Count me among those who would vote for a box of rocks before supporting Donald Trump's attempt to get back into the White House. I gave up listing the reasons why I loathe this guy years ago when it dawned on me that nobody would get as far as he has gotten without a good number of enablers. Since then I've tired of the many well-intentioned folk who work full-time generating outrage over his latest show of ignorance, cruelty or insensitivity. Stop beating a dead horse, I want to say. Put your energy where it can do some good. Forget the meanness, get out of the dark side, focus on the decency and integrity that still exists all around us.
I had not been much of a Kamala Harris fan before it became clear that Biden was likely to lose to Trump in the November election and it was time for drastic measures. I was all set to send my widow's mite to whoever the Democratic Party would pick to replace him. Kamala has managed to bring in half a billion dollars in what, one month? since she took over, so I'm feeling like a tightwad, but my inbox fills with a hundred requests for cash every day, so I want some indication that my contribution will be more than a good luck token, divided fifty ways. I'm real cynical about the American way of running elections, and the fact that in the U.S. it's the rich who call all the shots. I am also tempted to simply jump on the bandwagon to eliminate the Electoral College but have to admit I don't have a tight grasp on the difference between FPTP (first past the post) arguments, which support it, and the PR (proportional representation) arguments, which are agin it. At least I'm less ambivalent about the fight to get big money out of politics. I lost all respect for the Supreme Court way before they threw out Roe v. Wade, back when they gave us Citizen United, giving legal weight to the notion that rich people are more important in America than poor people.
All of this as a way of saying that until a week ago I was pretty cynical about national politics and followed it only casually. I am not particularly knowledgeable, and have been more anti-Trump than pro-anybody in particular.
But then came the Democratic Convention. At the risk of exposing my belly to the wolves, I am going to admit that I have become an enthusiastic supporter of the Harris/Walz ticket. More than a little. I'm ready to beat the drum. I am too old to travel to Nevada or Arizona to knock on doors, and remain grouchy about the belief that my ability to contribute to political campaigns can make a dent, but I am now ready at least to bore the socks off of anybody in a crowd who might want to hear what I think about American politics. I'm happy to share my views about the choice between somebody way more than decent and somebody way less so. Between somebody who will support the Ukrainian effort to push the Russian invaders out of their country and somebody who thinks the Russians should be able to "do whatever the hell they want." Between somebody who believes a person's right to determine what they do with their body and somebody who believes the government has a duty to punish doctors who aid women in distress who have been raped by a parent or sibling or who have learned they are carrying a nonviable fetus.
Richard Reich has a clear explanation for what a party convention is these days. Originally it was a conference to bring attention to the many candidates vying for the job and make a case for each. It was an actual contest, not unlike a beauty or talent contest. In recent times, and especially this year, it has evolved into a giant "infomercial," an occasion for "selling" the candidate chosen by insiders to the public. When leading democrats were able to convince Biden that the signs were clear that he couldn't win in November, he was persuaded to step aside. The fact that he did so is evidence that he has the strength of character to put country ahead of party and self. Gainsayers are trying to cast shade on this, claiming he was "pushed." But Biden himself has never even hinted that that was the case. On the contrary, he still holds the leadership of the Democratic Party. I think he is rightly celebrated by the party as a hero, and not a victim here.
The party then had to face a second important decision: who to replace him with. Biden's choice was Kamala Harris. This made sense because technically that would have her do what she was elected to do: step in if Biden could no longer do the job. It also made sense pragmatically; given how close the polls show the election is likely to be, for Democrats to scrabble over a successor would surely have not been in their best interest.
Republicans have lost the decency and integrity they once had, exchanged their souls for power and wealth to a proto-fascist Pied Piper with little to no regard for truth or traditional American values. He appeals to the unfortunately large number of Americans who are convinced we need to tear down government and start over. Democrats, in contrast, tend to believe it is in the nature of democracy to tinker endlessly at the machine, replacing worn parts and discarding dysfunctional ones. Traditional Republicans are still to be found, but they occupy back seats and no longer have a voice in what goes on. The mainstream of the party are not remotely conservative any more, but rather ideological enablers of a self-serving power structure which has put their political organization on a path dangerously close to the path taken by the Germans in the last days of the Weimar Republic. My father was a proud Republican. For him Republican stood for standing on your own two feet, accepting personal responsibility, for honesty, integrity and for putting in a good day's work. I can only imagine what he'd say if he saw his party now in the hands of Christian nationalists and oligarchs whose hold on power depends on misinformation, swallows outright brazen lies by their leader, voter suppression, gerrymandering and minority control in all three branches of a government maintained and manipulated by fear and anger.
The contrast between the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention couldn't have been more stark and the split today between the mindsets of the two parties couldn't be more extreme. The RNC coasted along on fear and anger, the DNC on a sense of possibility. The purpose of the infomercial was to convince Americans they not only could but should allow themselves to shake off the long period of dread and bring out of the closet the concept of joy. Trump was upset by Harris's laugh. I doubt he was aware of what he was accomplishing by this attempt to detract; his remarks only served to underline the sense of relief - to the point of euphoria - that extended right to the top of the ticket. Democrats love her contagious laugh.
I don't know who deserves the credit for putting on this fantastic show. They pulled out all the stops. Partied from start to finish. Music, dance, hand-clapping and joyous speechifying. I remember how I used to cringe at the hokiness of a political convention. This time I looked at the candidates from Wisconsin wearing hats shaped like cheddar cheese and saw it not as dumb but as playful. The drawn-out roll calls where each state got to give a shout-out to its best-known native sons and daughters didn't come across as chauvinistic but as a well-deserved display of pride. And the accompaniment by a DJ and by rapper Lil Jon to help it along didn't hurt. The cumulative effect, when it was over, was to feel a sense of national unity and comfort in diversity.
Several highlights still remain in my mind: Adam Kinzinger telling Republicans that they needed to vote with Democrats until their party could be regained; Michelle Obama getting back at Trump for his insensitivity in calling the jobs illegal aliens are commonly limited to "black jobs" with one of the best come-back slap-downs of all time. "Who's going to tell him," she asked, "that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those 'black' jobs?"
Then there was the rapturous welcome the crowd gave to President Biden; Barack Obama showed he could keep up with his wife in slapping the Donald down. "There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes," he said, mimicking Trump's habit of moving his hands in an out as if playing an accordion to show size. By now the audience is familiar with all the talk about Trump's small hands and the allegation that it signals a small penis. At least that's what late-night comedians have made of the habit, and nobody missed the reference. Remember, we're talking not about a "may the best man win" contest but a Hollywood style entertainment program where foul language and sex references are now very much part of the scene.
Elizabeth Warren said of Trump and Vance, "I wouldn't trust those guys to move my couch." Melania Trump's aide, Stephanie Grisham, came out for Harris because, she said, Trump has "no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth." Vice President Pence's one-time aide, Olivia Troye, told her fellow Republicans, "You're not voting for a Democrat. You're voting for democracy....You're not betraying our party. You're standing up for our country."
The primary purpose of the infomercial was to stress the character of the new and unfamiliar party leaders, and here's where the script writers more than earned their pay. Kamala's speech was a textbook model for public speaking, perfectly constructed, and perfectly delivered. In contrast to her black-suit-no-pearls self-presentation, her husband, Doug Emhoff came across as warm and fuzzy, a husband and father to make anyone proud. I resonated personally with his description of their family as a blend of cultures and traditions. He goes with her to church; she makes a mean brisket dinner on Passover, he tells us.
But the pièce de résistance, the four-handkerchief moment of the final session was when Tim Walz got up to speak and began by telling the audience that his wife and daughter and son were his whole life. Gus, his seventeen-year-old son rose to his feet, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he could be heard to shout out, "That's my Dad!"
The moment turned out to be a Rorschach Test. Anybody who loves love could spot it as a spontaneous expression of affection for a father by a boy with learning limitations. A handful of loveless creatures like the stone-faced, stone-hearted and unloveable Ann Coulter made fun of the kid. When condemnation came down on them like the wrath of God, they withdrew their statements. It was too late; their character has been revealed and will be part of their legacy. One guy - I don't want to take the time to look up his name - made some remark about the kid not being manly. "Remember, Republicans," he was saying, "real men don't cry."
Sorry, jerk. People who are overcome with emotion and affection sometimes do. How many of us, if presented with a father telling the world he loves you in front of a combined television and live audience of 30 million people, plus those who watched it on YouTube and cable, that you are his whole world, would not cry, I ask you. I think it would take an Ann Coulter heart not to.
The show's over. I can now get back to Netflix and Amazon Prime binge-watching. Maybe do some postcard writing for Kamala and Tim Walz.
And you'll have to forgive me if my chauvinism shows through now and again. If you are not familiar with San Francisco Bay Area geography you may not know that Berkeley and Oakland are, in effect, a single East Bay entity, so when she tells the world she was born in Oakland, I get to grin from ear to ear. I live in Berkeley, six blocks from the Oakland line and spend more time in Oakland than I do in Berkeley, to shop, to see a doctor, to go out to eat, to visit friends. Kamala was born in Oakland and lived in the flats in Berkeley and started school at Thousand Oaks, just north of Solano Avenue in Berkeley. I was there not too long ago to attend a performance by the son of the woman who used to clean my house. Very local. Very familiar. Very much home folk.
The kind of thing that makes me smile.
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