The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

Were you watching the first couple of evenings of the Democratic national convention in the midst of a Bahamas lockdown as COVID-19 tried to secure a tighter grip here? Most of the convention was actually quite worth watching.

The Democrats, operating virtually and mostly outside Milwaukee where they will need to amass a huge voter margin in November in order to retake Wisconsin for Joe Biden, presented an impressive pastiche of snippets and short speeches from an intentionally diverse collection of Americans meant to represent the broad coalition the party needs to stitch together to win back the presidency.

Convention planners clearly invested wisely in production values for their big TV show. Presenters were slick and sophisticated. The video clips of ordinary people lingered long enough to reveal individual characteristics. The featured speakers were sufficiently limited in their time that much of the pomposity accompanying such events was gratifyingly absent.

On the first night, Michele Obama, still America’s First Lady, skewered President Donald Trump in such a quiet, dignified way that parts of her address may appear for months in campaign ads. Her husband did not disappoint either. They both looked older and somehow even more reassuringly, still the Obamas. It was a reminder for voters who were paying attention that the American presidency does not have to always rest in the hands of a knave.

When Michele Obama said the following, listeners had the sense she was speaking the truth, from her heart:

“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong President for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

“It is what it is” was a not-so-oblique reference to a remark Trump made during one of the most calamitous, revelatory interviews he has given as President. The interviewer had brought the conversation around to the coronavirus pandemic which is sabotaging Trump’s White House tenure. He mentioned that more than 1,000 Americans are dying every day from COVID-19.

“They are dying, that’s true,” the President said, flatly with no apparent emotion. “It is what it is.”

For much of the early part of the Democratic convention, only CNN, MSNBC, PBS and C-SPAN covered the entire show. During the early parts of the convention schedule, regular programming appeared on the traditional broadcast networks. ABC, NBC and CBS covered what their executives felt was important. The rest was saved for the evening news broadcasts and the early morning talk shows for the next day. Fox News offered its usual highly-rated evening fare of smug Sean Hannity and snarky Laura Ingraham.

Joe and Jill Biden both featured on Tuesday evening. Many viewers were doubtless looking at his face and checking for misstatements that would affirm the Republican line that he is increasingly senile and may not be mentally competent to handle the presidency.

At the same time, the convention’s TV producers are eager to display Biden’s human side that offers such a profound contrast to the President’s obdurate insensitivity.

In doing so, Biden’s humanity and compassion are on display. But Biden does appear to be halting and hesitant at times. They are just instants in the teleplay. But the seeds of doubt have been skilfully planted by Trump and the Republicans. It is a reminder that the US President is cunning, even brilliant, at identifying the weaknesses of his opponents and exploiting them.

The Democrats and Biden have to hope that events prevent him and Trump from facing each other in person for the presidential debates still on the election calendar for September and October.

It’s a shame that incandescent New York City congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) cannot take Biden’s place on the debate state. Given only 60 seconds on the national TV stage on Tuesday, she almost stole the whole show. This woman is a shooting star. She may be hailed in the history books as the personification of no more Old White Man Politics in the US. Or not. Look at the power Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer and Trump himself still hold in Washington DC.

But for 96 seconds on Tuesday, AOC dazzled. Here’s some of what she said, and it is certainly worth noting that she offered these remarks in the process of seconding the long-doomed nomination of left-wing hero Bernie Sanders as the Democratic candidate for the White House.

AOC emphasied the power of a “people’s movement that seeks to recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia.”

She said the movement “realizes the unsustainable brutality of an economy that rewards explosive inequalities of wealth for the few at the expense of long-term stability for the many.”

AOC has been outspoken about having to work three jobs to support herself, facing foreclosure on her home after her father died from cancer and most recently, how it is only now that she is an elected federal representative (with an annual salary of nearly $200,000) that she is able to afford braces for her teeth.

The Democrats have to be careful with their own left wing. Fortunately for those who feel Trump must be replaced, there is evidence the Dems realize this. But the danger for the party represented by AOC and many other passionate advocates is real. If Biden/Harris do win in November, and if the Democrats somehow manage to recapture a majority in the US Senate, they will need to move to the left in a way that precludes the many challenges their own left wing are even now preparing.

And at the same time, the Republicans, freed of the electoral albatross Trump is rapidly becoming, will be locked and loaded for a frontal assault on, among other things, the massive federal debt that they have encouraged recently and forgotten they ideologically oppose. They won’t forget after the election, and with the country still mired in economic distress, the GOP would be able to craft a convincing message for voters who have often revealed a startling shortness of memory in matters such as public policy.

Joe Biden will know all about this. It has happened in recent American political history, and it hit him and Barack Obama right between the eyes.

Obama/Biden swept to victory in 2008 and set to work on an ambitious social agenda. The centrepiece, they decided, should be health care, picking up the torch Hillary Clinton had to cede 14 years earlier during her husband’s first term. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was the result.

Masterfully distorting the real implications of Obamacare for American voters, the Republicans immediately started a campaign to roll back the ACA. A pushback against the first black President and his liberal policies strengthened and the Democrats got whipped in the 2010 bi-elections. Most next-day historians and pundits still feel the 2012 election was Mitt Romney’s to lose. Trump clearly agrees and berates the Utah senator for this consistently.

Obama/Biden did win in 2012, but they limped through their second term and suffered the humiliation of having to watch while Mitch McConnell’s US Senate denied Obama’s attempt to place a moderate on the Supreme Court. A loudmouth Republican congressman shouted “You lie” at Obama during one of his last State of the Union messages. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Thoughtful observers are already looking ahead to the actual prospective governance of a Biden/Harris administration. There will be an initial euphoria. They may have a chance to secure passage of some progressive legislation.

But the GOP and the millions of sore Trump losers won’t quietly go away. Neither will Bernie Sanders’ many ardent supporters, who are sufficiently alienated from present-day America that they may not care that their passion could easily return Republicans to congressional majorities in 2022.

A President Biden would need to be prepared, skilful and most of all, lucky, to survive his first two years in office without suffering mortal political wounds. He’ll have lots of people eager to inflict those wounds.