U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg at the DNC’s Veterans and Military Families Council, held at McCormick Place in Chicago. (Photo by John Griswold)
Tuesday there was a convention meeting for the DNC’s Veterans and Military Families Council, held at McCormick Place.
Council Chair Terron Sims II, a West Point graduate and veteran, made introductory remarks on the power of veterans as a voting bloc. Veterans and their families make up eight percent of the national population, more in swing states, he said. They want a president who will pay attention to foreign policy, strengthen alliances such as NATO, and find ways to support other allies, such as Ukraine, in order to keep American troops out of wars.
“And our candidates win,” Sims said.
As if to prove the importance of the bloc, Sims and his co-chair had barely finished their brief remarks when a series of politicians starting coming into the room, one after another, and made speeches that took up the next hour or more.
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) strode in in his Navy aviator’s jacket. Kelly was on Kamala Harris’ shortlist for Vice President and now is said to be in the running for a cabinet position, such as Secretary of Defense or Homeland Security. In written comments he praised Democrats for supporting veterans with the PACT [Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics] Act, which he called the largest expansion of Veterans Affairs benefits in decades. He pointed out that he had taken John McCain’s seat in the senate after McCain’s death, and that Donald Trump had dishonored McCain and many other veterans including, most recently, Medal of Honor winners.
(Trump’s derisive comments on military service are often used against him. Senator Tammy Duckworth [D-IL] spoke at the United Center on the dishonor of him doing so. She walked on- and offstage with difficulty due to her massive combat injuries as an Army Blackhawk pilot.)
US Representative Jason Crow (D-CO-06), a combat Ranger vet awarded the Bronze Star, spoke extemporaneously on what he called “servant leadership,” tying military service ideals to public leadership. It was a smart talk, though I did not care personally for his mention of the idea that military vets (and police and others) take an oath that is in place forever; I heard a lot of that from militia types, starting around the time of Standing Rock and continuing to January 6th. Crow said that some people understand that we must put ourselves into positions in which we must serve others, no matter what, and we do not always get to choose our moments. Donald Trump, he said, was incapable of understanding that kind of service and sacrifice.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg also dropped in to talk with good humor about Trump’s “weird way of talking about the service of others.” Buttigieg said he used to be hesitant about speaking up as a Democrat in the company of other veterans, due to their inherently conservative nature, “but no more,” he said. “God does not belong to one party,” and neither do issues of American freedom. (The convention was a mostly successful marketing campaign to flip many of the abstractions once claimed by the GOP.) He suggested that “a kid on the South Side” [of Chicago] may have gone to Vietnam for Trump, who was deferred on the basis of bone spurs. He finished with long praise of vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, who served 24 years in the Army National Guard, and said Republican PR people could only hope to make a candidate like Walz, who is teacher, coach, and veteran. Buttigieg said he looked forward to having someone with the spirit of an NCO [noncommissioned officer] in the White House.
Gwen Walz, the wife of Tim Walz, appeared with her Secret Service detail. She is an extraordinarily political animal and an elegant speaker. She told the story of her husband’s service, how they met (as teachers), and how they got involved in politics by working for John Kerry, who is, famously, a highly-decorated Navy vet. It was an emotional talk, and funny, portraying Tim Walz at the time he volunteered for the military as “a spirited young man,” whom his father thought might benefit from the discipline. Her message, filtered through a call for education and service to others, was that there is power in the value in every individual. The rhetorical stars of this convention have been women.
US Representative Jennifer McClellan (D-VA-04), the “only Democrat in Virginia on the House Armed Services Committee,” told us her district includes several important military and national security sites, including the Navy presence in Norfolk and the FBI academy in Quantico. The President, as Commander in Chief, she said, sets the tone for how those who serve are treated, especially in the requests for funding to Congress. She asked that everyone present vote and to “knock on doors,” to be sure others did too. “Because they’re going to try to steal this election,” she said, referring to the Trump camp.
The last drop-in was US Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA-06), who did four tours in Iraq as a Marine infantry officer and was awarded the Bronze Star. Many of his points had been covered, as he acknowledged, but he stressed the idea of honor and how it pertained to taking office. (The Boston Globe ran a piece on him in 2017 that wondered if he would be running for president; Moulton did announce his candidacy in 2019 but withdrew after four months on the trail.)
Both political parties have veterans in office, and I feel it is under-discussed, in our current post-war era, how deep some of their military service has been, and how accomplished they have become since then. This is a trove of experience for the country and, if the speakers this day are to be believed, a relatively sure path to good national leadership with personal sacrifice. (None of them attacked JD Vance’s service directly.) But it should be pointed out that the talk at the meeting was 100 percent unidirectional, from the politicians to the attendees, a rallying of the troops, an explanation, an ad for the party to those already wearing the brand. No questions or other input were permitted.
My seatmate at the meeting was a veteran of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. I saw his Screaming Eagles lapel pin, and we chatted. As it turned out, this was Bob Mulholland, a California superdelegate and “one of the great partisan brawlers and dime-droppers of our time.” This convention was his 13th, he told me; he got his start working for Tom Hayden.
Mulholland was hilariously irreverent during the speeches that day. One of the pols asked a leading question to the audience about why people went in the military, for instance, and Mulholland said loudly, “Because they were drafted!” Those who serve often develop senses of humor that clash with political rhetoric. This does not mean they are not serious people.
In a colorful article on Mulholland in 2003, centered around his military service, he told Roll Call, “I’m committed to social and economic change.”
