The Democrats’ Mixed Messages
Bearing my cross like the good book counsels us to do, I watched most of the Democratic National Convention last week. Reflecting the party as a whole, it was a mélange of mixed messages.
Back in 2020, the party’s leaders intervened during the primary in order to stop a Bernie Sanders’ victory. Right before Super Tuesday, they rallied around Joe Biden, the excuse being that he could win because he was a likable moderate from Pennsylvania.
Close to the working man and filled with empathy, this invented campaign persona bore little resemblance to Biden or his presidency. It was a classic “bait and switch.” Once in office, he quickly revealed that he was not really up to the task, and he turned the keys over to the highly ideological and cunning bureaucrats running the federal agencies.
He also opened up the gates of federal spending, continuing COVID stimulus payments long after they ceased to be necessary. This all contributed greatly to persistent inflation.
Are These Good Times or Bad?
One problem with the entire narrative of the DNC is that the Democrats can’t decide if we’re in trouble or if things are hunky dory. Sometimes they say the economy is great and that we are all too dumb to notice, but they also say that the middle class is being destroyed and they’re going to help people pursue the American Dream. Kamala has a list of things she is going to do on “day one” to help the middle class, but she does not have a good explanation for why they have not been done already.
Because of the inherent contradictions in their account of the recent past—particularly the meaning of Biden’s term—they have retreated into schlock. In speaker after speaker at the DNC, a gauzy sentimentalism ruled the day. Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and Tim Walz all talked about “civility” and “joy” and “family” and “how far the country has come.” Who can argue with that?
Barack Obama said he wants to “return to an America where we work together and look out for each other,” seemingly oblivious to his role in destroying national unity by cheering on Black Lives Matter extremists beginning in 2014. Michelle Obama spoke about how “all children, all people have value. That anyone can succeed [in America] if given the opportunity.” Tim Walz added his own glittering generalities, expressing his “commitment to the common good, an understanding that we’re all in this together, and the belief that a single person can make a real difference for their neighbors.”
These sentimental remarks were sometimes interspersed with radicalism, but the radicalism was always accompanied by a big smile. Michelle Obama claimed that “no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American,” meaning, I suppose, that whoever swims across the Rio Grande or overstays a visa can decide for himself. Tim Walz said, “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.” In plain English, he is coming for the AR-15. What does the Second Amendment even mean to people like this?
The rhetoric was empty and banal all around, but I’ll concede most of the speakers delivered their remarks well, particularly the Obamas, in notable contrast to the last four garbled years under Biden and the impending rhetorical catastrophe whenever Kamala is untethered from a teleprompter.
Democrats’ Policies; Disunity and Incivility
Multiple speakers emphasized the fraying bonds of community that once buffered partisan excess. But these remarks had a deceptive quality. It is as though Democrats want to paper over the radical changes that the left has inflicted on our public morality and recast the conservative rear-guard opposition as revolutionary.
They changed laws on marriage, added unassimilable aliens from Somalia and Afghanistan to previously safe neighborhoods, conducted social engineering via school bussing, foisted soft-on-crime policies in cities, attacked our basic understanding of who is male and female, and sent a huge portion of our industrial base to China. Responding to COVID, they stopped people from going to church and school, set up snitch lines to enforce restrictions, and made people get vaccines under threat of losing their jobs and pensions while making exceptions for the Antifa and Black Lives Matter fanatics to riot for George Floyd.
Then, after a year of left-wing violence in cities like Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis, they threw the book at grandma for peaceful civil disobedience on January 6 and followed up with a military occupation of Washington, D.C.
When Bill Clinton led his party to power as a New Democrat in 1992, substantive policy changes were at the heart of his campaign, particularly in the primary. He was no Mondale or Dukakis; rather, he was for the death penalty, critical of the welfare system, embraced free trade, and supported a strong military. Similarly, Trump loosened up his party’s orthodoxy on free trade and foreign policy and emphasized new issues like immigration. He redefined the GOP’s center and moved it closer to the country’s.
By contrast, the latest display is all about the packaging. The Democrats are selling a narrative, a story. But their policies are as radical as ever, including child sex changes, price controls, defunding the police, reparations, and open borders.
Regardless of which side you’re on, it is a fiction to pretend we’re all “basically for the same things” or “have more in common than not.” I saw a freak show in the DNC, and I do not want what these people want. But I also noticed they were clever enough to recast their freakishness and cultural radicalism as the natural evolution of mundane beliefs rooted in the American tradition.
“Let’s Be Nice” Plus “Trump is Evil Incarnate”
Alongside all these appeals to unity, community, and other nice-sounding things, there was a lot of venom for Trump and his supporters. For them, he is the apotheosis of evil: divisive, dishonest, racist, sexist, selfish, venal, a draft dodger, greedy, and all the rest.
They painted him as a would-be dictator without really reconciling this account with the mostly normal way he governed. One state senator from Michigan said he would unleash the FBI and DOJ on his political opponents—as if Barack Obama did not do exactly that against Trump. Since supporters identify so closely with Trump—similar to the way Democrats did with Obama but not with Biden—there is a risk this backfires and is felt by many as a divisive, personal attack along the lines of Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.”
Other than projecting a faux enthusiasm for the previously unremarkable Kamala Harris, it does not seem much at this convention will inspire or move those in the middle. A policy agenda was hard to divine amid the many snide remarks about Trump, and the emotional tone seems likely to alienate men and only appeal to the most committed true believers.
In other words, the speakers demonstrated little understanding of why Trump appealed to people as a disruptor of a corrupt system under which they were not rewarded.
Trump’s policies, particularly on trade and immigration, actually helped the middle class. His critics have implied that Trump is uncaring and selfish, but he is literally risking his life, his freedom, and his wealth by pursuing the presidency. This is the only reason he is now subject to multiple bogus criminal and civil proceedings, as well as a nearly successful assassination attempt.
This kind of determination and coolness under pressure naturally commands respect.
Kamala’s Performative Normalcy
Kamala matched the tone of the rest of the convention. In her delivery, she did better than I had previously seen. She appeared confident and comfortable, and her trademark vocal fry was absent. She spoke lovingly of her parents, her middle-class upbringing by a single mother after her parents’ divorce, and of her great love of America and its opportunities.
She left some things out, though. I noticed she did not mention that half of her childhood was spent in Montreal, Canada. Also, she did not once use the words “black” or “African” or “HCBU” or “Howard” to describe herself or tell her story. She painted herself as a cosmopolitan all-American girl, not as the champion of a particular American racial group. This was smart.
Moving to her career, she touted her days as a tough prosecutor, vindicating the rights of regular people and children. But she mostly failed to identify any significant accomplishments as senator or vice president. Her discussions of policy were all vague in the extreme; she would “be a president for all Americans” and “chart a new way forward.”
Her attacks on Trump were typical of other speakers and filled with falsehoods, such as, “When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite. He fanned the flames.” No, he told people not to be violent.
She tried to paint him as selfish and out for himself, which is impossible to reconcile with the great risk and personal cost the presidency and this race have cost him.
She had little intelligent to say about inflation, which is on voters’ minds. She also tried to recast herself as a patriotic protector of the border, even though it has been a sieve letting in unvetted trash from the third world for the entirety of Biden’s presidency.
She showed herself to be a complete establishment hack on the issues that matter: inflation, crime, trade, immigration, and foreign policy. She praised NATO and made it clear she wants our country to continue to be entangled with the rest of the world, a global empire masquerading as “leadership” for others in an “enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny.” For Kamala and the D.C. establishment, the Cold War never ended, Iraq and Afghanistan were success stories, and prolonging the war against Gaza and Ukraine is somehow leadership. We are never told how this benefits Americans.
I do not expect the convention changed much. It did show who the Democrats are and who Kamala wants to be. Like Biden, she will be a defender of the establishment and of business-as-usual. Her demographics will be different, but the policies will be the same. She would serve as a figurehead for the Deep State and the unelected bureaucrats who really run the country.
We should always remember for all the talk of Our Democracy™ and norms, they oppose Trump so vociferously because he aims to undo this arrangement, restore accountability, and transfer that power back to the American people.
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