I don’t spend alot of time following political conventions, but I did catch some of the DNC this week and some things stuck with me.
First, what happened to the protests?
They were expecting massive protests with 100,000 people coming to town. “Make it Great like ’68!” Chicago prepared for the impending riotpocalypse with boarded-up buildings and a scheme that left the United Center, with its perimeter fencing and ID requirements, better defended than either our border or electoral system.
It sounded about right given the pro-Hamas heat over the past ten months. So what happened?
Monday’s protest at Union Park? Organizers were expecting 30,000 to 40,000 and maybe got 10% of that number. There were pictures of hundreds of unused protest signs littering the park grass (only Tea Parties clean up after themselves).
Tuesday? Even fewer protesters marched on the Israeli consulate and when they became violent the police squashed it with 55 arrests made. However even that in reality was a bit anti-climactic. Wednesday? 2,000. Thursday? The last and biggest night of the DNC? About the same.
So again, what happened? Few protesters and those who showed up were from the fringe Trotskyite microsects. I know it was midweek but couldn’t they get some buses down from Dearborn? I mean even the WNBA draws better than this.
The scuttlebutt is that since the Spring protest encampments, the Dems have been desperate to avoid similar optics for the DNC and have been making calls to that effect. I’m guessing somebody (finally) picked up the phone on the other side and the parties cut a deal for a nice, quiet convention. So what was in the deal? I think we have to wait until the day after the election to find out.
Second, don’t ever doubt the power of the corporate media.
There’s a lot of schadenfreude on the Right about both the cratering level of public trust in the media and its declining business model, but that misses the point. The power of the media is in that it sets the Overton window for can and cannot be discussed and inserting and withdrawing issues from public discussion. You may not believe what they say, but good luck in getting opposing views to be aired
Over the past two months, the media has gone from Biden’s Praetorian Guard, to pushing him to leave the race, to calling for a mini-primary, to then just appointing Kamala (who for the past 3 ½ years no one thought was a viable presidential candidate). All of those about-faces were done with a precision that would have made a parade ground gunnery sergeant proud.
The Democrats have (so far) pulled a minor miracle in jettisoning Biden, avoiding a party collapse in finding a successor, and leaving the DNC roughly tied with Trump. They never could have pulled this off without having the media act as their PR auxiliary. Can the Democrats and the media keep this whole phantasm going until November? I doubt it but I’m impressed (and horrified) by what they have accomplished so far.
I have a question. How does the actual coordination with the media happen? What’s the 2024 equivalent of JournoList? Is it Zoom, Slack channel, volcano lair?
Third, the arrogance of the Obamas.
The Democrats are still Obama’s party and he makes no bones about it. The tradition used to be that immediately upon leaving office, the departing president would then leave town. The now ex-president left his successor’s inaugural and proceeded directly to Union Station and took the next train. Now of course they get a final ride on Air Force One. Not Barry, he just moved a few miles up the street to the Kalorama neighborhood and continued to pull strings. That’s arrogance.
It’s also arrogant for his wife to get up and make a speech at the DNC stating that she was taught by her parents to be “…suspicious of those who took more than they needed.” Of course, her family owns four mansions and is worth nearly $100 million, all based on leveraging their time in politics. I’m surprised she didn’t quote in her speech a famous community organizer who once said “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Btw… she looked fabulous in that $3,000 pantsuit. Wonder how long that $3,000 would feed a family of four. I couldn’t find a word in the media about the stunning hypocrisy; however, I did find a lot of stories praising her fashion sense.
Fourth, I have a real sense of dread.
Just watching the video from the DNC and feeling the vibes, and all that joy I smell hysteria and desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, desperate people with power do catastrophic things.
The DNC in Chicago in 1996 is probably more the standard, and props to CPD for a great response to the mayhem. The city and PD certainly lucked out from a smaller turnout. Great observations about the gathering, yet we have to hope that the Trump team has ballot harvesting and mail in ballots covered and countered in swing states in some form or fashion, and maybe exploiting the bump from RFKjr as best they can, because we sure aren’t going to get any help from national and local big city media.
I imagine that one of the factors limiting the “protests” was that word filtered down that the CPD would actually enforcing the law in this instance. Too bad about the dozen or so people shot on a given weekend, those resources are reserved for things that really matter.
Michelle’s suit was probably one of the cheaper ones to show up on that podium and likely the houses that go with it. The downside of a meteoric rise is that you don’t have as much time to accumulate graft. Then there’s a little luck involved; I wonder if anyone will ever figure out just how much money was laundered into Clinton’s pocket via the Haiti earthquake? Those sorts of opportunities don’t come around often. Lord knows little if any of it ever did anything good in Haiti.
Michelle hectoring us about greed and the injustice of accumulating enough money not to have to eat dog food when we retire is part and parcel with all the other celebrities lecturing us on global warming from the doors of their private jets or advocating for eating bugs. “Let them eat prime rib if hamburger is too expensive.”
Bezos just got a new G700, the better to weekend on his $500 million boat. He’s working hard to break it in with 28 flights in 39 days, generating 264 tons of carbon (not counting the boat and its 240 foot “tender”). At $200 a ton in carbon indulgences to some con man like Algore that will promise to plant trees somewhere, some time, that comes to $52,800 which is probably less than he spends to stock the bar.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/22/business/jeff-bezos-buys-80m-private-jet-that-flies-near-speed-of-sound/
A small humorous episode when some joker tried to feed real bugs to some Democrats for breakfast. So a little chance to smile.
“…suspicious of those who took more than they needed.”
What leaps to my mind is that she automatically associates wealth with taking.
Second, don’t ever doubt the power of the corporate media.
Well, I’ll at least quibble about it.
The power of the media is in that it sets the Overton window for can and cannot be discussed and inserting and withdrawing issues from public discussion.
Bankrupt corporate media organs that no longer exist can’t set anything anywhere. And I note that even the audience of the Colbert show laughed when he made the claim that CNN was unbiased. I suspect that audience was quite happy to have partisan media served up to them, but presumably don’t believe they’re actually being served up lies.
You may not believe what they say, but good luck in getting opposing views to be aired.
I suspect that opposing viewpoints are being discerned quite enough to matter, even if not enough to be universally heard. Otherwise, Trump wouldn’t the GOP nominee.
…avoiding a party collapse in finding a successor…
Have they? Notable democrats RFK jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have just endorsed Donald Trump. Kamala Harris can’t answer questions or speak without notes and seems to be as dumb as a bag of lobotomized hammers. This does not strike me as any sort of success.
…and leaving the DNC roughly tied with Trump.
I still recall the Wisconsin poll that claimed Trump was 17 points down on election day, which was lightyears from accurate. Polls are nothing more than guides for future vote fraud.
How does the actual coordination with the media happen?
Regime involvement, using government resources.
Fourth, I have a real sense of dread.
Can’t disagree here.
“…suspicious of those who took more than they needed.”
yea Big Mike gets to decide how much “they/xir/it” needs.
“Just watching the video from the DNC and feeling the vibes, and all that joy I smell hysteria and desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, desperate people with power do catastrophic things.”
I do not doubt such is the case, and that is the thing with which to be concerned.
It’s been said on the conservative side, a little, and somewhat quietly at that, that this election is the make-or-break election, not just “the most important election ever” which we hear from the conservative ramparts every four years, but this time it’s true, and true for both sides.
No one knows, for certain, how Trump will govern, but one can hypothesize from observations with his previous 4-year political rape that it won’t be unfocused or gentle. Not that I anticipate it to be an exercise in payback, a little of that is expected, but he, now, understands The Mission and how resistant Washington is, and will be, to it. He’s had four years to think about the experience and apply what he learned; his pick of Vance for VP is some indicaton of that, providing the opportunity for continuation of the effort.
The Radical Left – let’s call the Democrats what they actually are – also understands how important this election is; they run the risk of their empire being dismantled and crippled for a generation, probably more. And, to that end, they are not just willing but driven to do anything with anyone if it helps The Cause, and do it to anyone if they are an impediment. We will never know, but were the entirety of the actual facts to come out it would not be surprising to see some small Democrat tentacles – if not connected, at least adjacent – even if only very slightly, to July 13.
So much rides on this election, especially for the Radical Left, some of which I’m confident about which they are unaware, that desperation will rear its ugly head in ways that, so far, we can only imagine. The ability to tamp down the anticpated Chicago demonstrations, and keep them largely out of the “news,” is a good example of the power The Left can exert.
If their educated perception as November 5 draws close is that they will lose, especially not just the presidency but control of either, or both, houses of Congress, there will be no limit to what they will attempt, and it will be attempted even with suspicion of the consequences; as Harry Reid said about the stunning lies he told about Romney in 2012, “well, it worked, didn’t it?” The election results will be the hill that must be taken regardless of method and regardless of casualties; overturning a completed election is so difficult as to be almost impossible, especially when the winners control the supporting infrastructure. The Democrat Party has been called “an organized crime syndicate masquerading as a political party” and that layer quietly hides, or attempts to, below the banners and balloons but is there nonetheless.
Were, however, the Radical Left , aka Democrats, to succeed by Any Means Necessary some of the consequences may be far beyond their ability to control. Skulduggery, fraud, falsehood, malfeasance, legerdemain and outright theft may grant one side “a win” but should a substantial portion of the population suffer the consequences and fully embrace the idea that “as long as they exist we will never be able to select our leadeship through legitimate means and while they are in power everything I have achieved will be destroyed” it is not impossible that Other Means will be employed to achieve the goal.
And that is my greatest concern, that the Left’s unwavering absolute devotion to The Mission Of Winning may end up plunging the United States into a real civil insurrection, not just a smiling parade of the curious and frustated through hallowed halls in the presence of uniformed and armed law enforcement officers, but gunfire in the streets, blood in the gutters, and bodies hanging from streetlamps. Fromthat the country might not ever recover.
Not only that, but even more important – keeping things from NOT being discussed. Hunter’s laptop is what everyone will jump to mind but who here knows about all of the Trump executive orders against human trafficking? How many can name the sanctions Trump put on Russia and when they were implemented?
Sure I’d bet there’s a better chance more here would know the answers (without looking) but go out on the street? Just look at this quote from A Byron York article in ’21:
You know, the dirty little secret about the Trump administration was that while Donald Trump clearly had a kind of soft spot for Putin, the Trump administration was pretty tough on the Russians. They armed Ukraine. They armed the Poles. They extended NATO operations and exercises in ways that even the Obama administration had not done. They maintained the sanctions. So I don’t think it will be that different.”
The dirty little secret??? It was never a secret at all. All of the actions Zakaria listed were well-known public policy during the Trump years. Any of Zakaria’s colleagues, at CNN and in the press as a whole, might have cited them.
And of course the media has gotten it down to an art. So if say… Trump cured cancer, instead of reporting on it, the media will say something like, “Trump to issue mandate requiring Americans to smoke.” That then forces “the other side” to run around constantly arguing about how that is a lie and work to debunk it and then there’s never any room or oxygen for the actual big news.
If you’ve studied nudging or mass conditioning, you’ll see it everywhere and it’s so blatant it’s tough not to shoot the TV at times when the news is on.
I think it’s scarier: there ISN’T any coordination. Like schools of fish or flocks of birds, I think the group are so locked in-step and cult like, they just pick up what the new message is and spread it immediately without anyone directing them. James Lindsay hinted at this a little in a long interview where he said he’s known leftists who feel like they have a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads constantly and they are paranoid about getting labeled an enemy. So each fish in the school is hyper sensitive to every slight change in its neighbors and reacts as fast possible to agree and amplify any signal that travels through the group in order to avoid getting pushed out and attacked.
Well when you’ve lived your entire life getting money from donations and taxes and not by producing anything…