At some point, some bright-eyed and bushytailed reporter
will notice that the Democrat National Convention has no clothes on.
The event is being referred to in news stories as “the
Democrat National Convention,” although delegates are not convening anywhere
because there is no “where” there, no delegates, no contestable nominating
speeches, no reporters roaming the convention floor shoving microphones into
delegates faces and asking them what they might think about party leaders.
The non-convention this year will be a video presentation,
an entirely scripted event featuring a host of speakers including former Ohio Republican
Governor John Kasich, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, high-profile black
speakers former first lady Michelle Obama and her consort, former President Barack Obama, firebrand anti-capitalist,
New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and the twinkling star of the
non-convention, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders, all virtually gathered
together to unspool political bumper sticker pleasantries about the
incontestable Democrat Presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate,
Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
The nominations of Biden-Harris are a virtual – pun intended
– certainty because no Democrat delegates with be present to offer alternative
nominations.
An Associated Press reporter noted some sharp differences with
conventions past: “… without the opportunity for the approximately 4,800
Democratic delegates from across the country to gather on the same convention
hall floor, as is tradition, the opportunity for a genuine convention debate
over the direction of the party has been eliminated.” Sorry about that Bernie. Most US journalists certainly would have preferred a brokered rather than a broken convention.
Rules Committee member and Sanders confidant Larry Cohen “lamented
the loss of an in-person convention, but not because it limits debate.”
Actually, it eliminates debate.
“’The key of a convention, really, is the party building
that comes with 57 different delegations,’ [Cohen] said, noting the in-person
daily meetings that would occur in hotels across a host city. ‘You shape the
party in those breakfast meetings, where you argue over what it means to be a
Democrat in Wyoming, what does it mean in Georgia.’”
Journalism, this writer has often pointed out, is the art of
naming, which involves putting the right names to persons, events and concepts.
So then, what shall we call a Democrat Nomination Convention that convenes nowhere,
features no convention delegates, is highly scripted, many of the scripts
written far in advance of the event by political staff people, and does not
allow person to person press interviews with the missing 4,800 Democratic
delegates from across the country?
The AP story notes, “The Biden campaign on Friday announced
watch parties in all 50 states featuring elected officials and celebrities such
as Alyssa Milano, Pete Buttigieg and Valerie Jarrett. The watch parties, like
the convention itself, will be online.” So then, state delegates have been
replaced by political and Hollywood celebs.
If this is no more a national party convention than an apple
is an orange, what is the right name for it?
The sage of Baltimore, Henry Mencken, who covered every
national political convention for the Sun Papers during his half century long career in journalism, and who
also wrote a dictionary of the American language, might have been able to
invent a neologism that would properly describe this new political goblin, but
it is obvious there are no Menckens in modern journalism’s database.
Looking forward to modern times from 1924, Mencken, who loved
the gaudy bustle of political conventions, saw conventions taking a lamentable
turn in the road. “The convention
system, at bottom, is certainly not a bad one,” he wrote. “It gives the people
of all parts of the country their chance to be heard; it provides for free
debate; it insures voting in the open; it is fundamentally fair and honest. But
in practice it has become so horribly enmeshed in formulae that two-thirds of
the ends that it was designed to achieve are defeated. The delegates spend
nearly all their time and energies not in considering the business before them
but at the hollow maneuvers of trained animals.”
Virtually – again,
pun intended – all of the features commended by Mencken have been eliminated in
the Democrats new model convention. People from all parts of the country will
not be heard; there will be no free debate, because there will be no delegate
debater; voting will not occur because delegate voters on the convention floor
will be absent; indeed, there will be no floor; voting will not occur in the
open because all issues that might be decided in what Mencken views as a “free debate”
will have been decided long before the Hollywood and professional politicians
assembled in watch parties open their mouths.
The good news is
that the convention delegates will not ape the “hollow maneuvers of trained
animals” because they will be at home watching the virtual convention from their
Coronavirus cocoons.
Wouldn’t it save a
great deal of time and effort if we were to allow the editorial boards of the
Washington Post, the New York Times, AP writers and Hollywood celebs to choose our
Presidents and Vice Presidents?
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