I didn’t watch but those right wing pundits seem to have erased Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair for 10 minutes out of their mind. Nothing can be more cringe-worthy than that.
I hope we can just do away with conventions altogether. The whole thing is just a long infomercial.
That said -and this is just me - but I thought the first night was powerful in a subtle way because the inclusion of everyone from John Kasich and Meg Whitman over to Bernie Sanders on the left was, for me, not only an exemplification of what Joe Biden represents (which is some degree of unity in this country), but it also speaks to the fact that traditional Republicans and Bernie Sanders can put their differences aside to come together in this moment.
Even though some Republicans like Kasich had some serious misgivings about Trump back in 2016, they still held out hope that they could remain closeted Republicans and influence things behind the scenes, which was why a lot of Republicans chose to simply stay home and be quiet rather than openly confront the stench that their party had become, which they had a responsibility to do back then. Fortunately, they recognize that they have an even greater obligation to do that now.
By that same token, Bernie Sanders is not going to fall on his own sword. He recognizes that this election is not about him and his movement - there’s a time and a way to extract more of what he wants out of Biden, but Sanders knows that right now it’s about defeating the worst president in American history. I think it sends a powerful message to progressives who may not be convinced that Biden is going to bring substantive change to the table.
And this all circles back to Joe Biden’s strengths as a candidate, which are often overlooked. People look at Biden’s boring centrism and find it uninspiring, and yet, I don’t know of too many other candidates who have been able to bring about different wings together within so much as shouting distance, let alone talking distance. If you think about it in this way, then you realize maybe there is some hope. Maybe there will be progress, or at least incremental progress. It may not be all the progress we want now, but we keep moving forward.
It went off very well, but it’s not a convention. There’s no drama or suspense. Of course that’s appropriate considering the circumstances. This is video confirmation of what we already know - Trump is a disaster and a real danger to our form of government.
I liked the fact that the motto of the US was referred to twice as E Pluribus Unum .
So, it wasn’t as much fun as 48 or 52 and not as exciting as 68, but maybe that’s progress.
I only saw the second half, from Klobuchar on, but I was surprised and impressed with the whole thing. There was a consistency of message without being overly repetitive, the production was smooth, a mix of why Trump is terrible contrasted with Joe’s character, diversity of people and points of view, cute touches like the people applauding from home and Michelle Obama. If I were a Dem official, I would be feeling really good about that start.
To everyone saying they should have done more of this and that, I say: chill out. That was only the first night!
My favorite speech that I saw was Amy Klobuchar, and I never thought those words would come out of my mouth/keyboard. She was down to earth but enthusiastic, plain-spoken but well-spoken, clear and concise. I love Michelle and I thought her speech was good, but she got off to a slow start and wandered a bit, but she picked it up in the middle and finished very strong. “It is what it is” was savage.
It definitely exceeded my expectations for a virtual convention.
I’m not being facetious when I say look up the definitions of “wonderful” and “boring”, and you will see that they are not mutually exclusive. It’s like a TV address to nation by a president, vs the state of the union address. They both may contain similar items, but the latter has the pomp and circumstance, cheering, etc., to liven it up.
Eva Longoria has spoken at previous DNC’s (2012, 2016), has been immersed in philanthropy for the Latino community; she has a master’s degree in Chicano Studies (2013, CSUN) - her thesis was on the importance of Latinas in STEM careers.
Here’s the text of Michelle Obama’s heartfelt remarks: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/512450-read-michelle-obamas-speech-at-the-democratic-national-convention
To add further to my original response here, I was quite serious about being upset that Stills/Porter were preempted by a group of people who no doubt spoke well into the night after the first day of the convention, but couldn’t wait five minutes for this song to finish. Did the producers not realize that those two put time and effort into their performance, most certainly were excited to be able to make a statement in front of the nation, only to see those efforts completely wasted. But God forbid the nation should be denied even five seconds of the utter brilliance of the MSNBC cable news entertainers.
OK, I’m not actually saying Trump is Hitler, or even Mussolini. (Those guys had way more energy than Trump.) But watching John Kasich and Bernie Sanders making the case for President Joe Biden really did make me think of World War II. Churchill and Stalin*, teaming up to take on the imminent threat to the future of the world!
*Of course I’m not saying Bernie is Stalin, either. For that matter, John Kasich is no Churchill.
Oh, hell yeah.
Sounds like you want the convention livestream.
It’s pretty weird to tune in to MSNBC and be angry at the MSNBC people talking.
Michelle gave a fine speech. I don’t think that Melania can top it even if she uses the same material.
A fine address, but still it would have been better if she could have delivered it to a rocking raucous crowd. But it is what it is.
So, Michelle Obama’s speech to the “convention” was taped, because, you know, 2020.
Trump, naturally had to point this out. In doing so, he apparently gleefully pointed out that “she had the wrong deaths”. She said “more than 150,000” but by now it’s more than 170,000!
Ha! Stupid lib-tards, undercounting the number of Americans who have died on my watch!
What an idiot he is.
Most people aren’t chatting on message boards about politics. It is an infomercial and an important one because it’s when more people actually pay attention.
Thanks for the livestream link. If I had known about that, I wouldn’t have had to tune into MSNBC. But as I did not, I don’t think it was weird at all to tune into MSNBC, because I’ve got to watch the convention somewhere.
Would it be too pedantic to point out that “more than 170,000” is also, in fact, “more than 150,000”?
I have only seen snippets of the convention and it seems fine but lacking in the energy generated by a packed hall. I wonder if the Republican convention will be different. My guess is that neither convention will move the polling needle much.
FWIW, Washington Post also ran uninterrupted coverage from their homepage, if another link would be helpful.
Oh, to be sure, "More than 150,000 people have died " is a perfectly accurate way to characterize the situation, it’s just not as precise as saying “more than 170,000 people have died”.
But that’s also an astonishingly stupid nit for the sitting POTUS to be picking.
I’m picturing some rather dim-witted–but very egotistical–criminal sitting in the police interrogation room. “You found four dead bodies buried in my crawlspace?!? No way, man! I stashed way more than just four victims under there!”
I just had a chance to catch up on some of the stuff I missed and watched Kristin Urquiza, whose father (a Trump voter) died of COVID-19 because he believed Trump and thought the danger was over in May. That was brutal. Very smart programming from the Dems - a clear, unequivocal story personalizing the massive death statistics and laying the blame squarely where it belongs. The fact that she was clearly not an expert “in front of the camera” speaker only reinforced its authenticity. I think this one was actually better in this virtual format than it would have been on a big stage. Visceral stuff.