One of the most striking things about this Democratic National Convention is how many Republicans have chosen to become a part of the show.
On day two we saw another parade of prominent Republicans willing to either endorse or otherwise praise the Democrat nominee Joe Biden in his campaign to remove a Republican president from office.
On Wednesday (AEST) the surprise speaker was the prominent Republican Colin Powell, a former Secretary of State and National Security adviser to two Republican presidents in George W Bush and Ronald Reagan. Powell has fallen out with Trump but his decision to appear at the Democratic convention spoke volumes about his disenchantment.
“Today, we are a country divided, and we have a president doing everything in his power to make it that way and keep us that way. What a difference it will make to have a president who unites us, who restores our strength and our soul,” said Powell.
“Joe Biden will be a president we will all be proud to salute. With Joe Biden in the White House, you will never doubt that he will stand with our friends and stand up to our adversaries — never the other way around. He will trust our diplomats and our intelligence community, not the flattery of dictators and despots.”
The day before, the former Republican Governor of Ohio John Katich led a large group of Republicans who told the conference they were crossing the ideological aisle to back Biden over Trump for the sake of the country.
And then on Wednesday Cindy McCain, widow of the late Republican and former presidential candidate John McCain, chose to do a voiceover for a video showcasing to the convention the long friendship between Biden and McCain despite being political opponents.
The appearance of so many disaffected Republicans in the convention has raised the eyes of some in the liberal wing of the Democrat party, but it’s a deliberate strategy by the Biden campaign to target the undecided moderates who will determine the election outcome.
One of the benefits of a virtual convention is that no-one in the crowd can boo if a line-up of Republicans takes the virtual Democrat stage.
To win this election Biden knows he needs to keep the vote of those moderates, especially in the Midwest, who switched from Clinton to Trump in 2016. Many of these, especially suburban women, returned to the Democrat fold in the 2018 midterm elections, flipping the House to a Democrat majority.
But polls show that at least 13 per cent of the electorate remains undecided about their vote with less than three months to go before the election.
The Biden campaign is using this conference to target undecided moderates, many of whom will be comforted by the sight of so many prominent Republicans switching their loyalty to the Democratic candidate.
The roster of speakers at the convention is heavily slanted toward the party’s establishment wing rather than the emerging liberal wing. The rising star of the left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was allocated only a minute or two to make her speech on Wednesday.
It’s not hard to find disaffected Republicans when it comes to Trump because of his divisive style and his policies which have ripped the party away from its traditional agenda of free trade, fiscal responsibility and global leadership.
So while much of the program at this Democratic convention has sought to rally and energise diehard Democrats to go out and vote in November, it is also squarely pitched at winning the hearts and minds of America’s undecided moderates.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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