Does anybody remember laughter?
– Robert Plant, The Song Remains The Same
It is a truism that a major party’s political convention immediately boosts its standing in the polls for the general election. That was not as much the case for the Democrats in 2020, because they were observing COVID quarantine, and even with Republicans conspicuously avoiding quarantine for their convention, the mood was down, and their clumsy deification of Viceroy Trump didn’t help. And believe it or not, they went even further in that direction this year, and given that Trump almost got shot to death just the weekend before, it almost worked. But then he nominated would-be populist Senator JD Vance (BR.-Ohio) as his running mate, and then everybody realized he had no appeal outside the Trump base, and maybe not even with them.
And then, in the wake of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and Trump’s successful Jesus Christ Pose, President Biden actually agreed to do what people were telling him to do: Give up the campaign and switch endorsement to his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris. And that gave the Democrats a kick, despite her lack of popularity and prominence up to then, because it was no longer a choice between two tired old white guys, either of whom might kick the bucket before 2028. And then, Harris chose as her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who presents as a regular Midwestern guy much more successfully than JD Vance does, because unlike Vance, he IS a regular Midwestern guy. Not only that, he’s the guy who went on cable TV and casually described the Republicans as “weird”, and that’s somehow shifted the perception of them more than anything the Democrats have tried in over eight years.
And because of all that, whatever very slight momentum Trump/Vance might have had in the wake of their convention has completely evaporated, with Harris/Walz now leading in national polls and competitive in swing states that Biden was losing. And going into the Democratic National Convention, all the delegates that were previously won for the Biden/Harris campaign pledged themselves to Harris. So the question here is did this month’s convention give the Democrats the kick they needed to propel them to national victory in November?
Because to review, there is only ONE question that matters in the general election: Do you want Big Chief Ook-Ook Gorilla (formally known as Donald Trump) to be your absolute monarch, or do you want Trump to go to prison?
Those are the only choices, because Trump himself will allow no others. Because his own pride will not allow him to just peacefully retire like Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush. And because he has committed too many crimes, especially national security crimes, to be allowed to run free. And because he will not stop committing crimes, because he is a pathological criminal. It is patently obvious that Trump is running for president just to stay out of jail, and that means he has to be president for the rest of his life, term limits be damned. And because when the Supreme Court gave us Trump vs. United States, they enabled the President to commit any crime as an “official act” because they knew that if Donald Trump is back in office, he will not stop committing crimes. And when they used language that the president can act in ways ‘incompatible with the expressed or implied will of the Congress’, they are making it clear that the modern Right’s concept of government, Trump or no Trump, is explicitly at odds with the Constitution.
Stopping Trump is the ONLY thing that matters. Every other consideration, like, the fact that the cost of living is skyrocketing under Bidenomics and Kamala’s price controls are not going to help, is secondary. This is about whether we’re even going to HAVE an economy. This is about whether you’re even going to be alive. Or did you forget how many people died in 2020 from Trump Virus? ™
Night 1
It’s hard to say if there was an organizing theme to each night, the way the RNC was organized around one night being “Make America Safe Again” and another night being “Make America Monochromatic Christian Again” or whatever. In this case the DNC seemed to be organized simply around its keynote speakers for each night. It would have been Joe Biden concluding the convention with his acceptance speech, but of course that decision was made. So they gave him the keynote speech of the night, basically to confirm that he IS still the president of the United States and official leader of the Party – but things are moving on.
I wanted to listen to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ speech, but I couldn’t get through it. Actually, from what I’ve read of AOC and seen of her interviews, she’s one of the sharpest people in politics right now, but her voice creates a certain amount of dissonance. Basically she sounds like one of those squeaky Gnomes from World of Warcraft. Really, imagine her saying “You have a great day now!”
During the evening, Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow brought out a gigantic prop, which was an oversized copy of the 900-page Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” document drawn up by conservatives. In fact, the DNC brought this up a lot. In fact, they even had Kenan Thompson from Saturday Night Live come on with the book Wednesday and interviewing people on video call to ask if they knew about some of its provisions, like eliminating civil protections for LGBTQ people. In fact, the DNC did a lot more to highlight the prominence of the Project 2025 mandate in their event than the RNC did the month before. Why is that, anyway?
They had several union guys come on to testify that Trump is a “scab” (which he is) and would be bad for labor, as anybody who heard his conference with Elon Musk could confirm. Most of the union guys who spoke were all wearing T-Shirts to the convention. This is a trend I can get behind.
However they also had a brief surprise moment where Kamala Harris made an appearance on the convention floor to give a brief speech. Given how this resembles Trump’s need to monopolize his own conventions, this is a trend I cannot get behind.
The other big event other than Biden himself was the speech from multi-accomplished former Trump opponent Hillary Clinton. Which, given the circumstances, was very much an “I told you so” thing, even if she was fairly gracious in saying that this was Harris’ moment to break the glass ceiling. Clinton still comes off as Pantsuit Palpatine to me, but it is testimony to Trump’s cosmic scale of evil and incompetence that she seems that much better a choice in retrospect.
At the end of all this, they had Joe Biden’s family members (not Hunter) come on to give remarks, and then President Biden come on for his bowing out speech. And the massive crowd held it up with cheers like “Thank You Joe!” Eventually, he proceeded, and you could see why it’s been decided that Joe is too old for politics, like the fact that he couldn’t look at the right camera most of the time. But his speech was at least as good as the last State of the Union, and when he recited the poem ending, “America, I gave my best to you!” that was a truly great moment.
Night 2
The main event in what passes for actual business in a major party convention is the roll call of the various states and territories, announcing their delegates and formally nominating the president and vice president. That was Tuesday. It is of course a total formality (like the entire national convention) when everything is decided in advance, but parties still keep this tradition because it allows people to come up and promote their state with speeches like, “Mr. Secretary, from the great State of Nevada, home of Reno, the biggest small town in the world, home of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste suppository, and home of Las Vegas, the only city in the world where the hookers give out discount coupons.”
But this time, in addition to the secretary announcing the roll call, the DNC had an innovation: A DJ, who was dressed in a shiny blue suit and giant sunglasses like a gay Paul Shaffer. If that isn’t redundant. And this meant that each state got its own theme music, like Florida getting Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”, Idaho getting the B-52s’ “Your Own Private Idaho” and of course, Nevada getting the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” The DJ party also set the stage for the surprise appearance of Lil’ Jon introducing the delegation for Georgia. The Democratic National Convention: Turn Down For WHUT?
The headline speakers of the night were both Michelle and Barack Obama, very appropriately, because while they are now old enough to be among the party elders with Biden and the Clintons, they remain as effective as ever on the podium. So after an emotive, call-and-response speech by Michelle, she introduced Barack, and by that point, the crowd were in his words “fired up” and “ready to go.” And not only did Barack Obama, like Biden, give an effective testimonial on the values and accomplishments of the Democratic Party, he peppered the speech with remarks (and at least one visual gag) belittling Trump. To me, Obama’s money quote was “We do not need four more years of bumbling, and bluster, and chaos, we have seen that movie before, and we know the sequel is usually worse.”
Which kinda brings up the question of what we would call Trump’s second term in office.
Trump 2: Electric Boogaloo
Trump II: The Wrath of the Con
Trump: The Secret of the Ooze
Abbott & Costello Meet Trump/Vance
Night 3
This night was the set up for Tim Walz to accept the Vice Presidential nomination. And the main attraction other than Walz himself was former President Bill Clinton, who is like Obama considered one of the great orators of the Democrats. Well, he was. Sorry, but good ol’ Bill’s voice is almost as shot as Robert Kennedy Jr’s, even if he’s clearly more on the ball than either Biden or Trump. Although I did like the part where he mentioned that Harris’ career in customer service made her the only presidential candidate who’s been in McDonald’s more than he has.
At least most of the speeches Wednesday were fairly brief, compared to Night 1. These included the aforementioned Thompson, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Andy Kim, New Jersey Congressman and Senate candidate most famous for volunteering to clean up the broken glass in the Capitol after the January 6 insurrection, and former Mike Pence staffer Olivia Troye. Along with the numerous other celebrities like Stevie Wonder who appeared, you had a central speech by Chicago’s own Oprah Winfrey, and while she pointed out that she was an independent, she made it very clear who she was voting for. In big, booming PRO-NOUN-Ci-A-TIOOONNS. Basically, Oprah was there to BE Oprah, and she did a very good job of that.
Before they had Tim Walz on, they brought on the players from the Mankato West High School football team where he’d served as an assistant coach, helping win the state championship in 1999.
Walz continues to come across as more approachable than most people in politics, including both Biden and Harris, let alone any of the Republicans. And in his speech, he continued to lean into his background, invoking his players as he gave a literal pep talk, saying that the Democrats are in the last play of the fourth quarter, down by a field goal, but they’ve got the ball. Like most of this convention, his speech did what it had to do.
To me, the two things that sold Tim Walz to me at least as much as his speech were: one, his son openly going crazy to see his Dad accept the nomination, and two, after the event, the Minnesota delegation stayed around for several minutes to wave giant cardboard Tim Walz heads, which I believe is a They Might Be Giants reference.
Night 4
And then of course we had the night for Kamala Harris. And there weren’t quite as many big names and they didn’t speak for quite as long. You had Senators Bob Casey and then Elizabeth Warren. The kind of person who would raise a cheer for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Al Sharpton came on with another one of the great visuals of the week, introducing four of “the Exonerated Five”, who had been arrested on suspicion of a violent rape in New York in 1989, at which point the media-seeking Donald Trump took out full page newspaper ads demanding the death penalty. The men were at one point convicted but then released years later when DNA evidence traced the act to a completely different man. But Trump has never apologized for his action, because reasons.
As cap off to the continuing parade of Republicans coming to the DNC to commit heresy against Our Lord and Savior, we had former Republican Congressman – from Illinois – Adam Kinziger come on. He said, “You never thought you’d see me here, did you?” And he told his fellow Republicans, “The Democrats are as patriotic as us.” (At which point the crowd chanted ‘U-S-A!’) And he made the direct point: The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It is a party in service to “a small man pretending to be big … a perpetrator pretending to be a victim.” There is a distinction between conservative and Republican because “Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party.” And he mentioned Ukraine and foreign policy, which a lot of observers have noted were not big subjects in the previous three days. And he said, “Democracy knows no party.” Well, the Constitution doesn’t, anyway.
We had another visual with Marine and Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego appearing with a bunch of other veterans – including disabled Senator Tammy Duckworth – to present a contrast with Trump, who has praised our enemies and called veterans “suckers.” And after a bunch of other brief speeches, and testimonials on gun violence, and celebrity appearances, including Pink, they had Harris come on around 9:40 Central Time. And while I am not a big fan of her slow, almost preachy delivery, she hit all the right points.
She pointed out that not only is she now in a blended family (with Doug Emhoff and his children) but was raised by a single mom after her dad left and was raised partially with the help of a lot of other people who were not blood relatives. And that’s a situation a lot of Americans can relate to.
Harris made her case that in her California career, prior to becoming a US Senator, she was a prosecutor, and “for my entire career, I have had only one client, The People.” And this eventually placed her in contrast to Trump, whose only client has been himself.
She pointed out that Trump in the first half of his term did try to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, an Obama policy that was actually popular. She promised a middle-class tax cut (we’ll see) and she pointed out that Trump’s plan for a broad based tariff on goods is a “Trump Tax” that would pass down to all consumers. (Would that Democrats would admit that ALL taxes on production get passed down to the consumer. But it’s not like the Trump Republican Party is in position to argue that.)
She pointed out that in this country, pregnant women have developed sepsis and conditions that will prevent them from ever being able to give birth again, specifically because their states no longer allow abortion, which is a direct result of Dobbs vs. Mississippi, the Supreme Court decision that Trump frequently brags would not have been possible without his Court appointments. She also says that Trump is planning on a national abortion ban and other agendas like ending the Department of Education – which Trump has not explicitly endorsed, but many of his political backers have.
Harris said: “And let me be clear: After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you: As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.”
She pointed out that while she, and Biden, have sought to preserve America’s strength and alliances abroad, “Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could ‘do whatever the hell they want.” She acknowledged the rights of both Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.
She said, “Our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is. Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are; you show them who you are.” She wound up saying “It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith: to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish, and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth—the privilege and pride of being an American. So, let’s get out there. Let’s fight for it. Let’s get out there. Let’s vote for it. And together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”
It worked.
Conclusions
You may have noticed that I generally don’t have a high impression of Democrats. I am not a liberal. I vote Democrat only to stop Republicans. But that’s okay, I don’t need to have a high impression of Democrats. The problem is my impression of the American voter is even lower. After all, Trump DID win once, and 2020 was a lot closer than it ought to have been, with Republicans winning a lot of downballot races and then taking back the House in 2022. If things are as close as they were in 2000, we will get another Bush vs. Gore, and this Supreme Court is that much more nakedly biased towards Republicans than that Court was. If it doesn’t go there, Republicans can still try to move a contested Electoral College result to the House of Representatives, where according to Constitutional rules the votes are by state delegation, meaning Republicans will have a majority.
The only way to prevent that is actually to do what Biden did: win enough states by wide enough margins that the Trumpniks can’t whine and bitch and steal the election result in all of them. And even then, Trump tried to take the government by force, though I assume that will be harder now that Biden-Harris are running Washington and not Trump.
So if it seems like my analysis of these speeches is on the optics and how all of this is perceived, it’s because that’s the whole point. It all comes down to perceptions. For better or worse, a Harris Administration is not really going to have different policies than the Biden Administration. So what changed, and why the change? Because everyone thought that Biden was lost and confused at the Trump debate, and he probably was, but that could be because he was actually trying to make sense of Trump’s continual Gish Gallop instead of staying on message. This whole change is about perception. The idea that the implementation of policy is going to be different under a young, female Kamala Harris as opposed to a visibly aged representative of last century’s career politicians.
And in the sense of optics, I return to one of those quotes from Harris’ speech: “Never let anyone tell you who you are; you show them who you are.” Because that’s how a senile career criminal like Trump could smear Biden as crooked and senile, and do it so well that people are actually blaming him for everything bad that happened in his term, including Roe vs. Wade getting overturned. The fact that Harris was under the radar for most of Biden’s term actually turns out to be an advantage here, because Trump was so invested in branding Biden and forcing him to play his game that he never considered Harris and now she has the opportunity to set the agenda, and she has.
In that regard, it’s that much more remarkable that the DNC went as smoothly as it did given that they basically had to redo the whole thing from scratch after primary season while making sure that the delegates already pledged to Biden moved over to Harris. The professional, dramatic presentation with lots and lots of celebrities indicates that the kind of people who know how to put on a show were very helpful in regard to arranging things. You could say this is just another example of liberal Hollywood and liberal musicians showing their bias for the Democrats. Or, you could say this is the media doing penance for foisting Donald Trump on us in the first place by taking a multiple-bankrupt investor and presenting him as an actual billionaire through the premise of “reality TV”, two words that do not belong in the same galaxy, let alone the same concept.
As of the weekend, most of the polls state by state are still within the margin of error, and RFK Jr. has decided to endorse Trump. Not like the Fauci-engineered-mind-control-nanobots-in-the-vaccine-for-George-Soros crowd were going to be voting for Harris anyway. But every vote matters. If Harris is going to have a chance to stop Trump, she needs to keep the initiative and keep Trump on the defensive. Fortunately this Democratic National Convention shows that she and her team know how to organize an agenda, and that is good news for the coming stretch, and hopefully for a future Harris Administration.