Let's Go!

UPDATE 08/22/2024:

This is not the Democratic Party I’ve watched since I entered adulthood in the 1980s, blinded by the faux sunrise of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” so terrified of being called “liberal” or getting a bad headline that they ended up like a dog that’s been beat too much, spending the last four decades covering up. I could feel the shock waves of the vibe shift from the convention floor Tuesday night as I watched the star speaker, former first lady Michelle Obama, who’d famously defined the old ways when she declared that “when they go low, we go high.”

[...]

Obama paid brief lip service to civility before a “crackback block” on Trump’s racism that had caused the GOP cult leader to once claim her husband was not an American.

“Who’s gonna tell him the job he’s currently seeking might be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

[...]

It turns out that replacing Biden with Harris was more than a shrewd political calculation. It was a signal for America’s political abuse victims to finally break free, to replace senatorial decorum with in-your-face memes, to speak their own truth about how Trump, Project 2025, and right-wing extremism have been battering America without worrying about what uptight fact-checkers and the tsk-tsk crowd at the New York Times and the Washington Post will say, and to make their own kind of music.

[...]

It’s been stunning to watch the Washington Post or the hopelessly tired FactCheck.org nitpick Democratic statements from the United Center podium while pretending Trump is a serious candidate and not a serial liar who tries to escape the political consequences of what he says by pretending he didn’t mean it.

[...]

What strikes me about Chicago is that seeing an escape route from the near-death experience of a frail Biden succumbing to Trump’s wannabe dictatorship has made Democrats not just giddy but more willing to bulldoze anyone who opposes them.

I saw that firsthand at DemPalooza, the DNC’s effort to channel enthusiasm, sign up volunteers, and sell a ton of Kamala swag in a section of downtown’s sprawling McCormick Place that the public can access without credentials.

[...]

It turns out that millions of repressed Americans were dying inside to make their own statement for a kind of freedom that values diversity, a sleeper cell waiting to be activated.

[...]

You know who really hates this? Well, Republicans, of course; they have been caught flat-footed by the Great Vibe Shift of 2024 — as evidenced by Trump’s joyless and nonsensical monologues about bread buyers getting raped or murdered, and turnouts for JD Vance that are counted in the dozens. But even more freaked out seem the nattering nabobs of the mainstream media and the fact-checking industrial complex, who can’t handle liberals talking about how it really feels to be an American today.

[...]

The elite Beltway media is used to dictating the terms of America’s political debate — usually badgering Democrats to move to the center-right — and clearly cannot handle this new power dynamic. That’s not surprising, but here’s what is: Democrats, from Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, down to the rank and file, no longer care what the New York Times picks nits about.

[...]

The exuberance here isn’t irrational, but Democrats have to remember that Trump’s defense of ancient hierarchies still gets him nearly half the electorate.

  Philadelphia Inquirer

Have we checked that lately?