The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

I have covered Republican and Democratic national conventions from New York to Kansas City, but I’ve never seen a first night as electric as that which I viewed on television last evening.  I did not take notes, so the following are the impressions that “have legs.”

Especially moving were the personal accounts of men and women harmed by the Trump-enhanced restrictions on abortion and reduced access to health care. As one speaker observed, the examining room has space for the patient and her doctor and no room for the government.

Hillary Clinton looked and sounded better than I’ve ever seen her, stirring old good -not bad- memories and enthusiastically embracing the new generation.  Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, brilliant in her powerful attack on corporate greed and celebration of unsung hard-working people, clearly has moved from her role as Squad provocateur to rising party star.  Jamie Raskin impressed with his stunningly incisive attack on Trump’s undermining of democracy. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock roused the crowd as only a preacher can do. But you had to watch C-Span to really appreciate the depth and range of the party’s bench.

Joe Biden gave a variation of the speech he had hoped a month ago to give this Thursday. It was largely a blazing and deeply heartfelt nearly hour-long wrap of the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration. And when he occasionally stumbled in his delivery, it made me – and I’m sure others – feel better at his having passed the baton. Movingly, he poured out his half-century love affair with our country. As he concluded, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you. For 50 years, like many of you, I’ve given my heart and soul to our nation.” You’d never hear those words coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth!  In not running, Biden surely put country over himself, wrapping up the evening and his electoral career, surrounded by his family, to the loving approval of the thousands in attendance, many in tears of gratitude (doubtlessly for what he accomplished and for stepping away as well).

Kamala Harris seeded the enthusiasm with more than just a cameo appearance, speaking briefly on stage and then sitting with an obviously moved Tim Walz and their families.  Her reemergence on stage at the end with Biden and family cemented the image of the baton being passed. If you looked closely at their embrace, you could see her mouth the words “I love you so much.”

Take-away message of the night: the Dems in the hall are more unified than any time in recent memory. Their organizing theme is that the Harris-Walz ticket is for working people, growing the economy from the bottom up and the sides out, not from the top down.  If we could bottle the energy on display last night, we’d lessen our dependence on foreign fuel well ahead of schedule.

The week is off to a good start. Comparisons to the chaos of the 1968 Chicago convention seem grossly unwarranted. Inside the hall, the unfurled banner waved by some “uncommitted” delegates in support of Palestine went largely unnoticed. And outside the promised crowd of 30,000 demonstrators never materialized. Yesterday only several thousand, mostly peaceful, marched around the convention center, and stacks of protest signs went unused. This is no longer Richard Daley’s Chicago. The week is off to a great start.  But it is still a country in which, despite renewed optimism, the race for president is still “margin of error” close.