Sunday, July 24, 2016

Well, Now This Week Is the Democrats' Turn at Conventioning. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Compared to that questionable, divisive, what-the-hell mess the Republicans attempted in Cleveland... I doubt the Democrats' show in Philadelphia will be as chaotic, clumsy, poorly vetted, or poorly attended (when a Republican convention fails to finance the local strip club industry, you know there's something wrong).

Still, there's a lot of things that can go wrong that could make for terrific ratings for Fox Not-News - and provide a distraction away from the Ailes firing, more on that later - and terrible heartburn for every sane anti-Trump voter on the planet in the United States.

For starters, thanks to an infodump by Wikileaks of DNC emails (hacked by Russians, with all that suggests), the BernieBro faction is enraged by the implications that the party leadership was all in for Hillary and had been looking for ways to sabotage Sanders' primary efforts. Nevermind that the email plotting never came to life - that it was all brainstorming conjecture that got rejected by higher-ups - any excuse to hate on Hillary and her peeps will do. There's already been some backroom in-fighting...

...that led to significant reforms to the Superdelegate rules to make them more reflective of the state-by-state Primary results, something Sanders pushed for. So is there any real reason to be running around on a rampage?

In terms of the speaker lineup, it's mostly going to be familiar faces: Sanders and Michelle Obama speak Monday, Bill Clinton and a collection of Mothers of the Movement (an anti-violence group) speak Tuesday, Biden and Obama speak Wednesday night (when was the last time a retiring President spoke at the convention?), and then Chelsea Clinton introduces her mother Hillary for the Thursday night big speech. This is odd because there's no up-and-comer freshman politician who can profit from a night in the spotlight...

...wait a minute. Where's Kaine? As Vice President nominee doesn't he get a slot?

RIOT! RIOT!

...then again, it's Philadelphia. Who's gonna notice...?

Okay, okay, I'll settle. Let's stay friendly, people. Unity... unity and competence and what what.

Update: So of course there's enough of a conniption about the emails that Debbie Wasserman Schultz - never all that popular among the Democratic faithful to begin with - had to resign just before the convention starts.

So we're going to get a lot of media bashing and faux concern-trolling about this instead of focusing on the real issues, like Trump being a completely unacceptable candidate who deserves to have his ass kicked in the general election.

Dammit.

Never underestimate the Democratic Party's ability to f-ck up an easy win.

8 comments:

dinthebeast said...

I thought Kaine's speech in Miami was encouraging, especially the part where he talked about his son being a Marine who is deploying to Europe to support our NATO allies.
I also read this morning that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is no longer chairing the convention, which is maybe a deviation from the plan, but not the end of the world. John Amato at Crooks and Liars has been critical of her for a long time, so maybe it isn't a bad thing overall, just bad optics and timing? You're from Florida, what do you think about that? I remember Rachel Maddow covering the Russian hack of the DNC system and wondering why it wasn't being reported as a bigger deal, considering that it was a bungled DNC break-in that took down a sitting US president. We know they'll try to make any bobble at the convention into a giant scandal A) to try to make their convention look better by comparison (BOTH SIDES!!!) and B) Hillary is involved, and that's what they do to everything she has ever done. I don't like tempting fate, but I don't see our convention scoring nearly as high on the disaster scale as what we just witnessed.

-Doug in Oakland

Paul W said...

I've been worried about the DNC leadership for some time, mostly because they've been doing a lousy job since 2010 recruiting and electing candidates at the congressional and state levels.

I am bothered a lot by DWS' ties to the charter school scams, which shouldn't be the Democratic Party's position: we should be funding public schools better, not shilling for privatized and deregulated schools (half of which close due to mismanagement or fraud).

As much as the Left - and myself as a self-proclaimed (almost)Sane Moderate - has ragged on the disjointed and chaotic Republican convention, I won't be surprised the mainstream media - even the ones who should know better - will try to cover the Democrats party using the same tone of disgust and disconnect. But the Dem convention should be better organized because 1) the majority of the party WANTS Hillary, shut up BernieBros and 2) every major speaker on that stage isn't going to sabotage Hillary out of spite like Cruz did.

And we're going to get some of the best - Bill Clinton AND Barack Obama - orators in the nation this week. This will be epic.

Infidel753 said...

when a Republican convention fails to finance the local strip club industry, you know there's something wrong

Perhaps their attention was elsewhere.

Paul W said...

Infidel, I think what happened in Cleveland is that all the businessmen Republicans - the ones who frequent the strip clubs to flaunt their wealth - shied away from this convention, while the social conservatives - who revel in their hypocrisy when they think no one is looking - came to the convention in droves.

Paul W said...

Sigh.

So of course the DNC convention opens up with controversy as Debbie gets the boot - forced to resign over the email leaks - and giving the media all the talking points they can giggle over for Monday morning "OH LOOK THE DEMS ARE IN DISARRAY AGAIN POOR LIBRULS"

...never underestimate the Democrats' ability to f-ck up an easy win...

AND DAMMIT WHY ISN'T TRUMP DROPPING IN THE POLLS BELOW 30 PERCENT LIKE HE OUGHT TO?

/cries

Pinku-Sensei said...

"WHY ISN'T TRUMP DROPPING IN THE POLLS BELOW 30 PERCENT LIKE HE OUGHT TO?"

Convention bounce. Don't worry. Most of it will go away soon.

Paul W said...

Nate Silver said the same thing about Trump's numbers in the primaries, "oh it'll drop soon."

...guess where we are now.

I am not so much panicking about Trump rising in the polls as I am disgusted and horrified that so many of our fellow Americans are either fucking racists or gullible suckers for Trump's fucking con artist shtick.

dinthebeast said...

From Steve Benin at the Maddow Blog:

As a practical matter, the impact of the shake-up will probably be relatively modest: once a presumptive nominee emerges, he or she effectively takes control of the party apparatus. In the Democrats' case, Hillary Clinton's campaign had already installed Brandon Davis at the DNC, and he's been overseeing day-to-day coordination on behalf of the candidate for weeks.

Now let's see the contrast between the competence of Hillary's team and Trump's...

-Doug in Oakland