I Hope They Know What They Are Doing

 The Democrats are still trying to play fair in a very unfair game. The problem is that no one is paying attention to how clean and conciliatory the Party is at their convention. The political press would, of course, howl like mad if the left had a more prominent position and are always on the lookout for the slightest disagreement to decry "Dems in disarray". The scumbag traitors in the republican party will call any Democrat "the most liberal... socialist, baby-killer, etc" no matter the truth. The progressives like Capper will call anything that is not completely subservient to whatever his wish list includes at the moment "corporate sell-out republican lite". And the leftists who fawn over Glenn Greenwald will demand that the party be burned to the ground. Driftglass was on to something when he coined the "Democratic War on Four Fronts." These are never calmly considered criticisms made in good faith either. That said, I think the DNC is running a rather solid convention so far.

For all the moaning about having John Kasich and Colin Powell give speeches they were really only on screen for a few minutes. And the republicans speaking at the Democratic convention were brief and persuaded me that they were there because of the extraordinary circumstances, not because they were planning a hostile takeover the way the Lincoln Project is doing. Kasich's remarks were less than a page and a half long, I sometimes need more than that just to get warmed up. We can read all sorts of nefarious intentions into his appearance; or we can ignore it as a silly stunt that is unlikely to change more than a handful of votes and get back to work. AOC and Bernie Sanders made a much stronger impression on me.

Powell's speech was about the same length and hewed pretty closely to his specialization, what a commander-in-chief is supposed to do. I had a little more trouble with this for lack of any indication that he bears responsibility for lying us into Iraq. Sure, I get what the Democrats were going for, "look at our broad coalition", but sweeping the past under the rug for present-day expediency does a lot more for the republican trying to get their reputation rehabilitated than for the party trying to save democracy. And the "regular" republicans jawing about their 11th hour conversion of convenience only got a collective 1 minute and 12 seconds. They looked to be people living among polite society, the types that might be sensitive to whispers about being scumbags for supporting doughfacedonny in the first place, making the social cost of continuing to slum with the Qanon freaks and tribespeople with shit in their hair too high. Which needs to happen a lot more but who wants to live out in the boonies among them?

I keep thinking about what I learned in grade school, that after the republicans shit the bed so badly in causing the Great Depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt rallied the public with his fireside chats. A calm, reassuring voice that was both free from preconceptions about ideology and sympathetic to the real pain felt by most Americans. This convention has much the same feel. We're in the middle of both a pandemic and a depression, even if it is not openly stated, and what a lot of Americans who aren't rock-ribbed progressive ideologues need is just some reassurance that the giant obstacle blocking relief and recovery can be and will be removed by this election. Sure, you can be cynical and complain that the convention looks like an overly-scripted and produced infomercial but that's what all political conventions are now. They stopped having an actual function a long time ago and are now just a way for a party to make it's case to the voters. Running this tight ship of professional speeches given in a lot of living rooms and kitchens with no chaos and technical difficulties between acts, says "we are the grown-ups". 

It remains to be seen whether this convention style makes any difference. And Democrats still seem wrapped up in trying to impress the mainstream media, which never works, and being unifiers instead of the opposition party trying to unseat the incompetent, sadistic, corrupt fascists from power. My goal from the beginning has always been to remove republicans from power, and then push them as far away from the ability to harm Americans as possible. That would open up a lot of space to actually debate ideas, try new things, and allow regular people to organize and be part of the process. A lot of "ifs" to be sure, but we liberals haven't been able to do anything like it in a long time. Politics should not be a spectator sport and abdicating responsibility to get involved ensures you lose 100% of the time.