Behind the Scenes at the DNC: Controlled Chaos and ‘Death Stares’

Right now, there is chaos in Chicago. Not in the streets as a result of protests or demonstrations, but in the United Center where the Democratic National Convention team has spent the last four weeks rewriting the script and putting together a different production with a different nominee, different speakers and a different message.

Our heart goes out to them. We have worked on the scripting and production of every Democratic convention this century. While the tools and technology have evolved (our early convention offices had fax machines), the job has remained the same: Turn an event that lacks drama and suspense — after all, a convention chooses a candidate that has already been chosen — into compelling television that delivers a message, excites voters and, hopefully, provides a boost for the nominee that will launch them toward victory on Election Day.

Under the harsh fluorescent lighting of a room in the bowels of the United Center, now sit about a dozen speechwriters trying to get their arms around the 125 to 150 speeches that will be delivered next week. If history is any guide, they are dealing with members of Congress who promise they will send in the draft that already is days late, the senator who swears she can deliver an 1,800-word address in three minutes (not even an auctioneer can do that), the governor who thinks his pet issue is way more important than whatever topic the campaign wants him to address.

Down the hall, the teleprompter operators are assembling the show script. Come Monday, they will lock their door, with only a select few people allowed to knock on it to deliver changes.

The production team is urging the film editors to finish their final cuts while finalizing a full run of show — a multicolored grid that maps out the procedural elements, speeches, videos, musical numbers and slivers of buffer time that will disappear as speech after speech goes over its allotted time.

A group of ex-staffers, lobbyists and other professional Democrats are getting their assignments as “trackers.” Their mission? Making sure speakers get to where they need to be on time.

At the best of times, all of this is in flux until the last minute. This year, it must be like herding (childless cat ladies') cats.

Knowing the work that goes into making the show — and it is, after all, a show — and, much like President Joe Biden, having passed the reins to a new generation, we are here to offer a guide to what convention viewers are seeing, what’s behind what they’re seeing and why it matters.

The Program: Go for the big names

There was a time when the convention was “must-see TV.” The summer was filled with re-runs, and networks turned over four nights of prime time to the proceedings. Today, the production team has to convince the networks (broadcast and cable) to give time to the convention, and when covering it, actually show the speeches.

That’s why at this convention, you will see at least one “must-cover” speaker each night: President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton on Monday, President Barack Obama on Tuesday, President Bill Clinton and Governor Tim Walz on Wednesday, and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday.

Even with big names, a Democrat supporting a Democrat isn’t newsworthy, but much like a 1970s sitcom, extra-special guests are — especially Republicans supporting Democrats.

This is why conventions have tried to highlight unlikely supporters or allies. If it’s rare to have a union president show up for the Republicans (as Teamsters President Sean O’Brien did this summer ), it’s also rare to have a CEO show up for Democrats, which is what happened when Costco CEO Jim Sinegal spoke in 2012 . Mike Bloomberg vouched for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Republican Governor and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman spoke as part of a group of Republican women in support of Biden at the 2020 Democratic Convention, as did Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Who will be the unlikely guest star for Democrats this year? Liz Cheney? Paul Ryan? Adam Kinzinger? We’ll have to wait and see.

The speeches: Putting the brakes on cranky pols

Getting invited to speak at the Democratic convention can feel to the speaker less like a special honor and more like an assembly line. Speakers are told what they should say, how long they have to say it, the word count they must hit and the deadline by which they must submit their speech. Even if they choose to write their own speech, they are assigned a member of the convention speechwriting team, who helps shepherd the speech down the conveyor belt: through a fact check and a “message check” to make sure it conforms to the convention message. (After Melania Trump plagiarized a Michelle Obama speech , we added plagiarism checks as well.) Meanwhile, the speaker is routed into a rehearsal room to practice on a teleprompter (no note cards or paper is allowed on stage), and then to tour the stage so they can get a sense for what it will feel like being up there.

For all but a small handful of speakers, we treat this as the “wedding guest” rule; it ain’t about you. You have to say what the candidate wants. This is not an easy message to deliver to a senator or House member. We still have nightmares about Harry Reid’s death stares, Maxine Waters’ death threats and one governor who told us to “stop busting his balls.” We’ve had to have uncomfortable conversations, like when we had to tell former Rep. Barney Frank in 2012 that because of his pronunciation challenges, his speech comparing “Mitt Romney” to the “myth of Romney” all sounded like “Miff Romney.” Or when we told a twentysomething actress that, as adamant as she was, her friends from her struggling days surely didn’t depend on Medicare; she probably meant Medicaid.

Do people go rogue? They have. In 2004, Al Sharpton couldn’t have been more agreeable — submitted a draft, rehearsed it, and then got up on stage and pulled an entirely different speech out of his pocket.

Still, speaking slots are coveted, and speakers pull every string they can for extra time or higher billing. Going over our heads is as common as kissing babies for the politician. We get it, because these speeches can make careers. But size doesn’t matter. In 2004, it took all of 16 minutes for Barack Obama to go from a little-known Illinois senate candidate to a future president.

And in the age of X and TikTok, any speech can go viral if it hits the right nerve. In 2008, Barney Smith, a former Republican from Marion, Indiana, whose job had been outsourced, had an early viral moment when he declared “We need a president who puts Barney Smith ahead of Smith Barney.”

In 2016, an unknown father of a fallen Army officer named Khizr Khan brandished his copy of the Constitution — creating an emotional reaction in the hall, a viral moment and ultimately a book deal .

And in 2012, Michigan Governor (and now Energy Secretary) Jennifer Granholm was tasked in the early evening hours to tout Obama’s rescue of the auto industry and take on Mitt Romney who had written an op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” She eviscerated Romney with a line that poked fun of his vacation home that had a planned car elevator : “In Romney’s world, the cars get the elevator, the workers get the shaft.” Granholm’s energy worked the room into a spontaneous frenzy of “USA” chants (note that any chants from the crowd you hear are almost always generated by the production team) by calling out each state and the auto jobs saved. The noise got the attention of the producers, who cut away from the talking heads and to the convention floor. By the next night, Granholm was on “The Tonight Show.”

In that case, we knew that this speech was going to be a hit because we heard Granholm practice it in the prep room. But speakers, beware: Just as convention organizers can put their thumb on the scale for you, they can go against you too. Play ball, and they’ll argue for you getting another minute or two. Practice well and get the speech prep team wiping away tears, and they’ll alert the media that your speech is worth watching. On the flip side, lack of cooperation has a cost. In 2000, Harold Ford Jr. was so uncooperative that the production team decided to let earlier speeches run longer so Ford’s keynote would run way past 11 p.m., the time networks cut away to the local news.

Finally, look at who is the keynote speaker, which as of this writing, has yet to be named. This speech is one of the last flexes of the party leadership; their way to identify and anoint the leaders of the next generation. From Hubert Humphrey to Barbara Jordan, Mario Cuomo and Barack Obama, these slots have catapulted careers. At the Covid 2020 convention, the keynote was a video of 17 young leaders , led by Stacey Abrams.

Who does Harris see as the next generation? Gretchen Whitmer? Josh Shapiro? Wes Moore? Or is there a little-known state senator with a funny name out there waiting to be discovered?

Videos: Making viewers cry

Video may have killed the radio star, but they saved “real people.” In the days of VHS, the convention video was really only used to introduce the life story of the nominee (most famously “ The Man from Hope ” for Bill Clinton in 1992).

Over the years, we had a problem with our “real people,” speakers who aren’t an elected official, professional activist or celebrity. Think the family who struggles to pay the medical bills, the truck driver who can’t pay for his child’s college education or the military family suffering through repeated deployments. They illustrate a policy point, or vouch for the candidate’s character.

The problem had long been that no one in the hall knew who these people were, and they just talked through their speeches and stories. If the audience is not paying attention, then the media isn’t either. However, once we began using videos to tell their story before they appeared onstage, it was a different story. Turning down the house lights to play them focused the crowd and set the emotional tone, teeing up a dramatic entry for the “real person.”

This, then, gets the media’s attention, especially in their hometown, which is the point of the whole exercise. Indeed, real people are chosen to drive local media coverage in key states. So if you want a peek into the Harris-Walz campaign strategy, look where the “real people” are coming from.

Signage: Sending a message, whether the speaker wants it or not

Signs in the crowd are as old as conventions themselves, but they’re more strategic than you may think. Attendees are not allowed to bring in their own signs. Watch closely, and you’ll see different signs being distributed and collected — as many as 12 different signs over the course of one evening of the convention. What signs the audience holds up is part of the production, sending a message to the media and those at home.

As the speechwriting team is drafting, we would identify good lines or refrains from key speeches, to be made into signs. Or sometimes, the campaign would share messages that they wanted on signs, and then ask the speechwriting team to make sure a speaker said them.

The problem occurs when a speaker gets cold feet, and the posters are printed. In 2008, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s speech had a refrain inserted in it: “Obama is the change we need. McCain is more of the same.” Each sentence was printed on a separate sign, and we were ready to go. The problem was that the governor wasn’t. He didn’t like it, and was convinced it wouldn’t work. After some cajoling, he relented — and as he spoke those lines, the signs went up and the crowd went wild .

Afterward, excited by the response, he joked how glad he was that we had used his line.

Seating: Keeping rogue delegates out of view

Unlike a Taylor Swift concert, the best seats don’t go to the people with the most money or the fastest Ticketmaster trigger finger. Floor seats and the lower bowl are for the delegates, divided by state. Front and center are the candidate’s delegations, California and Minnesota, with other key states working their way out from them. Usually, this is uncontroversial, but as The New York Times reported, the largest concentration of the 30 uncommitted delegates, who ran to protest the Biden-Harris administration’s stance on Gaza, are in Minnesota , giving them a prime spot to protest.

The convention team will be ready, scanning the floor and the stands for rogue signs or protests. Once identified, they can call others to put campaign-friendly signs in front of them to block a camera shot. Look for the guys in bright vests and ear pieces; they are the ones directing the crowd — and solving problems.

As for us, we’ll be watching too. A little less sleep-deprived than we were during conventions past, but no less impressed by all the work that goes into putting on the biggest show in politics.