Tone Contrast: Democratic National Convention 2016, Day One

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To anyone who hasn't understood what tone is, all you have to do is compare the RNC and the first day of the DNC.  Despite the terrible effect of the Wikileaked Emails.  Despite that Bernie galvanized an enormous number of young people who had never participated in politics before, all of whom were disappointed for the first time.  Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton had to scramble hard to address the fact that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) had been poisoned by various demagogues, including Bernie Sanders, who is the most wonderful demagogue of recent times.

I have struggled hard to see anything positive in the political rhetoric of the last year or so.  Last night, on the very first day of the Democratic National Convention, about half the speakers focused on the disastrous values of the GOP candidate.  But the other half--I would say, even more than half--focused on the positive.  First of all, the fact that in many ways the condition of the country is distinctly better than is reported by the GOP.  Secondly, that Democrats have set their eyes on more noble achievements, that the Democrats have more faith in the good will of its members, and that the representatives of the Democrats are driven by a spirit of service.  The best the GOP can do is to put themselves forward as the ones who will facilitate the self-interest of the individual voter.  Each man, woman and child for himself; that, they say, is America at its best.  The ideological battle the Democrats have faced since the Great Depression is that most of the problems faced by the USA have social solutions, if not socialist solutions.

It is hard to tell whether the Democrats settled on the contrasting battle cry of "Stronger Together" as a response to the GOP, or whether it is a natural outgrowth of Hillary's old motto: "It takes a village," but the expression highlights for me the fundamental difference between conservatives, who are typically skeptics, and often cynics; and liberals, who are occasionally just as cynical, but who are generally more idealistic than conservatives are.  That is the essence of the difference.

Often, striking a higher tone has to do with ignoring details, and going for the Big Picture, at least in terms of aspirations.  A negative tone is the opposite: of squinting at the terrible trees, rather than gazing at the beautiful woods.  This election season, though, the GOP has managed to find doom and gloom in both the trees and the wood.  Repeatedly, Newt Gingrich insisted that crime and violence being down is not important; the fact that people feel that crime and violence is up, and that they feel unsafe, that's what important!  Donald Trump keeps chanting the mantra that things are terrible.  The state of business is terrible.  Family life is terrible.  These are not specifics, these are imaginary woods, completely devoid of any trees based in reality.

Perhaps the Democrats must stop falling back on appealing exclusively to their traditional power base: educated urban folks, accustomed to a multicultural society, aware of the richness of opportunities that are available today.  Typically, Democrats swim in the water that is modern technology, freely available information, the subtleties of modern life.  But it may be time to reach out to the power base that has made Trump so successful: rural, working class older white Americans, who are an easy target for those who want to persuade them that they have been disenfranchised.  Unfortunately, the Democrats really do not have anything to offer them: there are none so blind as they who would not see.  You can tell them that it is a good world, and a great country, and they will insist: no, it isn't, not any more.  Nothing, they will complain, works the way it used to.  (This is something everyone has to get over.  It's not as though Trump is going to replace all the jazzy technology in stores with old-time, American made black and white TVs.)  People don't behave like they used to.  (You can't go around slapping up your spouse anymore; they fight back.  Well, time moves on; it isn't as though Trump will come by and make sure your spouse stays slapped. Kids will continue to text; adults will continue to tweet nonsense.)  Gays and lesbians are getting married.  (The sad thing is that this does not hurt die-hard traditional straight folks at all, except the thought that gays and lesbians are finally enjoying themselves without restriction. It is no longer reasonable to supervise the private lives of consenting adults.)  Anything that society can promise conservative older white males as a way to improve their lives can easily be trivialized (by someone like Trump).  A major step the Democrats are proposing is to allow everyone, 55 years old or older, to get Medicare.  Even that is likely to be seen as a mere nothing; older conservative white males wear their ill health like a badge.  For them, being sick, but out of the clutches of a doctor is fun.

What Trump promised older white conservative rural males is revenge.  Ironically, this is precisely what ISIS is promising its younger conservative religious fanatics.  Trump's followers--despite their hostility toward fanatical Islamic men--have a lot in common with these fanatical Islamists.

Whether or not the Democrats are able to deliver a Congress that can move us a significant distance in the direction of the type of progress that many of us want, at least they hold out the promise that the DNC will be a lot less doom and gloom, despite the frustration of the Bernie Sanders troops, some of whom have never felt political frustration before.  What the Democrats must recognize is that the agenda is not entirely in the hands of Hillary Clinton; it is just as much in the hands of the hundreds of Congressmen up for election in November.  It is just that Hillary will not stand in the way of progress--at least we hope not--but Trump certainly would.

Here is a summary of the speeches that I heard; I'm sure that there were good ones that I missed.

Michelle Obama, First Lady, 2009-2016:
Hers is the speech that most excited the faithful, and to be honest, the one that I cheered for the hardest.  You can probably get a summary of her speech almost anywhere.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts:
Senator Warren listed the actual parts of the platform that she was most interested in, which of course were also the planks that Bernie Sanders was most interested in: controlling Wall Street and the Big Banks, and People's United.

Senator Cory Booker, D-New Jersey:
This was a politician I had never heard of until yesterday.  He is most certainly an orator, and it was both heartening and thrilling to hear old time political rhetoric once again.  However, like Barack Obama himself, it is evident that Senator Booker is a man not only of words, but also of principles.  This was a defining moment for this convention.

State Representative Joe Kennedy, D-Taunton, etc:
I'm not sure whether this is a member of the great Kennedy Dynasty (and I wouldn't be that excited if he were, except that many wonderful leaders have come out of there, and we could certainly use some more), and the part that I watched was simply him introducing Elizabeth Warren.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York:
This lady is just too blushing and wholesome-looking to be taken seriously as a politician.  Apparently she appeared on the Daily Show (perhaps with Jonathan Stewart), and I should go watch that, to get a feel for what she is like.  She certainly is a refreshing contrast to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, that populated the RNC.

State Representative Diane Russell, of Maine:
There were two representatives, one each from the Clinton campaign, and the Sanders campaign, who participated in an offshoot of the Rules Committee to ensure that the process of selecting delegates in future years will be more fair.  Diane Russell, a refreshing breeze just when the disruption of frustrated Bernie supporters was getting obnoxious, was jolliness personified.  She was obviously delighted to be addressing the DNC, and she reported her facts with great enthusiasm, from the Bernie camp.  Most memorably, she quoted Albus Dumbledore (a character created by J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series) who said that it took courage to stand up to one's enemies, but even greater courage to stand up to one's friends, a remark that appeared to resonate with the younger Bernie supporters.

Eva Longoria:
The popular actress addressed the Convention as a supporter of Hillary Clinton, but also as a Hispanic native of Texas, among those who were vilified by Trump.  Memorably, she declared that her family never crossed the border, but that the border crossed them; a reference to the fact that Texas was originally a part of Mexico.

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota), Sarah Silverman:
Al Franken made the important point that the Convention would certainly result in a lot of motivation and enthusiasm.  But the real work, he reminded his audience, would begin on the Friday after the convention.  Only 102 days of furious canvassing would succeed in getting Hillary Clinton the Presidency.  Sarah Silverman addressed the noisy Bernie Sanders supporters, and told them that they were being ridiculous.  (She had the right to say this, as a Bernie supporter herself.)

Postscript:
What is the deal with Hillary Clinton?  My suspicion about this is that Hillary Clinton was getting ready to try for the Presidency, after paying her dues to the satisfaction of everyone she could imagine.  But Bernie Sanders was becoming utterly frustrated with business as usual in Washington--as we all are--and the increasing income gap and wealth disparity, that he took it upon himself to make one final attempt to bring some sort of  income redistribution, or something on those lines, by running for the Presidency.

Unfortunately, Hillary felt that Bernie was an obstruction, and being as ambitious as she was, and confident in her own qualification for the job (in fact overqualified, as many speakers at the DNC day 1 remarked), Hillary was annoyed and frustrated by the Bernie campaign.  On the third side, the Democratic Party was, to no one's surprise, more eager to get a Democrat in the White House at any cost, and, betting all their money on the Clinton horse, they, too, saw Bernie Sanders's campaign as playing into the GOP's efforts to wrest the Presidency away from the Democrats.  We must realize that, while the Democrat Party, as an entity, has values and a soul, the professionals who are in charge of the day-to-day work of the party side of the campaign is usually completely ruthless and unfeeling, and devoid of political judgment.  As the Wikileaked e-mails show that the strange ideas and suggestions all originated with party officials, and not with either candidate.  Bernie Sanders just got in the way of Hillary Clinton's reasonable, but intense, ambition.

I'm sure most people have arrived at the same conclusion.

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DNC II

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Last night, Barack Obama accepted the nomination for a second term, and gave a great speech.  It was preceded by a feisty and fiery speech by the VP, Joseph Biden, which was appropriate, and I would say, sincere.  (It had a lot of things wrong with it that are wrong with political speeches generally, except those by particularly diplomatic politicians, such as the Clintons, Hilary and Bill, and the Obamas, Barack and Michelle, and exceptional orators such as Elizabeth Warren, who can criticize people with a lot of style. Joe Biden's speech was more of an old-style campaign speech by a vice-president, which the audience needed at that point in the program.)

President Obama gave a speech that was of a piece with all the speeches he has given since he announced his candidacy in 2007-2008.  It was short on oratory, but it was appropriate. Too many elections are won by eloquence, and Obama was at one time accused of being too eloquent. So, while Obama used grammatical English (and good spelling, no doubt), he outlined the conflicting economic strategies of the two parties, without stooping to criticize his opponents at the level at which they had been set straight for the previous two days.

The Republican National Convention, while it appeared to have a degree of cultural diversity it had not enjoyed for years, still could not compete with the rainbow of faces and demographics that were on display at the DNC.  The Dems, who had soft-pedaled their support for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals for months, perhaps to save the feelings of the general population, components of which--even if they supported Gay Marriage and LGBT rights-- might still have felt queasy about having the subject constantly brought up, threw caution to the winds in this election season, and starting with Joe Biden, went openly on the record as supporting pro LGBT rights and (possibly) legislation. My wife has a finger on the political pulse of the population simply by virtue of being a part-time campaign-worker, and making phone calls, as campaigns are wont to do. The primary objection to the Democrat ticket is, at least in some quarters, their support for gay marriage; can you believe it? Respondents spit back that they will never support Obama, because of [his support for] Gay Marriage.  That's a Whole Nother Story, as they say around here, so we won't go there.  So a stealth strategy of the GOP is, even if it is a stealth strategy, to present themselves as the Straight Party.  Not only straight, but White, as well.  There you go.

Barack Obama has done many things that we can be thankful for, and one of them is that he has presented an alternative for young African American men, and there is now a role model for them other than the highly colorful gentlemen who roam the streets at night, sometimes doing nothing but keeping themselves amused, but at other times being destructive or worse. Barack Obama champions the underdogs, the diverse population, all those who are still fighting to get what they need, rather than to keep what they have, as the Dems have stubbornly pointed out in this Convention. What the Democrats see as Social Welfare, the GOP tries to portray as Wealth Redistribution. Whether it is or it is not, we cannot stop doing it, and we shouldn't. And for the first time, a black man is doing it, with moderate or great enthusiasm from his party. And he does it with good grammar, and good diction.

I imagine that part of the Republican anger at Obama is that he doesn't act like a black man, but like someone from Harvard. Someone from Harvard, they're probably thinking, should not be siding with the enemy. (This is very similar to the German anger against the British during the early years of WW2; there is some reason to believe that they thought that the British, being from a broadly Saxon culture, must surely sympathize with the German plight.) But Harvard, of course, is a big place, and statistically there have to be somebody from there who has some brains (just as not everybody from Yale is as confused as George W. Bush).

All through his speech, Barack Obama reminded us that he was black. But miraculously, he reminded me that he was one of us, and he was fighting for us, but with restraint and judgement, and without resorting to political trickery. Perhaps the time will come when political trickery will be desperately needed, but Obama has judiciously kept away from it in his first year. It is not a matter of being deceitful, I believe. It is a matter of giving the GOP majority in Congress every opportunity to set things right with their agenda, such as it is.

My expectation is that he will win this election, unless there is inexcusable apathy on the part of the voters. He will win this election without expending all of his political capital, and without using unnecessary roughness.

At that point, assuming he is elected to a second term, and assuming that he brings with him a better balance in Congress, ideally a Democratic majority, he can say: we sang to you, but you did not dance. Now things need to be done with bolder strokes. And the bolder strokes means stronger messages from the population about what it wants.

We cannot wait too long before we permit a woman to do for our nation what Barack Obama has done for minorities and blacks. I predict that for a time, minorities and women will lead the US, just as they have done as governors in many Southern states, for instance. But we must have better ways for Congress to know what people want; the newspapers, television and the Web cannot do it, since they really seldom know what people want either. If people do not want health care, Barack Obama cannot thrust it on them. If the people do not want gay marriage, Barack Obama will be the last to force it on them. Remember: there has to be a majority in both Houses to make a constitutional amendment.

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P.S.

Jon Stewart keeps poor Austan
Goolsbee in stitches

Jon Stewart analyzes the DNC from (slightly) off site.  Austan Goolsbee, a former Obama White House advisor, gives a lucid and non-technical explanation of the differences between the Republican and the Democrat plans for America.  The slow-speaking Goolsbee gets frequently interrupted by the impatient Stewart, but he manages to clarify the issues beautifully.  (How much clearer things would be, if Jon Stewart just shut up and let the man talk!!!  But seriously, the Stewart- Goolsbee team is actually quite effective.  Stewart manages to hurry the thinking along so that they don't lose viewers with short attention spans.)