The point of the Democrats' miniseries was that Donald Trump is a horrible person and Joe Biden a good guy.
It was that Trump is a threat to the country and Joe ... well, he's a good guy.
It's that Joe empathizes with people and Trump cares about no one other than Trump.
It's that John McCain loved Biden, and Trump not so much.
In Barack Obama's view, it's that Trump doesn't take his constitutional responsibility seriously or measure up to it, but Joe would.
The Democrats avoided depth on specific issues, because it was a convention, sort of, and the left and the further left tend to break down over specifics. And the Republicans are expert at pouncing on Democratic policy positions to brand the Democrats scary.
Democrats went with what they could all agree on and the one thing with which swing voters might be inclined to kind of agree. It is that Trump is not a good person or stable leader.
Polls must have indicated that the effective focus was on the demon Trump and that the party's identity-politics imperatives were problematic and should be dispensed within a checklist with nods to Blacks, Hispanics and gays and transgender persons.
The polls clearly indicate that the essential Democratic appeal to women gets absorbed in the attacks on the bad character and infantility of Trump. Mothers often have a keen eye for bullies and brats.
The parade of Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren reinforced the message that Democrats own the vanguard for female political prominence. Maybe a couple of those women--by whom I mean Obama and possibly Harris--connected with suburban women who voted for Trump last time but don't want to do it again if only the Democrats will show them something.
And what the Democratic convention attempted to show them was that Americans have deep worries and woes and Trump is incapable of empathy, but Joe is all broken out with empathy.
It's that John Kasich likes him and McCain loved him and Barack Obama came to call him brother, after once remarking early in their partnership--or so it has been reported--that no one should underestimate Joe's ability to mess things up.
Sometimes no-drama Obama wanted Joe to dial back the effusiveness.
There was the day Obama intended to celebrate the passage of the Affordable Care Act in his serious way and Joe, in presenting him, celebrated in his own style too close to the microphone and said that what was happening was a blanking big deal, except he didn't say blanking.
Obama's view of Biden is that the occasional cringe proved worth it.
So, to put the Democrats' television event in perspective: Good political talents with engaging personal stories and polished speaking skills--that's a Democratic advantage. That Trump is a monstrosity and Biden clearly empathetic and decent--that's a Democratic advantage.
But the real human power was provided by former Democratic representative Gabby Giffords and 13-year-old Brayden Harrington.
The Giffords moment may not linger, because gun reform somehow may not rank among the top half-dozen issues, probably because Biden would rather not go into rural Pennsylvania and talk about it.
Giffords was shot in the head with an uncontrolled gun, somehow surviving with damage to her ability to conceive and make words. Yet there she was, playing the National Anthem on the French horn and delivering remarks with arduous clarity.
She said words were a struggle but that she did not lose her voice, and that Joe Biden had been there for her.
The young Harrington told of and bravely revealed his stutter and said that Biden, a childhood stutterer, encouraged and counseled him.
In both cases, the message was metaphorical. It was that all of you are struggling, but you still have your voices, so use them for the candidate who has suffered hardship and tragedy and persevered and thus empathizes.
It was very good TV. Whether it's a prevailing political message is only the question of our time.
I suspect the point of the GOP convention will be that Trump is near-deity, for no reason other than that Trump will insist on that.
And it will be that Joe is a pliable guy in his dotage who has fallen in with a bad crowd of much-younger people who are leftist threats to the America we must make great again.
The GOP theme will be that suburban women--"housewives," as the president without empathy calls them--need to fret less about Trump's tweets and more about the safety of their families when Democrats let the rioters run free and defund the police.
Last week's mini-series was "Democratic Empathy." This week's will be "Democratic Dystopia."
Ratings will be out in November.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.