Politics is all about making contrasts. “Here’s what I believe and promise to do. Here’s what my opponent believes and promises to do.” What the ratio of believe vs. promise is and me vs. them is varies depending on the candidates and how well it’s going.
This week brought up something I remember from the very little I remember of Gilligan’s Island. The Professor is telling the Skipper about something he found being funny and Skipper replies, “‘Funny’ ha ha, or ‘funny’ strange?” It was the latter.
The Democratic National Convention this week evoked a funny strange and a funny ha ha reaction in me.
There was Joe Biden giving his speech, and I noticed what time he was doing it at. It was around 10pm Central time, and I thought, “Wow. He’s doing so much better than he did at the debate in June, and that was about the same time of night.”
I see a YouTube video that shows a little about how the Republican National Convention did their roll call and casting of votes and comparing it to the DNC’s. Here it is:
I find the one with the full RNC roll call and it starts with Speaker Mike Johnson telling everyone what the rules are for casting the votes, and though he’s smiling, it’s pretty dry stuff. He introduces the Secretary of the convention, Vicki Drummond. My first reaction on seeing her was “Is that Nancy Pelosi?” My second reaction, which I’m not proud of, was “Wow. She looks and sounds old, especially with her fumbling a bit.” And then you get to the speeches where each state makes their announcement, and many of them had “This is our relationship with Donald Trump” as a significant portion of their mostly staid and dry vote-casting speeches.
Contrast that with the Democrats’ convention. Whatever geek squad put together the A/V system knows their stuff and puts the other side to shame.
The RNC had a mish-mash of about two dozen differently-sized monitors, giving it a disjointed appearance. The four ceiling-mounted monitors at the venue are decent-sized so you can see what’s going on if you’re not close enough to the stage to see things clearly. The graphic stripes running along the divisions between seat levels seem split up at the lower levels instead of being connected.
The bank of monitors used by the DNC is more cohesive, flowing together, and matches the ceiling-mounted displays. The graphic stripes along the seat level divisions look like they wrap around the entire convention hall. If all of this was provided by the venue, then Chicago location is where you want to book a convention, not Milwaukee. If the DNC brought the stage equipment, they integrated it well into the venue’s systems and designed it to complement what was on site.
You have at the DNC a roll call that was accompanied by DJ Cassidy playing a different song for each of the 55 areas that are part of the nominating process: the 50 states, American Samoa, Democrats Abroad, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. When it was Georgia’s turn, Lil Jon brought the enthusiasm with a customized version of “Get Low”. The vote-casting speeches were more along the lines of “Here’s what’s great about our state/region and we’re casting our votes for Harris”, putting the people of their state or region first, instead of one person.
There have been more contrasts. The positive things about our country instead of the drum beat of “everything’s awful and only Trump can fix it”. The contrast of Democrats finally setting aside “If they go low, we go high” and taking him on in an impactful way. Republicans as speakers at the DNC, helping show and reinforce what Trump has always been and what he will always be, no matter what he says. For as much as Trump’s own advisors are telling him, “You’ve gotta stay on topic”, and Trump is even saying this when he’s been holding mini-rallies in the area this week as “counter-programming”, like saying that he was there to give an “insightful” economic speech, his ability to stay on topic is almost non-existent.
Each speaker and each day of this convention provides a very clear contrast with last month’s convention by the GOP. The GOP looks old, tired and stale. Trump couldn’t stay awake when his own son was giving a speech. Democrats look young, energetic and vibrant. It’s Ben Stein repeatedly asking “Anyone? Anyone?” in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off contrasted with Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling”.
All of this was made possible by Joe Biden deciding to step aside. He wanted to continue. He was confident he could. It’s a trait of his to be tenacious. If he had continued, then the Democratic convention this week would have looked and felt like the GOP convention last month.
Biden had the wisdom to realize he should not continue. He stepped aside and endorsed Harris as his replacement as the Democrat’s presidential candidate.
In doing so, it was the first of five times proving he believes in a peaceful transfer of power. He was not a tired old man desperately trying to hold on to it. He willingly gave it up.
The second of the five times is when he did not storm into the convention, demanding to be given the nomination back, as Trump fantasized Biden would. Biden reaffirmed his commitment and endorsed Harris again.
The third through the fifth will occur in the future, on November 5th when the election is held, on January 6th when the votes from the electoral college are officially counted (provided they are; more on that next week), and on January 20th when the next President is sworn in. If it’s somehow Trump for those three, I expect Biden to abide by them even if he doesn’t like it.
Let’s make one final contrast with Trump’s belief in a peaceful transfer of power. In short, he doesn’t.
His first time of proving he doesn’t occurred in November 2019 when he suddenly went to Walter Reed Medical Center for an unexplained reason. The answer came later it was for a routine colonoscopy that he didn’t want people to know about so he wouldn’t be the “butt of the joke”. Other presidents sign executive orders to temporarily transfer their powers to the VP for things like this. Not so Trump. He was not sedated or anesthetized so that he would not have to transfer his power to Mike Pence even for as little as two hours.
The second was his answer about whether he would accept the results of the 2020 election. His answer was he would, with a pause and then a qualifier of “if it’s fair”. This is the same answer he’s given in the same way about the upcoming 2024 election. Always with the qualifier of “if it’s fair”. Anyone who takes an objective look at Trump’s life should be able to see that his definition of a “fair” election is “if I win”.
The third occurred on the night of November 3, 2020 when Trump did not concede the election to Biden. To this day, he has not and he continues to say he won.
The fourth came in the speech he gave on January 6, 2021 that led to the storming of the Capital.
The fifth was when he sat there, watching it happen on TV for, what was it? 87 minutes?, refusing to do anything about it, and when he finally got off his butt to address the nation, he gave his approval to what happened. Behind the scenes video showed it took him a long time to record the message because he kept rejecting sections of the script. “I don’t want to say that.”
The sixth was when he slunk away quietly on January 20, 2021 as Joe Biden was sworn in.
That leads us to examples #7 through about #2500. There have been about 1,365 days between today and November 3, 2020. Every one of those days was a day Donald Trump could have proven he believes in the peaceful transfer of power by conceding he lost the 2020 election. Every day that he didn’t added to the tally that he doesn’t believe in giving up power.
The extra counts reaching to #2500 is a rough estimate of how many times he’s said he won, it was stolen from him, he’s being persecuted because he’s too popular, how he’s done nothing wrong and everything else. I’m probably under-estimating by several orders of magnitude, but it adds up to a person who doesn’t believe in giving up power and won’t if he gets it again.
