The DNC

So we have passed through the 2020 Democratic National Convention, or the first stage of bowel movements in the Taco Bell overload that is a presidential campaign season.

These are some of my impressions:

I seem to be in the minority, but I think the whole thing would have been better if Julia-Louis Dreyfus had been hosting every night. Now, with the “reconciliation” theme they seemed to be going with, I can see why they wouldn’t want the star of the notoriously acerbic and foul-mouthed Veep on stage the whole time, but some rage at the political clusterfuck is totally justified, and her tone was a nice balance to the overall sweetness of the whole affair.

The DNC got substantially worse ratings than it did in 2016, which frankly stands to reason, because as with so many other media events in the age of coronavirus, it loses something without a crowd. On the other hand, media observers really liked what they saw. This isn’t a contradiction. These duopoly political conventions have been nothing more than “infomercials” advertising a result that was pre-determined by primaries for years. This year, the Democrats actually worked with that, with taped musical pieces and other media events that are designed more for TV than a live audience. This extended to the traditional roll call of states announcing their delegates, which were done by remote on location from the actual states. This played well on camera and a lot of critics thought that they should make this change permanent.

Substantively, the need to play to the “cool” medium also affected the speeches given by the headliners, such that few people (other than Kamala Harris) tried the traditional approach of speaking at a lectern with a set of timed applause lines. I think this change born of necessity worked very well. And it worked best for the final speech of Joe Biden, who is no one’s idea of a master orator.

But at one point, Biden said: “I have some idea how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens up in the middle of your chest and you feel like you’re being sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes. But I’ve learned two things: First, your loved one may have left this earth, but they’ll never leave your heart. They’ll always be with you. You’ll always hear them.”

Now, I don’t care who you are, or if you believe in an afterlife, but that just hits home.

Joe Biden’s people keep using certain terms to praise him: “Empathy.” “He listens.” “He knows what it’s like.” Joe Biden and his family keep referring to the death of his son Beau, and the earlier death of his first wife and daughter, because he still seems to feel that loss, and it still seems to inform him. And I think that a lot of people are going to gravitate to that, especially at this point in time.

You could be cynical and say that Biden is just milking the sympathy factor, but if you really want to be cynical, the fact is that he CAN and he DOES.

You could never see Donald Trump making a similar appeal on the basis of personal confession – or at least, it wouldn’t be as convincing – because Donald Trump has invested so much of his life and his public image in playing the invincible Sun King, moving from victory to victory, who never has anything bad happen to him. Bad things only happen to those other people. This despite the fact that Trump HAS had his own tragedies, like the death of his parents from lingering illness, or the recent death of his brother, but I don’t he could gain as much sympathy from the average voter with such a confession of loss. Especially since Trump’s main coping mechanism seems to be golfing.

And that goes towards something that Barack Obama said in his DNC speech: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.” Trump is fundamentally lazy and stupid, and he has become that much lazier and stupider by his unbroken chain of success, because he has never had to learn how to change course, and now that events have finally turned against him and he needs to change his approach, he doesn’t know how.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t keep at least half an eye on the Republican National Convention, if only for the “Bearded Lady and Jo-Jo The Dogfaced Boy” factor of watching Nick Sandmann from the Lincoln Memorial standoff, and the Mr. and Mrs. Karen who stood outside their home with firearms during a Black Lives Matter protest this June. To say nothing of even more ridiculous speakers, such as Matt Gaetz, Joni Ernst, and of course, Donald Trump.

Somehow I doubt their sky-is-falling cluckings that Western Civilization is DOOOOMED if we don’t goosestep in line behind Trump will appeal to a country that has already had the sky fall on them under Trump.

In fact, there are already signs that Trump’s big strategy to pinch out a victory – cheat by cutting off mail service – may be backfiring. It not only motivates Democrats to find other ways to vote, it unnecessarily angers traditional Republican demographics who may not even want to vote by mail but who still have to get deliveries to rural areas that UPS and FedEx normally don’t cover. And thus if Trump can’t turn things around – and the whole reason things are still this bad is that he cannot or will not change course – then the November attempt to contest the election will go just as well as the attempt to sabotage the Post Office, and Trump will end up commandeering Air Force One for a one-way trip to Moscow, after first looting all the White House silverware.

Look: I am a cynic. I am NOT a liberal. I have more in common with the Republicans than with the people that Democrats normally pitch to, which is part of why this year’s DNC spent so much more time on the NeverTrumpers than the “progressives” who are already aligned with Democrats. And I have no confidence that Joe Biden has any real ability to contain the coronavirus or to rebuild the economy that Trump decimated. But the first day that Joe Biden is president will be the first day that Donald Trump is NOT president, and that in itself will do wonders for our nation’s recovery.