The whole convention had a real fascist flavor. The core theme could be summed up as "
strength through unity." Tammy Duckworth's speech in particular made me think of Starship Troopers...
I was apparently in a masochistic mood, since I watched most of the convention. It was certainly better than past conventions, but only because it was shorter and more focused. Lots of glitches, and the whole thing was very fake-feeling. As I read back through the schedule now, the only things that I can really remember as being well-done were:
- Several of the professionally-produced "commercials", like the John Lewis biography.
- The roll call was less painful than usual, though still boring and pointless.
- Jill Biden's speech was well-delivered, and the content may have struck a chord with some people.
- Barack Obama's speech. The man is one fine orator, and the content was generic but probably attractive to many people.
- The short thing with Cory Booker and other Dem candidates near the end. It was super fake, but I still chuckled.
The
constant weaponizing of Beau Biden's death disgusted me. I'm not sure if most people would notice this, though, since most people wouldn't have sat through the whole convention to see them bring it up literally dozens of times.
While Biden's acceptance speech didn't stick out as a disaster, the content was shallow, and it was delivered rather poorly. Since it was pre-recorded, if that's the best take that they were able to get, then it continues to indicate to me that Biden isn't in great condition.
Policy-wise, it's clear that the Democratic party wants to become the old Bush-era Republican party, but with some identity politics smeared on top. Pro-war, pro-status-quo, supporters of the administrative state, corporatist, blind nationalists, etc. If I was eg. a Bernie supporter, I'd be incredibly disappointed, and I'd feel little reason to support the party.
Maybe it makes some sense electorally, but I don't think that Biden's "strength through unity" message is very attractive to most Americans, who are at their core deeply divided. How are you going to unite a country where a third of people think that a different third of the country are deplorables, and vice-versa? Most people want to crush the opposition, not to unify. Traditionally this'd be "fixed" by starting a war or something, but I'm not even sure that having a big outside enemy to unify against would remove the division very much in today's world.
I'd guess that the convention was mildly effective.
Among the handful of people who watched it, it will increase turnout for Biden supporters, and the nationalist message might've attracted some boomers and gen-Xers who were on the fence. It was a particularly effective message for the midwest swing states, which are quite nationalist. Since almost nobody watches these conventions, the effect of this one event is limited, but it shows the direction that the Biden campaign is going in, and this direction is IMO a reasonably intelligent way of playing the cards they have.
I'll be interested to see how the Republican convention compares. On the one hand, the Democrats were preparing for this for longer, though on the other hand Trump's biggest area of expertise is TV production. The Trump campaign really needs to stop making "Biden is a radical socialist" their main line of attack, since this is
totally not how Biden is portraying himself, and the argument therefore rings false even to someone who's only barely paying attention. Trump can't win with
only a pumped-up base. It's looked to me for a while as though the Trump campaign is actively trying to lose, so I'm not expecting much. If it's a big disaster, I hope that it's at least an amusing disaster.