Did you detect a theme at the DNC? An underappreciated story from the DNC convention last week was how Democrats finally seemed to get their messaging act together. Speeches at the DNC convention that ended Thursday night dwelled less on Donald Trump and his many crimes and miserable plans for this country. Democrats focused more on where they want to take America and everyone in it. As Vice President Kamala Harris said in her acceptance speech Thursday night, “we have so much more in common than what separates us.” Freedom was the central theme of the convention. Freedom is a core American value. For conventioneers and viewers slow on the uptake, Beyoncé’s “Freedom” regularly blasted the United Center as a bumper between program segments. Throughout the four-day convention, speakers invoked freedom not as an abstraction or as justification for stockpiling weapons. Democrats embraced freedom as the expression of personal and family autonomy, freedom as the catalyst for realizing people’s hopes and dreams for a better future. It was a sharp pivot from President Joe Biden’s emphasis on saving the nation from “clear and present threats to our very democracy.” But people facing more immediate concerns of paying monthly bills and feeding their families have less bandwidth for saving democracy than members of the political class. Harris chose to energize her base with an uplifting message of where their dreams might take them rather than doomsaying about a second Trump term and the end of the United States as we know…