Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic Convention Address Analyzed

Although Walter Mondale was resoundingly defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1984, Mario Cuomo's opening address to the Democratic convention that same year remains indelibly imprinted in the minds of all those who heard it — and those who re-hear it today. It is a clarion cry for a different vision of America and a demand that all the voices of Americans be heard. In an era when liberals were often criticized as anti-American, Cuomo makes inventive use of that notion, reversing common tropes of patriotism. As someone who believes in the American Dream, Cuomo argues he must therefore support a more progressive vision than the one currently on offer. He supports an America where all citizens are cared for — not simply a race in which only the strongest are rewarded.

He recalls stirring images from America's past to render this point: "We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees" (Cuomo 1984). The great American president who led the nation through World War II and created socially progressive programs to liberate America from the Great Depression was himself, Cuomo reminds us, weak in his own way.

In the arrangement of his text, Cuomo's speech begins with a reasoned but fierce attack on the ruling administration. As a supporter of the challenger, it is his job as a speaker to make the case for why Americans should vote a new president into office. "But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate" (Cuomo 1984).

Cuomo dwells upon the middle class as well as the poor to illustrate that the Democrats are indeed part of mainstream America and speak for most of its citizens.