democraticparty
William Langewiesche, a writer and pilot, once told me that flying a plane was "90 percent boredom, 10 percent terror." I might say the same for the "Make it great like '68! Shut down the [Democratic National Convention] for Gaza!" protest that took place in front of the Israeli consulate in downtown Chicago on Tuesday night. The event was organized by Behind Enemy Lines, and as might be expected from a group whose tagline is "The empire is the enemy. From the belly of the beast, we choose to resist it," participants arrived carrying resistance-ready banners, flags, and bullhorns. They arrived...
Reason
Tuesday marked the second night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC), in which speakers included former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. But a pair of speakers earlier in the night demonstrated a long-standing schism in the party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) spoke to the crowd earlier in the evening. After waxing poetic about the trillions of inflationary dollars spent during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sanders aired a familiar list of grievances. "My fellow Americans, when 60 percent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the...
Reason
While this year's Republican Party platform makes only a passing reference to Second Amendment rights, the platform approved at the Democratic National Convention this week does not mention them at all. But it does include eight references to "gun safety" and a section that brags about the Biden administration's accomplishments in this area while laying out an agenda of additional firearm restrictions. That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned "the rights of responsible gun owners" but did not elucidate the basis of tho...
Reason
For years, populists on both the left and right have griped that Washington is in the thrall of libertarians, market fundamentalists, or perhaps neoliberals—despite the rarity of any politically powerful figure identifying as such. Recent events should put those complaints to rest: With the elevation of Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) to the Republican presidential ticket, and, in a different way, Vice President Kamala Harris, American politics is now in the grips of a kind of neopopulism, one implicitly founded on the rejection of that synthesis, and in particular on the abandonment of the free-mark...
Reason
Washed up: Last night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) played the hits. Just one problem: Nobody cared. He asked Democratic National Convention delegates to recall the early days of the pandemic—when "people were being evicted from their homes" and "children in America were going hungry"—and how Democrats came together to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which provided "$1,400 for every man, woman, and child in the working class," offered "emergency assistance" to help small businesses stay operational, and included eviction protections to keep people in their homes. "I say all of this...
Reason
Democratic delegates approved the party's 2024 platform at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago yesterday, including sections lamenting the unfairness of marijuana convictions. However, the platform failed to explicitly call for legalizing or even decriminalizing the drug, a change from its position four years ago. "No one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana," the final 2024 Democratic Party platform reads. "Sending people to prison for possession has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Those criminal rec...
Reason
Say what you will about the otherwise calorie-lite first fortnight of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign, at least it eased for a moment the shrill catastrophizing that has marked Democratic messaging against former President Donald Trump over these past nine years. "Gone are [President Joe] Biden'ssoberexhortations about the battle for the soul of the nation and a democracy under attack," The Washington Post observed earlier this month. "In its place are promises of 'freedom' and 'a brighter future' and, at times, audible giggles and laughter." Well, the darkness came back with a vengeance i...
Reason
On the first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC), speakers assembled to make the case for Vice President Kamala Harris to be America's next president and to provide a glimpse of what policies she might pursue. Unfortunately, it's clear that industrial policy is likely to survive and thrive in a Harris administration, despite clear examples that giving public money to private companies carries significant risk. Some speakers took shots at former President Donald Trump, with Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), invoking the closure of a General Motors (G.M.)...
Reason
After all the talk of abortion rights, protecting democracy, and how "fun" Vice President Kamala Harris apparently is, the first night of the Democratic National Convention culminated with a celebration of President Joe Biden's four years in office. Biden "recovered all those millions of jobs that [Donald] Trump watched slip away," Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) declared. Biden "rebuilt the economy" after the pandemic put it "flat on its back," intoned Sen. Chris Coons (D–Conn.), a longtime Biden stan. Biden himself put the cherry on top. "We've had one of the most extraordinary four years of progr...
Reason
Full disclosure: I got into a little physical altercation yesterday with the Chicago police and lost my notepad in the scuffle. We'll get to that, but for now please forgive any errors in the timeline. The first march organized by the March for the Democratic National Convention was set to take off from Chicago's Union Park at 1 p.m. Reporters were invited to get there at 7 a.m; I have no idea if any did, but at 10:30 a.m. a friend texted to say, "Union Park right now is very underwhelming." This seemed to be the consensus going in; that the anticipated 30,000 marchers would come nowhere near,...
Reason
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