CHICAGO — Democrats got their 2024 nominating convention under way here on Monday with a jam-packed session: Paying tribute to their legends, drawing contrasts with their opponent, touting their star power, showcasing their new generation and, most importantly for them, smoothly transitioning their current leadership to the next one.

In making sure everyone heard from President Joe Biden to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to Golden State Warriors Coach (and Chicago Bulls legend) Steve Kerr to singer Jason Isbell to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, the Democrats’ blew past the television networks’ programming window, going late into the night. The crowd, though, did not seem to mind, packed from the convention floor to the rafters, with delegates, guests, media, influencers and many, many more who filed into the United Center for opening night.

The Democrats’ newly minted nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance early in the primetime program to recognize the outgoing president, who dropped out of the race not even one month ago, on July 21.

“Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation and for all you will continue to do,” Harris said. “We are forever grateful to you.”

Biden was the keynoter tonight, and in an evening long on ovations, he had to wait out more than four minutes of applause and shouts of “We love Joe” before he began his remarks.

When he did start speaking, he wasted little time in throwing to Harris, promoting the vice president’s role in the administration’s agenda, including by highlighting Harris’ casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate on the reconciliation bill that allowed for Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

“We’re in a battle for the soul of America,” Biden thundered, describing the stakes of the race against former President Donald Trump, whom he blisteringly referred to as giving comfort to neo-Nazis and all manner of anti-semites and bigots.

Biden recalled the security posture on Capitol Hill for his inauguration in January 2021, just weeks after the Jan. 6 insurrection that was egged on by Trump.

“There’s no place in America for political violence. None,” Biden said. “You cannot say you love your country only when you win.”

Perhaps aware it was one of the crowning moments of his long years in office, he said, “I love my job. But I love my country more.” That was a reference to his dropping out of a race he might have thought he could win, but was getting away from him — and with Harris’ ascent, has turned back into a competitive toss-up where Democrats feel momentum that had long eluded them.

“And all this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down: It’s not true,” Biden said.

At the end of the speech, he noted wistfully that, when he was elected to the Senate at age 29, he was too young to serve, as least until he turned 30, and now that he was 81, he was too old to serve any longer as president.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who traveled to the president’s beach home in Rehoboth, Del., to relay the concerns of the Senate Democratic caucus before Biden ultimately decided to step aside, said at an event on the convention sidelines hosted by Politico and CNN earlier Monday that the president ultimately came to the right decision.

“He’s been amazing, but he knew he had to put country first. He knew that it was so important — he said it in his own words — to prevent Donald Trump from being president, that if he was going to stand in the way of that, he wouldn’t,” Schumer said.

“I’m not going to put percentages on it, but I think he made a decision that there was too great a risk of Trump being president,” Schumer said. “I don’t have to second-guess what the numbers were. He did the right thing.”

Tough talk

The themes of democracy and freedom, in the context of the insurrection, voting rights, worker rights and abortion rights, came up again and again through the night.

“Someone should have told Donald Trump that the president’s job under Article Two of the Constitution is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not that the vice president is executed,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a constitutional law professor and one of the impeachment managers for Trump’s second impeachment, said in the lead-up to Biden’s speech.

Fain, one of several labor leaders to speak, quoted the rapper Nelly in taking a shot at Trump.

“In the words of the great American poet, Nelly, it’s getting hot in here,” Fain said, taking off his sport coat to reveal a red UAW t-shirt saying, “Trump is a scab, vote Harris.”

Past and future

Biden was preceded by both the past and future of the Democratic Party he has served in public office for more than 50 years.

Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee who lost to Trump, and long-time Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., whose advocacy in 2020 helped Biden turn around his bid for the nomination and ultimately beat Trump in the fall, were on hand to both praise Biden and Harris.

Referring back to her bitter defeat and her concession speech in 2016 that acknowledged the glass ceiling she was hoping to break through would hold a while longer, Clinton passed her own torch. “On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States,” Clinton said to deafening roars.

Warnock, a Baptist preacher whose election in January 2021 helped secure Democrats’ Senate majority, brought down the house with his unique way of melding sermon and policy speech. He charged the crowd to help Harris defeat Trump, like Biden before her.

“The day after my January 5th election, he instigated an insurrection, a violent assault on our nation’s Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power. The Big Lie. But behind that lie was an even bigger lie. That this broad, increasingly diverse electorate does not get to determine the future of our country. The lie and logic of Jan. 6th is a sickness, a kind of cancer that then metastasized into voter suppression laws all across our country. Those antidemocratic forces are at work right now. Who will heal our land?” he said.

Despite the deep and dark contrasts, though, the mood inside the United Center was borderline euphoric.

The remarkable mood of this convention and its speedy evolution from the long-expected showdown from Biden and Trump, two men representing two fading generations, Silent and Baby Boom, and the jubilant current mood of a party spoiling for the Harris-Trump race, was summed up by Rep. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat who launched a long-shot, ultimately unsuccessful bid for the presidency, calling for a change in leadership.

“I feel like I was invited to a funeral and I showed up to a birth. It’s awesome, and it’s exactly what I dreamt of when I began this journey.”

Daniela Altimari, Mary Ellen McIntire and Aidan Quigley contributed to this report.