
But from the opening national anthem _ sung by dozens who ultimately coalesced into the U.S. flag, to the final fervent plea by former first lady Michelle Obama _ the switch from live action to online packed an emotional punch missing in traditional conventions.
A moment of silence led by the brother of George Floyd, whose killing at the hands of Minneapolis police in May sent the nation into a reckoning over racial justice, came between canned speeches that TV anchors would have cut away from in past cycles, calling on pundits or reporters working the delegate crowd.
There was no escaping the scripted material for those who tuned in, and raw moments in which struggling Americans shared their stories sometimes followed others that had the feeling of a telethon.
Yet the party leveraged the captive audience to hammer home its theme of Trump's incompetence.
"This president is not just a threat to our democracy, but by rejecting science, he has put our lives and health in jeopardy," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a former Biden rival who has championed the party's progressive wing. "Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs. His actions fanned this pandemic resulting in over 170,000 deaths and a nation still unprepared to protect its people."
Sanders urged every progressive to put aside their differences with Biden and help vote Trump out of office.
"The future of our democracy is at stake," he said. "The price of failure is just too great to imagine."
Obama, who enjoys soaring popularity across partisan lines, took top billing, however, speaking the longest and arguably the most poignantly about the "chaos" Trump has inflicted and the "decency" of Biden, who served as her husband's vice president for eight years.
"I know Joe," she said. "He will govern as someone who has lived a life that the rest of us can recognize."
The planned four-day lineup was designed to expand the party's appeal as it makes its case that the Trump administration's response to the pandemic and economic recession has caused suffering that knows no political boundaries.
A California woman whose 65-year-old father died of COVID-19, Kristin Urquiza, said her dad's only preexisting condition was trusting the president. "And for that, he paid with his life," she said in an intensely emotional video.
With unity as the night's theme, former Trump voters and four Republican politicians lent their voice to Biden's campaign, among them former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and the GOP's 2010 nominee for California governor, Silicon Valley executive Meg Whitman.
"Donald Trump has no clue how to run a business, let alone an economy," said Whitman, who in 2016 endorsed Hillary Clinton over her party's nominee. "For me, the choice is simple. I'm with Joe."
The marquee Republican, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, acknowledged the improbability of his prerecorded appearance _ which may not have gone as smoothly before a howling crowd of partisans _ but said "these are not normal times."
"I'm a lifelong Republican but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country," said Kasich, who ran against Trump in 2016 but, unlike other ex-rivals, never accommodated himself to the president or his pugnacious persona.
Lavishing praise on Biden, a decades-old acquaintance from their years in Congress, Kasich said, "Joe Biden is man for our times. Times that call for all us to take off our partisan hats and put our nation first, for ourselves and, of course, for our children." He laid on the metaphor thick, speaking from a literal crossroads in his hometown of Westerville, Ohio.
The inclusion of speakers from across the aisle is a time-honored party convention tradition, and so is the backlash it often triggers, in this case from progressive activists.
Critiques of the lineup were led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has drawn a national spotlight in her first term as a leader of the progressive wing.
Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a Biden campaign co-chair, said the four Republicans were added to the Democrats' lineup to appeal to the "'silent Biden voters,' those Republicans who feel bullied, those Republicans that feel they will be isolated if they support Biden, and that they will be picked on. This will show them they are not alone."
To broaden the audience _ and give the feel of a live audience for the virtual convention _ the party hosted watch parties across the country. The proceedings were projected onto the screens of drive-in movie theaters in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Delaware.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a newcomer to the national political scene whose demands for a competent virus response from Washington put her on Biden's short list of running mate prospects, joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in attacking Trump's handling of the crisis.
Several of Biden's rivals in the Democratic primary talked about why they ran and why they now support the former vice president.
The convention, such as it is, opens at a time of relative stability in the presidential race.
For months, polls have shown Biden ahead, both nationally and in the battleground states needed to win a majority in the Electoral College, including here in Wisconsin.
Some polls taken since last Tuesday, when he announced Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, have given the pair a double-digit lead over Trump, though most analysts believe the race will tighten by November.
Unlike most previous nominees, who had to fill in their background, Biden has been a national political figure for nearly five decades, first as a U.S. senator from Delaware and then as vice president under President Barack Obama.
His acceptance speech Thursday, campaign officials said, will stick to the same themes Biden has steadfastly pursued since he entered the race: restoring the "soul" of the country and unifying America in a chaotic and unstable time.
Still, a virtual extravaganza presents both opportunities and risk.
Parts of Biden's life story are unknown to many voters who came of age after Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 at age 29. Although he has rolled out a series of policy proposals since clinching the nomination in March, much of the detail has been lost amid the pandemic and a national reckoning over racism.
The nightly focus on Biden, Harris and their fellow Democrats will allow them to fill many of those blanks. Harris' speech Wednesday night will also serve as her introduction to the largest political audience she has ever faced.
Trump, forever conscious of ratings and the show-business aspects of politics, will almost assuredly seize on any lack of audience interest to press his claim that Biden lacks the energy and leadership skills to lift the country from its malaise.
Milwaukee, which was supposed to host the convention, had the sad feel Monday of a city abandoned.
Sidewalks that would have been teeming with visitors _ as many as 50,000, planners projected _ were empty, save for a few scattered pedestrians enjoying a steamy afternoon. The weather was supposed to be one of Milwaukee's selling points, along with Wisconsin's status as a major political battleground.
Normally, the lobby of the headquarters hotel _ the downtown Hyatt Regency _ would have been a hive of intrigue, packed cheek-to-jowl with political dignitaries, reporters scribbling notes and tourists craning their necks to pick out the celebrities, real and imagined. Instead, just a handful of tables were occupied.
A reporter for Racine's newspaper interviewed a stray Biden delegate who came from Las Vegas to see the sights. On the wall-mounted TV, sportscaster Bob Costas soundlessly interviewed baseball's Bob Uecker, a Milwaukee native. The official convention souvenir shop, a cubby converted from the hotel business center, had not a single customer.
Nearby, outside the shuttered Fiserv Forum, where the convention was supposed to take place, a group of hard-hatted AT&T workers posed for a group photo as sea gulls scoured the plaza out front, unimpeded.
A few blocks away, in one of the few signs of political life, about a dozen anti-abortion protesters lined Wisconsin Avenue in a wordless protest, waving anti-Biden signs at the occasional car that passed.
Monica Miller, one of the organizers, said she had hoped a group of counterprotesters might come along and spark a bit of conflict to liven things up. But none showed.
Miller, though, was not discouraged. "We will be back out tomorrow," she said.
