Biden Went on Late. Democrats Offered a Culprit: ‘Raucous Applause.’

A performance by James Taylor? Cut. Tribute video? Shelved. President Biden’s speech? Started late and ended in the wee hours of the East Coast morning.

And the reason, Democratic organizers insisted on Tuesday, was simple and heartening: Everyone was having entirely too much fun.

“Because of the raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people,” read an after-the-fact explanation from officials in charge of the Democratic National Convention, who declined to be quoted by name.

Coordinating the moving parts of a live telecast is no one’s idea of an easy assignment. And while Mr. Biden ultimately emerged at 11:25 p.m. Eastern, after the bedtimes of millions of voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, it was still a respectable dinner hour for many undecided Arizonans and Nevadans.

Still, history shows that applause is a common element of national political conventions. Party delegates have a tendency to cheer, sometimes raucously.

“That’s sort of the thing,” the news anchor Anderson Cooper said on CNN, “that you build in.”

When Mr. Cooper read aloud the “raucous applause” excuse, a smile crept over his anchor’s mien. “We have had conventions before,” he said, amusedly, as his co-host Audie Cornish laughed.