Artemus Eden looked upon the queue for the Democratic National Convention with pity. In star-spangled shorts and a blue kippah, he stood beside the pavement about a kilometre from the entrance of the United Center in Chicago. “Look at them, queuing like cattle,” he told me. The line stretched back through car parks and past high-security fences. A self-described street healer who thinks the Democrats are a party for the super-rich, Eden walked along the queue with his dog, Travis. “My dog is smarter than all these people put together,” he said. “Some of us aren’t as insane as all of you.”
Those insane enough to brave the two-hour queue included party delegates, trade unionists and corporate guests. They were there to witness the coronation of the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris. There were plenty of foreign politicos: I spied the head and shoulders of the former Nato secretary general George Robertson, while Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s former shadow cabinet member, stood to one side looking daunted by the potential wait. Frank Luntz, the seasoned American pollster, was also in the line. He was emphatic about the Democrats’ chances of victory. He predicted they could win the so-called trifecta – the Senate, the House and the presidency – on 5 November. “The Democrats need to start thinking about what they do if they win everything,” he told me. “A three-way sweep is now conceivable. It is now a real possibility.”
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