The DNC has been electric and it's only been two nights. Compared to the RNC (whose fundraising numbers just came out for July - - only $31 million, with $33.5 going back out)? It's on life support and the DNC has put up a pinebox for it to crawl into and be done.
Bringing the hammer and nails last night? Well, it started with a raucous and jubilant roll call complete with a DJ. DJ Cassidy (currently engaged in a Las Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood) rocked out a playlist that was curated for each state and territory as the delegates awarded their votes to Harris and Walz. From obvious choices like Sweet Home Alabama for Alabama and Carry On My Wayward Son for Kansas by Kansas to a surprise reveal as Lil Jon hyped the crowd with Turn Down For What as Georgia cast their votes. State by state by territory, song after song took what is usually a meh portion of the events and turned the DNC into a party.
Seriously, the powers-that-be running the Harris/Walz campaign are so on point and prepared, the playlist hit Spotify within 15 minutes of the roll call being completed.
In a night full of highlights, we got a surprise as Kamala and Tim, 90 miles away in a packed arena in Milwaukee, were livestreamed into the DNC just after the roll call. Two arenas filled to capacity connected as much by joy as by technology. The crowd response was thunderous. And the smile that I had plastered on my face from the music, stayed there. (I had just boarded a flight and my goofy ass grin was covered by my mask, but my crinkled up eyes surely gave away my happiness.)
We then got the beautiful oration of Doug Emhoff as he paid tribute to his talented, learned, experienced wife, Kamala. It is always heartwarming when a significant other waxes rhapsodic, but this speech also served to highlight something that exists on this side of the aisle that is a famine on the other: Secure male personalities.
No bullshit machismo. No pandering to the little ladies. No talking down to or for them. No puffed up chests hiding the diminished capacity below. We have men at the top of this campaign who openly revere their wives with no hesitation or fear that their man card will be pulled. They love them, hug them, kiss them, speak of them with highest regard. They support them. They are in awe of them. And they know how damned lucky they are to simply exist in the orbits of these remarkable women.
Take note, MAGAts - those are the true measures of a man. There is nothing manly about keeping a woman down, consigning her to the kitchen, making decisions for her. Your bluster and bravado? As fake and phony as the bull testicles you attach to your trucks to convey your ... manhood? There's a reason you seek out timid women, trad wives; why you push to enact laws that demean us, control us, take our voices away. You are scared little boys. Here's the truth: it takes confidence to stand next to your partner. It takes being secure in yourself to stand behind them. To cheerlead them. To cede the spotlight, to be the support system. To feel, in every fiber of your being, pure joy when they succeed, unsullied by jealousy or insecurity.
We see it in Doug. We see it in Joe. We see it in Barack. Men comfortable in their own skin. Men who lift up their wives. Men who are not intimidated by the women they married. Men who radiate pride in their partners.
More of you need to take note and do better.
Which brings me to the better part of the evening. Actually, the best part. I landed just in time to stream Michelle Obama's speech.
This woman is a force. Composed, calm, educated, informed, and ready to do battle. While her words from the past, "When they go low, we go high" still ring in our ears, last night saw her finally say "Hold my earrings" and bring the fire against the man and the cult that have for nearly two decades threatened her family. Her words rang out, strong, true, pointed. She spoke of her recently passed mother, her grief, and her determination to honor her and all our mothers and grandmothers and on and on who have fought, struggled, lived and died in the pursuit of making better lives for all of us.
She spoke of Kamala, and took Trump to the woodshed, without ever saying his name:
She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt the business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don’t get to change the rules, so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something.
Skewered his tiny heart and roasted it whole.
When she did utter his name, it was utter perfection:
For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.
Wait, I want to know: Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those “Black jobs”?
Then she did something that needed to be done, she brought out a mirror for this party to look into. Dems have a long history of flinching. Of not fighting back. Of getting scared off. And this time we simply cannot afford to be cowed by anything the right throws.
So no matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle. So folks, we cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is just right. And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.
Small aside: I truly believe that part of why this movement has been embraced so strongly is that we are finally seeing a campaign stand up and strike back. The sharp, immediate, snark laden press releases. The calling out of the weird obsessions the right has with genitals and bodily autonomy. The meandering, mindless, sundowning Trump's "speeches" display. This campaign is cutting them down to size, calling bullshit as it leaves the orifice, and doing it all with a smile, with a laugh. At their expense.
That last part is why the Trump campaign and the MAGA cult are unraveling. Why they cannot fill a single arena, let alone two in one night. Why their coffers are running dry. Why they are throwing anything and everything at the wall, but cannot make anything stick. They are constantly being pushed onto the ropes by a younger, smarter, agile, tech savvy opponent. An opponent who knows the Achilles heel of that narcissist is his ego. And laughing at him is death by a thousand guffaws. He is a small man, he has always been a small man. And now everyone is seeing it.
To borrow from When Harry Met Sally - I'll have what she's having.
Michelle's speech was pure fire. That woman is a gifted orator, a brilliant mind, a brave warrior. And she left the crowd and the tuned in nation/world uplifted, challenged, resolute about our assignment.
The night could have ended on the high she delivered. But no, there was more to come. Following her would have been impossible for anyone else, I mean who on this planet could even hope to step up to the mic after all that?
President Barack Obama, that's who. Although even he acknowledged the difficulty in having to speak after her. I am feeling ready to go even if I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.
Michelle had opened her speech by speaking about the heaviness we have all felt for far too many years. A heaviness we all knew was there, but could not fully define. A cloud constantly hovering over everything. And that is why feeling joy, feeling hope is akin to finally breathing deeply again. Hope is making a comeback.
Seeing Obama, listening to Obama, my God, how I have missed that man's ability to speak, to calm, to center a frightened nation.
To use the repetend of the moment, he understood the assignment.
He began by honoring the efforts and achievements of President Biden. Bragging on himself only to say this: And looking back, I can say, without question, that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best. And that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as Vice President.
He spoke of Joe's empathy and decency and resilience. His compassion, his steady hand, and most notabley, his selflessness. That last one is how we got here. Media onslaught be damned; party insider pressure that can piss right off; President Biden ultimately decided to step aside and pass the torch to his VP, who is now making an unprecedented, historic run to the Oval. By doing so he breathed new life into the party, the process.
Country over party. Imagine Trump doing that. You can't. It's simply not in his DNA. Self regard? Absolutely. Selflessness? Not a chance.
His words were strong and rang true. And then he brought the pain. I can only imagine the ketchup covering the walls of Mar-a-Lago.
He lambasted Trump for his incessant whining and endless grievance stream (think a one man Festivus), and then lampooned him. He did not aim for the jugular. Rather, his target was lower. Yes, that's right, Barack Obama made a dick joke at Trump's expense. It was glorious. And it was everything that overbearing, self centered, hubris laden Hefty bag deserved. The emperor has no clothes, and look! He has a small penis! (And to the media and mouthpieces on the right who are pearl clutching over this? Pound sand. You support a name calling, adjudicated rapist and felon. Take all the seats.)
Referring to Trump as an incessant leafblower outside your window, he broke it down for America:
He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedom, since it won’t affect his life. And most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided: between us and them, between the real Americans who—of course—support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those other people back in their place. It is one of the oldest tricks in politics, from a guy whose act has—let’s face it—gotten pretty stale.
We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.
(Think Jaws 3-D or Sex & The City 2. Especially the latter - oy.)
Then he did what he needed to do, and although I don't completely agree, I get it. He reached across the aisle in an attempt to open the door to those in MAGAland who may be wavering. He spoke of what unites us. He spoke of understanding different points of view. Again, I get the reasoning, but I personally cannot extend it to racists and Nazis and bigots. I do not have any desire to understand a point of view that threatens my son's life. That's not a difference in politics, that's a difference in humanity.
By all means, if more of that sorry lot have their eyes opened by what they are seeing in their own party and now ours, GREAT. At no point in time has the contrast been so obvious, the feelings so dark on one side, so hopeful on the other. And make no mistake, joy is contagious. It's the kind of infectious that's good to spread around. But also, make no mistake - that party is roiling with hate and rage. They see the happy faces at the DNC and it makes them angry. They see the party atmosphere and openly mock what they simply don't understand. And they hear the uplifting words and only ratchet up their own vile rhetoric.
That is why Trump's every rambling "speech" is based in one thing: FEAR. That's all he has left. Lies and scary declarative statements about communism, Marxism, and the end of this country. It's why JD Vance simply echos what Trump bleats. He cannot go off message - and that message is keep them scared, keep them believing that the only answer to not being raped as they go to buy bread is TRUMP.
But back to Obama.
He continued to highlight the differences between the oppressiveness of the cult and the forward looking mindset of the the Dems.
Well, we have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you’re willing to work hard. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life, how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry. And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours. That’s okay.
I completely agree. I do not care where you go to church, how or what you believe. Just leave me out of it. I don't care if you love pickleball - I don't get it. And I don't have to. It is not up to me who you marry, if you marry, if you have kids, how you have kids. Just as it's none of your business that I have sex for recreation not procreation, or that my son is transgender, or that my daughter is happily married and wants no kids, or that my other daughter is happily married and only wants one child. As Tim Walz says, Mind your own damned business.
Obama extended some grace towards the backwards proclivities of the MAGAsphere when he said this:
We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up.
Sure, to a point. Racists have had forever to "catch up" and they don't want to. Bigots need more than encouragement to educate themselves. There are rancid, dangerous, vile groups of people in our world and they do not deserve grace or time or patience. They deserve to be firmly pushed back into their swamps, to have society cast them so far out that they are once again afraid to espouse their venom.
Do I believe there are people who simply need to see the proof in the pudding, as it were? Of course. Who need to finally grasp that my son is not a danger to their son or daughter? That Pete's and Chasten's marriage does not take away from theirs? That drag is an art form not a deviant pursuit? That abortion is sometimes an absolutely necessary medical procedure, and even when it is simply a choice, it is not a choice that has any bearing on their life or is any of their fucking business? Yes, yes, yes and yes. But how much time, how much patience must we expend on them? When does patience turn into placating the petulant and willfully belligerent? Marginalized people do not have the luxury of endless time and patience. There is truth to let go or be dragged.
And I believe Obama fully knows that. He just also knows that when the spotlight is on him and the time calls for olive branching, that is what a statesman must do, what he must encourage.
He ended his speech by reminding everyone that the world is watching. And it is. The Trump years may have dulled the light, but we are still a beacon with the chance to once again shine brightly, lead the world out of the darkness. His final words were concise and to the point. We have roughly two months left until this thing is decided. So let’s get to work.
Volunteer. Register to vote. And set it on your calendar to check and recheck your registration as we get closer to the date. Encourage others to vote and be unabashed in telling them why they need to. We must come out so strong, in such vast numbers that all the Republican subterfuge just won't matter. Swing states must swing our way. And we can do that.
Spread the joy, the hope, the laughter and the light. As MLK said, Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
We love this country. We love one another. We love the vision this party has for the future, a future that includes everyone. Let's shine our light so brightly that it completely and forever fades that orange stain until it cannot be seen anymore.
One of your best Linda!
Posted by: Judy Spiegel | Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 06:31 AM