Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, I’m Peter Hamby, coming to you from Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention is gaveled in and underway. If you see me around town, say hey. I’ll be the guy in the lanyard following Jonathan Martin to various steakhouses. Below, my look at Joe Biden’s historic handoff to Kamala Harris, what his speech tonight means for his legacy, and why excited Democrats here are also being realistic about what it will take to beat Donald Trump.

But first…

🎧 If you missed, I reunited with my boss Jon Kelly on The Powers That Be podcast this morning to discuss a flurry of hot-button issues in the media industry, including the politics of scoring D.N.C. speaker slots, the dark side of NBCU’s Olympics narrative, and the latest round of executive musical chairs at Condé Nast. [Listen Here]

👔 Lauren on D.N.C. fashion…: One interesting bit of intel I gathered is that, apparently, most delegations at the D.N.C. have a dress code. One state, for instance, is directing its delegate members to wear blue on Monday; red, white, and blue on Tuesday; whatever they want on Wednesday; and white on Thursday for women, navy and white for men. Also on Wednesday, there is a “pink out” organized by the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, encouraging all delegates to wear pink. My prediction: We’re going to see a lot more Issey Miyake in Chicago than we did at the R.N.C. —Lauren Sherman

And now, here’s Abby Livingston with the congressional view from the convention floor…

Yes, there are pro-Palestinian protestors outside the security perimeter. But as of Monday evening, they felt like a sideshow—if not an outright non-issue. There is a post-Biden afterglow among the rank-and-file Democrats. Over lunch with a pair of party operatives, one told me that a Biden-headlined convention was on track to be “our last time getting to see each other before the Republicans marched us to the Gulag.” The other operative described the previously-anticipated Biden convention as “a three-day wake.”

Democrats, after all, have been conditioned to a funereal atmosphere. The most recent in-person convention—the hot, humid, 2016 nightmare in Philly—turned into an unmitigated shitshow. The Russian hack had unleashed the equivalent of all the family secrets on Thanksgiving Day, and operatives and members alike were anxious that there was more to come. State party breakfasts devolved into screaming matches, and boos were audible in the arena. Then, the 2020 convention was an online non-convention, and the attendant pall hung over Biden’s pandemic-era victory and inauguration. Earlier today, I texted a senior House Democrat to ask if this was the first time Dems have truly had fun since Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. “EXACTLY,” was the reply.

This D.N.C. is also a reminder of the remarkable, long-overdue turnover in the party: There are a lot of new kids on the block, and given the 2020 non-convention, some now-senior members of Congress are coming to the Big Show for the first time. For the classes of 2018 and beyond, the giddiness of a national convention is a novelty, with third-term members passing along rookie tips like, “Be sure to wear comfortable shoes.”

But despite all the excitement, party leaders acknowledge that the White House, Senate, and House could come down to the wire in November. DelBene, for her part, sported a “4 for 2024” button, indicating that she needs to pick up an aggregate of four House seats to hand House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the gavel in January. She also noted that her party is still very much on the defensive in some races until Election Day, especially in open seats in Michigan, Orange County, and Virginia. “I’m confident and paranoid… A lot can happen between now and then,” she said, still smiling. —Abby Livingston

There will be more than 5,000 delegates in Chicago this week, but they aren’t the same old faces. Roughly 700 of the delegates have never attended a convention before, and almost a quarter of attendees will be under the age of 36. Forget that famous Macarena video from the 1996 convention in Chicago—this week you’re more likely to see Democrats in the United Center doing the Apple Dance. That, and a brigade of hundreds of young digital creators broadcasting the convention to their followers on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, and TikTok. (As someone covering the festivities for both Snapchat and Puck, I walked into the media registration center and chuckled to one of the volunteers that I could probably check in at both the “Press” table and the “Creator” table. I have finally achieved content creation singularity.)

The D.N.C. crowd will look a lot like the base of the party these days—the likely voters and also those voters the party needs to get off the couch in November. It’s just younger and more diverse than the aging whites who make up the ranks of Donald Trump’s Republican Party. About 30 percent of the delegates are Black, and 20 percent identify as Hispanic, according to convention organizers. That diverse panorama will be on vivid display this week—by design—as Democrats engage in the delicate dance of turning the page and reframing the rest of the campaign as a choice between past and future.

I’m also told by two Democratic sources that Biden communications adviser Anita Dunn gave a rather salty departure speech at her farewell event after leaving the White House two weeks ago, with an odd reference to The Godfather and vague allusions to “getting revenge,” one person told me. Harris herself isn’t a big fan of Dunn, so her departure was probably for the best. Meanwhile, Harris’s small band of loyalists, including her vice presidential communications director Brian Fallon, are asserting themselves over on the campaign side of things, as are former Obama advisers like David Plouffe, who jumped on the Harris train for the final sprint.

But any staff friction is minimal. No one working on or around the Harris campaign is interested in H.R. distractions. The prevailing vibe among staffers in Washington and Wilmington, and among delegates here in Chicago, is that Democrats are now lockstep-united to beat Trump. They’re playing to win. (We’ll see if the Gaza demonstrators around town cooperate with that unity message. So far, they aren’t.)

Biden, the old pro, would never share any private bitterness in public. He does like Harris personally, even though some of his advisers aren’t superfans. Either way, Monday’s speech is too important for him—I’d argue much more important that his Oval Office address semi-explaining his decision to leave the race, which was a big moment for his family but an event already forgotten by the public. The D.N.C. is likely his final opportunity to bask in the bright lights of the American public before his Lame Duckness sets in for good and Harris becomes the leader of the party that has been his professional home for more than half a century.

The transition from Biden to Harris is actually a fitting punctuation mark to his career. When Biden came up in the Democratic Party, he was a natural star in the Kennedy and New Dealer mold, a glad-handing, labor-friendly Irish-Catholic charmer in a party that was still home to lunch-bucket workers. Many of those voters have since gone Republican. Democrats now look more like Harris: younger, racially diverse, college-educated, more consumed with identity and culture than the party was for much of Biden’s career. On Monday, he’ll be showered with praise by the speakers sharing the stage with him, representing the different races and younger faces of the new Democratic Party, people like Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, and congresswomen like Jasmine Crockett and Grace Meng. Biden will even be on the receiving end of some kind words from progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an image that would have been unthinkable back at the last D.N.C. in 2016, when Democrats were plainly more divided than they are right now.

Biden will officially stroll off the public stage for good next January when he leaves the White House. But Monday in primetime will really be the last time in his long career when he will command the full, unrivaled attention of tens of millions of Americans in front of the TV cameras he loves so much. The framing for tonight, a White House adviser told me, might seem predictable: “President Biden will make a forceful case to continue our progress and beat back attempts to erase it by electing Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. He’ll do so by reflecting on how much we’ve overcome and the stakes of the moment: From an economy flat on its back to the strongest in the world, overcoming a once in a century pandemic and defending democracy at home and aboard.”

That ain’t a bumper sticker, sure. But put another way, Biden’s speech tonight will be all about what tortured him during those critical weeks in July when he decided to quit: legacy, legacy, legacy. Yes, the legacy of his achievements in office—lowering health care costs, getting the country past the pandemic, fighting to save democracy in Europe, etcetera. But his legacy, too, will be the symbolic handoff to Harris tonight. “As we honor President Biden’s historic achievements, I look forward to uplifting Vice President Kamala and Governor Tim Walz,” D.N.C. Chairman Jaime Harrison told me Monday.

That two-step messaging might sound clunky, but what Biden is doing tonight is literally what he promised to do when he ran in 2020. To get rid of Trump, pass consequential legislation, and then hand the reins of power to a new generation of leaders—you know, be the bridge. That’s how he’ll be remembered in middle school history textbooks decades from now, and that memory will be burnished if Democrats can actually finish the job and beat back Trump once again in 77 days.

But the Democrats here in Chicago are pros, and the delegates I’ve chatted with so far are also realistic about the race. They’re elected officials, state party activists, strategists. They know how to read a poll, and that the race is very close. Delegates are in a better mood than they were earlier this summer, but they’re also not taking anything for granted.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, one of the best number-crunchers in the party, said Monday that “conventions, in presidential races, are just the starting line,” and he’s right. Michae Kapp, a D.N.C. member from California, said that while Democrats here are giddy, they’re also more focused and ready to work than they were in 2016. “It’s the same level of excitement and momentum that I’ve seen in smaller groups and over the phone and online, just with much bigger crowds,” Kapp said. “There is a willingness to take the fight to the Republicans, but no rose-colored glasses that I and many others had in Philadelphia in 2016.” Levar Stoney, the mayor of Richmond, told me that Democrats are “determined” to keep the last few weeks of momentum going. “Everything seems very business-like,” Stoney told me. “Yes, there is excitement here. But the threat of another Trump presidency hangs overhead and it has people focused like I’ve never seen before.”

These are Democratic sentiments amid a week meant to celebrate Democrats. But outside of the massive security perimeter enveloping the United Center, Republicans are aghast at what they see as fawning media coverage for Harris, and phony bandwagon enthusiasm for a nominee who was wildly unpopular until she suddenly became a phenomenon. “They pretend she hasn’t been at the center of his administration failures when everyone knows she has,” said Scott Jennings, the Republican strategist from Kentucky who is one of few Republicans bopping around town thanks to his contributor role on CNN. “Two months ago she was the laughingstock of this party and today she’s ‘an icon’ and ‘a legend?’ My god. The shamelessness is breathtaking.”