So the first night of the Democratic National Convention has come and gone. It was a night featuring two memorable swansong speeches. The first came from Hillary Clinton, who in an alternate universe would be finishing up her second term as president right about now. The second came from Joe Biden, who is currently finishing up his first (and only) term as president right now. It was a night for passing torches, in other words.

A few general comments are in order before I get to the actual speeches. Sadly, Joe Biden's speech was probably not watched by as many people as originally planned, since the entire night ran long -- way long -- and Biden didn't even take the stage until half an hour after primetime had ended on the East Coast. When he appeared, the crowd erupted with sustained applause and chants of: "Thank you, Joe!" which further delayed his speech's start time. He then spoke for roughly 50 minutes, meaning East Coast viewers would have had to stay up until twenty minutes after midnight to catch the whole thing. Hopefully some of them will take the time today to go back and stream it, because the speech was definitely one of his best.

Political conventions, not unlike awards shows, often run long. It's the nature of the beast, really. The people in charge of planning them often don't plan for how slow some of the speeches are delivered -- mostly due to multiple pauses while the crowd reacts to well-delivered lines -- and they are pressured into packing as many speakers as they can into each night. Last-minute cuts are often not possible, since who is going to be the one to tell some powerful politician that he or she is not going to be able to give the speech they've been dreaming of?

Even so, this was a rather epic failure of time management. The Democrats just tried to cram too much into one evening. Most of the speakers added significant value to the event, although some didn't add much of anything at all. The problem with yanking people from the schedule, though, is that the easiest people to scratch are the ones who speak the earliest -- the later in the evening it gets, the more prominent the politicians scheduled to speak are. So if you suddenly realize the show's going a half-hour or 45 minutes long, it is impossible to go back to the early hours and just yank five or six not-so-important and not-so-powerful people, since you'd need a time machine to do so. The Democrats have promised they'll fix things tonight, by starting the show earlier and by having a lighter schedule, so we'll have to see if this works out (I still expect it to run long, personally).

I have to actually say something positive about Donald Trump here, for a moment. Trump has tossed aside many political traditions during his time in politics, and it seems that even the Democrats have decided that one of the things he jettisoned wasn't worth preserving. The pre-Trumpian tradition was that the presidential nominee not even appear until the final night of the convention, but there was no real reason behind this -- merely a sort of superstition, like the groom and bride not seeing each other until the wedding ceremony itself. Last night, Kamala Harris followed in Trump's footsteps and not only appeared in the audience for the whole night but actually jumped up on stage to deliver a very brief statement personally thanking Joe Biden for all he's done. This worked out great, so I have a suspicion that the whole "don't appear until the final night" tradition has gone by the wayside for good.

Outside the arena, the mainstream media was disappointed by the fact that the "tens of thousands" of protesters promised didn't actually appear. A few thousand did show up and hold a march, and a handful broke through the security fences and got themselves arrested, but from the visuals of the whole thing it appeared there were more cops present than actual protesters. The media had been all set to run the storyline of "1968 all over again!" but it just never materialized that way.

But getting back to what happened inside, in reviewing my notes I came up with a few speakers that could easily have been cut (which would actually have improved the flow of the whole production): Senators Dick Durbin, Laphonza Butler, and Chris Coons, as well as New York Governor Kathy Hochul. That's probably a half-hour saved right there! And there were plenty of others who were so unmemorable I didn't even bother writing their names down in my notes, although most of these appeared much earlier in the evening.

But enough carping, let's focus instead on the high points of the evening (of which there were many -- these are just the ones that impressed me the most, there were plenty of others to choose from, though). There were quite a few competing themes of the evening, but one that was definitely worthy of inclusion was the focus on Unions. The presidents of a number of Unions were given speaking slots, the most prominent of which was Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers. He's always a powerful speaker, and early on leaned into the immortal Union organizing words: "Which side are you on?" But his best moment was when he unveiled his prop: "In the words of the great American poet Nelly, 'It's gettin' hot in here'," said Fain, before removing his jacket to show a T-shirt emblazoned with: "TRUMP IS A SCAB / VOTE HARRIS" on it. The crowd loved it, and began a sustained chant of "Trump's a scab!" Union votes are going to be critical in three of the states Harris badly needs (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), so I fully expect this chant to reappear out there on the campaign trail in the coming days and weeks.

The crowd was in a frenzy by the time he finished, which normally might have been a problem for the next speaker (it's hard to maintain a crowd's high emotions, in other words). However, the next speaker was none other than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and she did just fine. I saw a reminder in one of the liveblogs covering the convention yesterday that pointed out that A.O.C. only got ninety seconds at the 2020 Democratic convention, and she was limited to just announcing how her state's delegates were voting (not a real speech, in other words). Four years later, her rockstar status has only grown and she showed everyone why. Her speech was electric and chants of "A... O... C!" erupted frequently. She began with: "You know, six years ago, I was taking omelette orders as a waitress in New York City..." which seems hard to believe, considering how much stature she now commands within the party. National conventions are designed in part to showcase the future of the party, and nobody personified that future better than A.O.C.

After an interlude where both by video and in person some moments from Kamala Harris's childhood were featured, the program moved on to the next big star to speak: former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton. One scheduling footnote: if Biden appeared too late in the evening, I thought Clinton appeared too early. She was intentionally slotted in before the big hour of the night, when she should really have been right up there with Joe Biden (just before him, perhaps). But whatever, it's a minor quibble.

Clinton spoke, unsurprisingly, about the role of women in American politics. She started by stating that her mother was born before women had the right to vote, which is kind of astonishing, seeing how (as Clinton pointed out) that right was obtained 104 years ago almost to the day, when the last state ratified the Nineteenth Amendment.

Clinton then ran through a history of women in presidential politics, giving shoutouts to Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, and then herself (not too surprisingly, Sarah Palin's name was not mentioned... heh...). Clinton seemed thrilled that even though she didn't manage to "break the glass ceiling," that she lived long enough to see another woman pick up the torch and take another crack at it. If Kamala Harris does win the election, it's almost a given that Hillary Clinton will be given pride of place at her swearing-in ceremony.

Clinton did an excellent job of firing the crowd up. She took several shots at Trump, the most effective of which was: "Kamala locked up murderers and drug traffickers. She will never rest in defense of our freedom and safety. Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial -- and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions." The crowd ate it up. They began chanting "Lock him up!" which was entirely appropriate, in response to Trump using the line against her back in the 2016 campaign. Hillary didn't echo the chant, but she couldn't help but smile at it. The place was in an absolute uproar by the time Clinton finished her speech with: "The future is here, it is in our grasp -- let's go WIN IT!!!" As previously mentioned, I got rather nostalgic for that alternate universe where Hillary Clinton would now be in her eighth year in office and we'd have a nice solid liberal majority on the Supreme Court. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who felt the same.

After Hillary spoke, Representative James Clyburn very subtly burned Trump as well, quoting from the Bible's Second Corinthians (which Trump famously flubbed as "Two Corinthians," a while back). It was a nice touch.

The funniest video of the night played next, a sendup of the opening to Law And Order (although without the "DUM DUM!" sound, which would have been a nice addition). "In the criminal justice system, there are two groups..." familiarly rang through the auditorium, before it continued with: "This the a story of Donald Trump..." laying out how he's dodged responsibility for his crimes and misdeeds for his entire adult life.

This was the intro for Representative Jamie Raskin, who was one of the Democratic stars of the House select committee investigating January 6th. He trotted out a few zingers to make the crowd laugh, including: "It's been rough on Capitol Hill, where it's not just the heat, it's the stupidity." But his best lines were directed at JD Vance, as a warning: "JD Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the GOP ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor!" Raskin leaned in, saying presidents are supposed to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed -- not that the vice president is executed!" For good measure, he also called Trump "a sore loser who does not know how to take no for an answer from American voters, American courts, or American women." Personally, I've long thought "sore loser" should be a prominent label for Democrats to use against Trump, so this was good to hear.

Representative Jasmine Crockett -- another up-and-coming Democratic star -- spoke next, and kept the vibe going in saucy fashion. She compared Harris to Trump with "a career prosecutor versus a career criminal," and pointed out that "Kamala Harris has a résumé, Donald Trump has a rap sheet." Being a language geek, I also appreciated her zinger: "We are through with vindictive vile villains who violate voters' vision!" (after which she gave the amusing aside: "I hear alliterations are back in style").

The mood shifted abruptly at this point, as another theme of the evening appeared. We got painful stories of women in red states who were needlessly and cruelly put at medical risk due to their states' abortion bans. The three women and one man (one of the women's husband) who spoke were all very powerful, and they were followed by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear who won his most recent election by leaning in to his support of abortion rights in a very red state. He called the red-state abortion bans: "policies giving rapists more rights than their victims -- that's just plain wrong!"

The proceedings took sort of a detour here, as Senators Raphael Warnock and Chris Coons both spoke. Finally -- at around 11:15 P.M. Eastern -- Jill Biden appeared on stage. She was obviously there to introduce her husband, but in a curveball sort of moment introduced her daughter Ashley instead. Ashley Biden was the one to introduce Joe, and the family-love vibes were heavy. Ashley gave a great speech, sharing several heartwarming memories of her dad while she was growing up. When Biden finally did appear, he was pretty moved by her performance and yelled at the crowd with pride: "That was my daughter!" After a very extended chant of "Thank you, Joe!" from the crowd, Joe finally began speaking, at around 11:30 P.M. Eastern.

For the next 50 minutes, Joe blew the roof off the place on his own. He showed incredibly high energy and forcefulness as he gave what will likely be the last major speech of his political career.

It was a convention acceptance speech, a State Of The Union speech, and a swansong reminder of all that he has accomplished as president, all wrapped into one. Biden deployed many of his "golden oldies" -- lines that he has used effectively in previous speeches -- mixed in with praise for his vice president and his absolute satisfaction with her performance so far. Biden ran down all that he has accomplished in his term as president, again, with the highest energy imaginable. So much for the image of "Sleepy Joe," eh?

Biden finished impressively. Nobly, even. He spoke of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sharing his vision for the future of America, and humbly asked everyone to join him in "promising your whole heart" to the effort to elect them, to which he added: "I promise I'll be the best volunteer Harris and Walz... have ever seen."

He followed this by quoting a song (after getting a laugh by explaining: "I can't sing worth a damn, so I'm not going to try"). The song is "American Anthem," and here are the lyrics Biden chose:

The work and prayers

Of centuries

Have brought us to this day

What shall be our legacy?

What will our children say?

. . .

Let me know in my heart

When my days are through

America

America

I gave my best to you

There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Joe Biden is a class act, and he ended his swansong speech with his head held high and his sterling principles shining through.

It ran late, but it was worth it to watch until the very end. It is a rare event in American politics when a sitting president walks away from his own re-election effort for the sake of both his own party and for the country at large. A different man might have shown bitterness at his fate. Joe Biden showed incredible dignity, and he will always be remembered for how gracefully and humbly he did so. The crowd was right: Thank you, Joe.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant