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. 

What Army do Never Trumpers bring?

Well, going forward, here is the blueprint for how grownups debate. How, on social media or in real life, reasonable adults who accept science, evidence, facts, and logic can have a disagreement and discuss it. Bob Cesca has a Wednesday interview show that is available on his Patreon page that is free to the public. The idea is that you will go to the Patreon page, enjoy the free content, and be moved to kick him a few dollars to help continue producing content. A great concept, this is the good side of DIY political media and we should all consider spending a little bit here and there to support independent media. And for almost the exact reason for the debate here; because mainstream corporate media is not up to the task of defending democracy and in many ways is responsible for the horrid political climate that lets republicans skate away scott free from every disaster they cause and then put them on television to cover it up and call liberals traitors, etc.

Bob had Driftglass and Blue Gal on this week. They have had a low intensity disagreement for months now over the subject of Never Trump republican conservatives. I'll give you three guesses who's side I'm on and the first two don't count. It has annoyed me to ever higher levels that Bob has taken the position that some grand coalition of liberals and never trumpers will come together to rescue democracy and get rid of #doughfacedonnny. Driftglass has intermittently called Bob out for the, God Chez Pazienza would hate me using this word, problematic nature of throwing in with never trumpers. I don't want to tear down Bob, his heart is in the right place, heck I even tried this argument before the election. "This time, just this time" don't vote republican for president, #doughfacedonny is fundamentally unfit for office in every sense of the word is what I tried to convey. But too many credulous liberals are retweeting Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, and others as though they have awoken from the multiple decades of leadership in conservative intellectual and political circles to see the error of their ways. This has to stop, these people are not your friends.

Bob clings to liberal optimistic hope that things might be, could be different this time. Hope is inherently about the future, and the future is not set. Sure it's possible that this coalition could arise, but is it likely? Is it worth the price liberals would pay by embracing people who were calling them anti-American traitors two years ago? I used to write about Bob and Chez as being akin to the subjects of my MA thesis, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. Like them, Niebuhr died earlier than Schlesinger and it is possible that the latter would have thought and wrote in different ways if the former had lived longer. Chez was a healthy voice of skepticism in the more gregarious Bob's ear and while Bob has new co-hosts who exercise some influence on him, he doesn't have that same grounding he once had before Chez died. This is the first time in a while that DG & BG have been on Bob's show and it isn't a seamless transition because they were guests on his interview show, not co-hosts with equal weight to drive the discussion. But DG & BG did present that counterargument that has been lacking on Bob's show.

I'm not finished listening to the debate. Just wanted to get something down about the show itself. The point being that this is how adults argue. This is how sensible people can disagree on something but still be on speaking terms. It's a good demonstration of what we can do if we remember that that disembodied text commenting on something you post, or a news story on a public forum is also a human being. As for the title of this post, it was something that Driftglass said about the coalition with never trumpers. The US allied with Stalin during WWII because the Soviet Union had the Red Army and was a huge asset in fighting the common foe. What do never trumpers bring? Votes, where? The death star plans to unravel their propaganda machine and deprogram all the meatheads? Even some small assurance that we won't go back to defending against grand bargains and how much to cut Social Security again once #doughfacedonny is behind bars, as Blue Gal added. The votes from these people are a rounding error, and they are simply taking opposition seats on tv news that should go to actual liberals who have been fighting trump and the fascism he represents (and republicans embody) since the beginning.