Democrats nearly pulled off a masterful arena-sized trick in Chicago this week, repeating so many times during their quadrennial nominating convention that Americans were reacting with “joy” to the possibility of Kamala Harris becoming president that many watching the race from afar likely became convinced that such an unlikely outcome was real.
There’s no doubt the Democratic Party’s professional delegates on the floor of the United Center — elected officials, union representatives and celebrities — were ecstatic that they no longer had to feign enthusiasm for an octogenarian president who was falling mentally and in the polls. Inside the building, they were thrilled by the charismatic words of Barack and Michelle Obama, the beat of DJ Cassidy’s American music and, most of all, the spread of the polls. Open up The showdown between Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
But the number is only a few thousand. 345 million Many of us feel that way. Here’s what Thursday’s climax at the Democratic National Convention looked like for one of them.
Within walking distance of the house that Michael Jordan built, in Union Park, the largest public space free of barricades, a few hundred protesters and petitioners held a lackluster rally, carrying banners and occasionally yelling into bullhorns about the plight of Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war. They and the Democratic National Committee were accompanied by roughly equal numbers of heavily armed riot police, with bikes, face masks, face shields and guns.
At the Border Patrol entrance a few blocks away, more than 1,000 DNC attendees sweated under the hot sun as they stood in a line that wound around not one, not two, but five street corners. At the end of that line, after enduring a heartbreaking protest about Palestine, Jesus, abortion, and the awesomeness of Vermin Supreme, the delegates finally began the process, walking through makeshift fences and concrete barricades and showing badges on both sides as their IDs were checked at literally dozens of checkpoints.
At one point this week, I couldn’t help but chuckle and take a photo of a flyer that’d been tacked to a nearby tree warning about “techno-fascism.” I can see now that a few feet behind the flyer is a makeshift black anti-riot fence (with a “No Trespassing” sign), and behind that is a low concrete barricade, sandwiching yet another layer of barricades/fencing on a disused roadway, and behind that is a patrolled armed guard. Behind the guard is a parking lot where buses are parked, and eventually (because I’ve made it to the other side), there are more barricades and fences, more armed personnel, and eventually the United Center comes into view in the distance.
This is not a security doctrine unique to Democrats. This is my 10th major party political convention (I skipped the Republican National Convention this year), but the trends from the 2000 Los Angeles convention and the 2024 Chicago convention are clear: the mob is pushed further and further to the periphery, and hypermax security is tightened to unspeakable degrees. And it’s not just logistics, it’s metaphor.
As delegates prepared to drum up false jubilation over the Democratic candidate’s decidedly tepid speech, I made my way through a dense network of checkpoints and crowds that had swelled last night, only to find that there wasn’t an empty seat in the arena and the only speaker I would see in person on this final and most important day of the Democratic National Convention was…one of the biggest public policy minds. villain In modern American life, says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, “We need to be more vigilant about our education.
“One of the first lessons I taught my students was about the social contract,” Weingarten said. “The social contract is about how important both individual freedom and mutual responsibility are in a democracy. This contract underpins our commitment to public schools.” Weingarten’s COVID-era approach to public schools was perhaps the biggest driver of families moving away from the “free” education system.
Descending the steps near the start of the never-ending quandary of the exits was another Democrat undoubtedly feeling joy this week: former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
It is these grotesque vulgarities, not the glittering billionaire authors like Barack and Michelle Obama, the six-figure speakers, or Chicago’s friend Oprah Winfrey, who actually constitute the linchpin of “democracy.”For all this joy, for all this empathy, the everyday product of Democratic-led politics is the catastrophe of real-world policy in places like Chicago.
In the face of a really difficult and mercurial Donald Trump, the Democrats have spent the last eight years positioning themselves as the defenders of democracy, and now in Chicago, they have zero primary wins, zero interviews, and He never even came close to winning his home state. In the 2020 primary, Democrats are trying to accept her candidacy as a fait accompli, a feeling of joy they didn’t even know they were experiencing, without pitting her against voters or a hostile press. I’m not averse to anyone succumbing to that feeling. But I’m not going to join them.
