I'm waiting for the next act -- with Harris as prez, a 50/50 Senate, and narrow Dem majority in House; we'll see whose agenda comes up under those circumstances!
I didn't really watch much of the convention because it's just a form of entertainment to me. But I am REALLY excited to see others reacting so enthusiastically. Seeing Walz in action convinced me he was the right choice. Bro knows how to wingman.
Overall I think the convention was good. The headliners (even Biden) did well and Harris killed it. I feel kind of dumb that I thought she wouldn't be a good campaigner although I was in favor of switching after the debate. The convention for the most part stuck to clear themes, tried to appeal to moderates, and was also "fun" (as much as a bunch of speeches can be). I think the convention would have been a disaster if Biden was still running but with Harris you could see the enthusiasm and sighs of relief.
It was not a perfect convention, however. When Biden went late the first night, a lot of people (such as Nate Silver) thought the party was trying to deliberately push him out of sight. It became clear the next day, however, that the convention had no sense of time management. Many speakers should have been cut to get the headliners on earlier. It is true that a lot of people consume the convention through clips the next day but there is no excuse not to get your headliners on during EST primetime. The sneers I saw on twitter about how not everyone lives on the East Coast felt almost deliberately obtuse to me. Yes, it is true not everyone lives in the Eastern Time Zone, but that's where most of the swing states are! I wonder if the long list of speakers reflects the typical Dem issue about failing to prioritize and trying to make everyone happy. Well, we don't need to hear from Leon Panetta, sorry. The "Beyonce suprise" fakeout was also bizarre and I don't think it would have hurt to have a Palestinian-American speaker who played ball but I understand why they didn't want to do it.
Hiding from questions is not dynamic, and it doesn’t erase the past 4 years of VP Harris being a professional useless person. She can make moderate mouth noises all she wants but for 4 years the opposite is what we got and there’s no reason to believe the future will be different.
Wow, this was actually a really compelling argument for me to split my ticket with Harris at the top. I had been sort of discouraged, and didn't want to vote for either candidate (I lean R), but this constrained agenda sounds appealing. I'm in Texas, so of course it makes no difference 😂
Stopped listening to those guys years ago. In 2017, none of my friends were as devastated as I was by a Trump presidency, and it was very comforting to listen to them. But their political instincts are terrible, and they have no inside connections to the Biden Administration.
The Democratic Convention was an occasion of deep sadness for me. I thought Obama made a beautiful speech, and said all the right things about persuasion and tolerance and unity of America. Given the content and tone of the other speeches (and *especially* Michelle Obama's), I am devastated to think now that it is - and always was - just words.
What I saw was a festival of talking-over and talking-past. The party has a stunning power to create a facsimile of itself through media. They can do some talking that they think the normies want to hear, while avoiding making a case to the American people for whatever they actually plan to do. Notably, the portion of the crowd in the camera range seemed to be almost entirely upper middle class, with young, ostentatiously intersectional people in the first several rows. For ordinary Americans, who are not at all represented here, it screams cultural exclusion and contempt.
I feel the convention shows what the party and it's leaders really think. Shifting temporarily to the right-tested centrist words that are entirely at contrast with they way they have and will certainly govern, will not fool me.
I saw tons of middle aged white people in the crowd. If the presence of young people and people of color among them “screams cultural exclusion and contempt”, that’s pretty damn racist and it’s sad if we have to pander to people who are so threatened by including black people.
Like, to be clear - most of the speakers were white. The VP pick is white. The big musical performers were white. *Most* of the attendees were white and middle-aged.
White people made up the majority of that audience on the TV I was watching, and made up the majority of the speakers, musical performers, etc. a few shots of young black people being “ostentatiously” in the front rows doesn’t mean that the vast majority of crowd shots were primarily middle aged white people.
I mean, you're the one saying "older white people making up only 60% of the audience" is "screaming contempt and cultural exclusion." Your only point is that you think any plurality of people of color in the frame is a threat.
Let me see if I can explain this to you. The intersectional kiddies were fine and lovely and inspiring. They are not the point. The issue is a cultural one. A convention is an assembly, a gathering together of many people, from many cultures, who mingle and create the event. But the event I saw reflected one culture, the culture associated with educated elites, with very specific values that many (even most) Democrats don't share. The implicit message is "we are in charge, this is the culture of true Democrats, and if you don't get in line with this culture, you don't belong here" It is a kind of forced celebration determined by power from the center. It's clear to me that the words of moderation, patriotism, solidarity (on behalf of a candidate who won't talk to the press) are just words; the Democrats will govern the country the way they governed the convention, and that is appalling to me.
Nothing could better express what the party has become since I started voting the straight blue ticket in 1984. Hence the sadness.
Rock: What culture was missing from the convention? There were, of course, mostly white people there, so you are obviously talking about something more than race. But race, gender, and age are pretty much all you can tell from images. So I'm genuinely confused as to both what culture you think was missing from the convention and how you came to that belief.
Not so. You can tell a lot from the way people behave and present themselves, and the context in which they are presented. At the risk of stirring things up, I'll focus on the cultural meaning of the young people up front. The idea of having a bunch of young people of all different kinds representing the future is a lovely one. In the hands of the party, it was curated to convey the upper-class progressive values of centering and decentering people by race, and of the importance of imposing this as an act of morality. This bothered me personally because the concept is repulsive to me, but I also think it very much a minority view among actual voting Democrats, whose party this supposedly is. I don't think this progressive element would do anything to help elect the candidate. Rather, it was what the upper-class people in charge liked to present to themselves, in the spectacle they created and that belongs to them. I doubt it would have occurred if it had been an event that reflected an assembly of Democrats, as in the past.
We all must have different views of the auditorium depending on the media, but from my vantage point it was all upper-class people as far as I could see into the darkness. The young people did not look at all like most young Americans, they looked like the privileged upper-class young people at prep schools and expensive colleges. I did not see in the audience, or in all but one of the interviews, what you might call regular working people (odd, in what was once the party of FDR and the common man). That's the culture that is missing. As superficially diverse as the interviewees looked, I heard no truly personal views, independently arrived at. They looked different, but thought the same. Democrats are supposed to be more unruly than this (as H. L. Mencken said, "I belong to no organized political party - I am a Democrat"). The only Democrat I like these days is James Carville. Nobody is going to take away *his* individuality.
In past Slow Boring posts, I have complained about Democrats under Biden have allowed Trump to own the issue of the economy by being too passive, in spite of the fact that Trump's proposed economic policies (tariffs/mass deportations/tax cuts for the rich) are terrible. In last night's speech, I felt like Harris had actually listened to my advice. She openly promised to grow the economy (e.g. she's not in bed with the ultra-progressives who believe that economic growth is bad). And she called Trump's planned across-the-board tariff for what is is - a de-facto tax on the middle class.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to see more of in the campaign. The fact that voters have been saying so far that they trust Trump more on handling the economy is absolutely ridiculous, and it's time to change that.
She was quite good. However, I couldn't help but feeling nervous from the fact that, should Israel and Hamas refuse to compromise and no cease-fire materializes, that Harris is setting herself up to take the blame, even though it would be totally unfair, as the intransigence of Israeili and Hamas leaders is something totally out of the U.S.'s control.
Simplest explanation would be: because there wasn't a primary this time, and it's primaries that bring the pressure to play to the base. If Harris wins, someone should seriously start pushing for the return of smoke-filled-rooms.
Excellent analysis of what this convention means for the campaign and the party. In convention mode, we saw the pulpit lead the pews. That's a welcome shift from a near decade of the party being driven and riven by the bully pews.
1 -- Man, do Democrats want to win/beat Trump. That trumps everything. Demand a conservative, Republican-favoring border bill? Bring it on!
2 -- She refused to "balance" the American parents of the hostage by caving in to the demand to also feature a Palestinian speaker. Maybe that shows lack of moral balance, but it sure shows that she and her folks know how to read the polls.
3 -- Gretchen Whitmer was fine -- at most. (Actually, I thought "meh" about her speech.) Not only did the Democrats pick (luck into?) the absolutely right nominee, but it shows how ludicrous the Ezra Klein-type open convention would have been. It's not democracy -- it's a four day infomercial, people! And it's putting together a massive national campaign under incredible time pressure. The Harris team pulled it off (mostly by emerging, Alien-like, from the body of the Biden campaign). The idea that the open-convention winner would start *right now* to put together a national structure and campaign is so stupid that it pretty much disqualifies anyone who advocated for that.
Yeah Whitmer kind of flopped tbh. Shapiro also was not that great imo. Maybe if they had more time and there hadn't been 4 days with so many speakers it would have been better but I think a sense of fatigue sets in with the non-headliners at a certain point.
I think we can all be satisfied that it was clearly the right decision to make Biden step aside, and it was also clearly right to have a coronation, not a second primary.
Let's the the W, everyone! Democrats solved a massive collective action problem. The GOP wanted to dump Trump multiple times in 2016, but they lacked the wherewithal to do so. The Democratic Party is a real party. It acts as its own entity, not simply a shell for its most fanatical elements.
1. I think being a good speech-giver is a overrated aspect of being a good candidate. Most of the campaign is spent doing things other than giving speeches.
2. I think Harris' speech last night was very good, but it's not the first big political speech she's ever given, and her performances in the past have been fine but not memorable. It's important to remember that she and Walz weren't just in a room somewhere writing these speeches on their own and unveiling them on live TV -- these aren't school assignments. Because they are the nominees, they have an army of Democratic speechwriters and message-makers editing their drafts, suggesting improvements, and helping them with their deliveries. You don't need to do all that for the "regular" speakers like Whitmer, you just need a quick vetting.
I mean, those people were clearly right. Whitmer has won two statewide races by solid margins in a key swing state. Harris has only ever run in one contested statewide race vs. a Republican, and she barely squeaked by in a very blue state. In a vacuum, Whitmer would clearly be the stronger candidate. Of course, given the circumstances of having to make a switch from a reelection-eligible incumbent, the choice was *not* being made in a vacuum and Harris was the right choice.
I think had Biden dropped out in, say, January 2023, it would have been really interesting to see Whitmer and Harris fight for the nomination. In July 2024 -- uh uh.
It definitely would have been awful in July 2024, but if anything I think it would have been even worse in January 2023! The last thing we ever need to see is a head-to-head presidential primary between a black woman and a white woman, especially without the disciplining pressure of an imminent general election vs. Trump. The social media takes would have been utterly deranged.
Speech quality is surprisingly low amongst politicians. Like Obama is fine…for a professional public speaker. Like fine. Not great. But politicians in general suck at giving speeches. I’m better than all of them and there are plenty of people better than me. But our public speaking pays our bills ultimately. It really doesn’t for politicians. Clinton in his prime had his moments. Reagan was very good. JFK was quite good.
I always thought it was notable how much more fired up Obama was in his famous 2004 convention speech, than in his later speeches. He sounded much more like MLK Jr. in 2004 and then dialed it way down later on
She does it so rarely that I forget just how good Michelle Obama is. What is so amazing about her is that she apparently really doesn't like this line of business. Great orators are in part great because they are extroverts and get pumped up on adrenaline in response to the crowd's reactions. But I don't get the feeling she responds much to that at all; she simply goes out there and gives an awesome speech just because she's a unicorn.
Like he said, she's better at it than her husband.
Clinton is interesting because he had both incredible highs and incredible lows. Like I thought his speech at the 2012 convention was the best of the year, but his 1988 debut was one of the most famous bombs in convention history. I guess it's sort of consistent with his overall character. Guy with off-the-charts talent who doesn't prepare but goes out and wings it is going to have results all over the map.
"American people are not obsessed with the specter of warmer weather"
Well, doesn't that depend? If you live in Phoenix and "warmer weather" = "more 100+ days and higher risk of heatstroke," shouldn't you be, if not obsessed, then at least somewhat concerned?
"...core convention themes seemed to get lost. Democrats were back in the land of the everything bagel, with lengthy digressions about climate change and assault weapons bans"
Christ in heaven. Climate change isn't a "digression," it's a really effing big problem that we have to try to solve, that will cause literally millions of people to die/lose their homes. Yes, yes, I know that China is now a much bigger polluter than America (in total, not per capita), but America ought to be a leader on this, it's the right thing to do!
"I acknowledge that nobody wants to eat shit on their personal pet topic."
Again, climate change is not my "personal pet topic," it's a freaking disaster in the making, and one that can only be solved by *collective* action.
Look, I understand that none of it is the Democratic Party's fault. The median voter, as Matt keeps reminding us, is a non-college-educated middle-aged white guy in a suburb, and that guy doesn't give a sh*t about climate change and he feels about a CO2 tax approximately the same way he feels about cockroaches. I really don't know what the answer is, persuasion doesn't seem to work, we just absolutely have to throw everything we can at clean energy (including telling the "but wind turbines ruin the view from my summer cottage" folks to STFU).
I agree that there is an issue, but to summarize points Matt made recently: the US can't "solve" issue because its a global issue that requires global answers acceptable to the developing world.
If the US stopped ALL emissions next year and everything else stayed the same, world emissions would be where they were in 2010. Except they aren't going to stay the same - the rest of the world is going to emit even more than it does now unless we can figure out the technology to provide low emission energy for cheap. Our best option is to subsidize solar, wind, and nuclear *technology* to delink energy production from CO2 emissions.
I was considering writing something to this effect. Matt's just doesn't seem to be willing to grapple with the the basic premise "monotonically worsening problem that is essentially unfixable once it occurs or worsens" is different in kind from "problem that can be fixed (or at least dramatically ameliorated) within a short span by policy changes if and when public opinion gets there."
Like, it may be a tone thing but it's hard to not to read the combination of the blithe dismissal of "warmer weather" and the necessity of meeting voters where they are to something like the following extrapolation"
[50 years hence:]
"Inasmuch as Arizona only saw 50 120-degree weather days, and excess heat deaths from this and 95-plus wet bulb temperatures in the humid South are still below 20,000 / year. While it's unfortunate that all the arctic and antarctic fauna are dead, we no longer have hard freezes to control pest insect and tick populations, and coral are dead, the American people are clearly not obsessed with the specter of warmer weather, so the Dems shouldn't make noise about it this election." It's disaster by induction.
(Alternatively, same scenario except now the voters do care, but it's far too late to do anything about it.)
Yes, obviously the Republicans are worse on this, but the status quo is actually in and of itself a problem that can't just be rectified by a down-the-line policy shift once people start caring enough. That's the whole problem!
A someone who top issue is climate change, and who also recognizes how low a priority it is for most people. I want Democrats to treat it the way Republicans do tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is to say, relentlessly push the policy while talking about everything except that. Popularism.
And there's many way to frame issues. Producing EV technology here rather than China is a national security issue, and can also be framed as bringing manufacturing jobs home. Building EV charging stations create jobs, and national infrastructure. EVs lower gas prices. Lots of ways to skin that cat.
This reminds me of what puzzles me about the climate change discussion and how much it is in the weeds. I hear a lot of specific ideas about concrete things that "must" be done, from mandating EVs to making gas stoves illegal. As if it's an engineering problem. But it's not. It's a political problem, so far badly addressed.
Capitalism is the only power strong enough to solve the climate change it created. The specific solutions will come out of that process, and they will certainly be different from what people dream up on their own based on what seems right to them. Climate change efforts need to focus on broad policies that turn the capitalist machine in the right direction. Unfortunately, most climate change activists are left-oriented and mistrustful of capitalism and capitalists, so this doesn't get done.
Well, it's also an engineering program, lol. And Matt has discussed how we'll need huge leaps in technology, which the government can invest in, as it did with NASA.
But yes, it does seem that ultimately it will have to be markets.
Climate change also feels difficult because the science of climate, the engineering of potential solutions, and the policies needed are all distinct and highly technical topics. Even having basic understanding of all three is extremely unusual. It's a terrible fit for grassroots activism, which is how the Sunrise Movement ends up fighting solar farms.
Agreed. The government has a role. I'm just advocating for a different role. It can facilitate, but not drive, the transition. In my view, broad tax and industrial policies are more important than detailed planning for investments in specific directions. We did this with aviation (in which the United States created supersonic aircraft, ballistic missiles, and transcontinental jet travel in about 10 years). The technical aspects were done entirely by scientists and engineers employed by the aerospace industry. The government (especially the military) created the environment and motivation for them to do that. NASA 's space shuttle was trouble-prone and impractically expensive. Now we have reusable self-landing boosters, a completely different approach, thanks to Elon Musk. As you say, climate change transition involves a great number of such technical innovations. We have to scale up many such efforts. I'm saying that we need the concentrated expertise of big corporations (e.g. Big Oil) to do it. So we need to figure out how that can happen. The climate change activists are an active hindrance to that.
"...the status quo is actually in and of itself a problem that can't just be rectified by a down-the-line policy shift once people start caring enough."
Why not though?
China and India probably drive most 21st century emissions, right? Most of China's population already live in places with hot summers, same with India of course. As the world gets hotter they have a very concrete stake in keeping things from getting too out of hand. As they start to care more about climate change, can’t they just reduce emissions then?
Solar panels and batteries only get cheaper. They get richer, which means they get pickier about particulate emissions in their air, which should mean less coal and oil. Maybe somebody even figures out cheap fusion or geothermal?
In any case, if future Americans become very unhappy with the climate that China and India are creating, can’t we just start doing geoengineering? My understanding is that it would be cheap and easy to go back to cold winters and cooler summers here at any time if we wanted to.
I'm *extremely* pessimistic about geoengineering effectiveness. Solar and batteries getting cheaper are reason for optimism about future emissions trajectories and should drive policy consideration.
I’d be curious to hear about why. Given what we’ve just seen with marine fuel sulfur standards and the crazy jump in ocean temps I would think we’ve got better evidence than ever that we could generate huge effects with geoengineering if we wanted to.
While I think it is conceivable that we could do it, I think that the fallout from dimming insolation enough to make a dent in global warming would have devastating impacts on various other systems, most obviously agriculture and basically everything depending on photosynthesis.
That doesn't agree with the assessments I've seen, and it doesn't make sense to me conceptually. Small changes in albedo cause very large changes in temperatures.
This is a fine example of the is/ought distinction.
You and I are firmly on the “ought” side. Voters ought to care more, god freaking damn it! I 100% agree with you!
Matt Y and commenter Lisa J are on the “is” side: welp, voters do not, in fact, give a fruit fly’s fart about climate change beyond paying some lip service to “climate change probably bad” that doesn’t involve any inconvenience or sacrifice.
The thing is, Matt backs certain "ought" horses in the is/ought fight -- specifically, YIMBYism and One Billion Americans -- I just think that these matter way less than global warming, because the latter has far more serious consequences over a far longer time horizon.
I would guess that's because Matt felt enough books have been written on climate change, and he didn't have much to add that hadn't already been argued better by someone else. Not that he doesn't feel climate change shouldn't be a priority. He's said plenty of times he thinks policymakers should take climate change more seriously than voters do, and he was very positive about the IRA, which was a clear prioritization of climate change over other issues.
By contrast "One Billion Americans" is a much more novel - and interesting, to me at least - case to make. I can't recall anyone else making it as explicitly as Matt has. YIMBYism has been a bit more widely argued, but still much less so than climate change, and I think Matt saw a clear need to rebut some of the anti-YIMBYism arguments that have taken hold on the left.
I know you are very passionate about this but from my experience having worked to promote sustainable transportation as my job first the last 20ish years, the amount of talk about climate change at the convention was exactly the amount that Americans were clamoring for. As in, they weren’t. I get that this is a challenge for trying to address it given it is a real problem, but I don’t think Americans in general, including Democrats, are truly motivated by the prospect of climate change addressing policies. All you have to do is observe how presidential approval ratings track gas prices to see how concerned Americans are.
And I think Matt has a compelling argument that the way we will get the right policies is, err, obliquely (for lack of a better word). We elect people who do care and will do things IN SPITE of the lack of public clamoring not bc of it.
I should add, I don’t know what you do, so perhaps your experience of American opinion is different and I’d be very open to hearing it!
Sorry about being a negative vibe merchant. And your passion is great! I just unfortunately have a somewhat low opinion of how much Americans are truly motivated by this issue. Like, as in, not just willing to tick a box on a survey, but do something.
Climate change is probably not a disaster for America or China or Europe if they can defend their borders. Going whole big to save some equatorial countries is probably not in the cards.
"We've got ours, f**k the poorer/more tropical countries of the world, let's use our superior military to beat back waves of desperate climate refugees at our southern border" is not a great look, Seneca Plutarchus.
Not having a named policy bundle I think is helpful. No Build Back Better, Green New Deal, or Project 2025 type name to go after. Great for normies painting whatever they want onto Harris.
I saw a good example of "progressive Borg mind" at the Times where three different experts announced that not giving "Uncommitted" a speaking slot was the worst part of the convention: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/opinion/scorecard-night-4-democratic-convention.html Really, the worst? Seems to me like blowing them off had zero negative consequences and a better thing to point out is that OMB fanboys aside Leon Panetta in prime time is just a, well weird, choice.
My understanding is that there are roughly 30 some Uncommitted Delegates out of like 3,000 total. Why would anyone think that small a percentage deserves more than a cursory hearing at a non main hall hearing?
I'm waiting for the next act -- with Harris as prez, a 50/50 Senate, and narrow Dem majority in House; we'll see whose agenda comes up under those circumstances!
I didn't really watch much of the convention because it's just a form of entertainment to me. But I am REALLY excited to see others reacting so enthusiastically. Seeing Walz in action convinced me he was the right choice. Bro knows how to wingman.
Overall I think the convention was good. The headliners (even Biden) did well and Harris killed it. I feel kind of dumb that I thought she wouldn't be a good campaigner although I was in favor of switching after the debate. The convention for the most part stuck to clear themes, tried to appeal to moderates, and was also "fun" (as much as a bunch of speeches can be). I think the convention would have been a disaster if Biden was still running but with Harris you could see the enthusiasm and sighs of relief.
It was not a perfect convention, however. When Biden went late the first night, a lot of people (such as Nate Silver) thought the party was trying to deliberately push him out of sight. It became clear the next day, however, that the convention had no sense of time management. Many speakers should have been cut to get the headliners on earlier. It is true that a lot of people consume the convention through clips the next day but there is no excuse not to get your headliners on during EST primetime. The sneers I saw on twitter about how not everyone lives on the East Coast felt almost deliberately obtuse to me. Yes, it is true not everyone lives in the Eastern Time Zone, but that's where most of the swing states are! I wonder if the long list of speakers reflects the typical Dem issue about failing to prioritize and trying to make everyone happy. Well, we don't need to hear from Leon Panetta, sorry. The "Beyonce suprise" fakeout was also bizarre and I don't think it would have hurt to have a Palestinian-American speaker who played ball but I understand why they didn't want to do it.
Hiding from questions is not dynamic, and it doesn’t erase the past 4 years of VP Harris being a professional useless person. She can make moderate mouth noises all she wants but for 4 years the opposite is what we got and there’s no reason to believe the future will be different.
Wow, this was actually a really compelling argument for me to split my ticket with Harris at the top. I had been sort of discouraged, and didn't want to vote for either candidate (I lean R), but this constrained agenda sounds appealing. I'm in Texas, so of course it makes no difference 😂
Do we think RFK Jr's exit/endorsement will move the needle at all?
The bit about "defending everything" is absolutely essential, IMO.
PS: Eff Tommy Vietor and the self-centered PSA crowd. (Not Dan P) Still bitching about Biden even this week. So gd childish.
Stopped listening to those guys years ago. In 2017, none of my friends were as devastated as I was by a Trump presidency, and it was very comforting to listen to them. But their political instincts are terrible, and they have no inside connections to the Biden Administration.
The Democratic Convention was an occasion of deep sadness for me. I thought Obama made a beautiful speech, and said all the right things about persuasion and tolerance and unity of America. Given the content and tone of the other speeches (and *especially* Michelle Obama's), I am devastated to think now that it is - and always was - just words.
What I saw was a festival of talking-over and talking-past. The party has a stunning power to create a facsimile of itself through media. They can do some talking that they think the normies want to hear, while avoiding making a case to the American people for whatever they actually plan to do. Notably, the portion of the crowd in the camera range seemed to be almost entirely upper middle class, with young, ostentatiously intersectional people in the first several rows. For ordinary Americans, who are not at all represented here, it screams cultural exclusion and contempt.
I feel the convention shows what the party and it's leaders really think. Shifting temporarily to the right-tested centrist words that are entirely at contrast with they way they have and will certainly govern, will not fool me.
I saw tons of middle aged white people in the crowd. If the presence of young people and people of color among them “screams cultural exclusion and contempt”, that’s pretty damn racist and it’s sad if we have to pander to people who are so threatened by including black people.
And there we go. You are proving my point for me.
Like, to be clear - most of the speakers were white. The VP pick is white. The big musical performers were white. *Most* of the attendees were white and middle-aged.
I'm simply responding to what I saw on TV.
White people made up the majority of that audience on the TV I was watching, and made up the majority of the speakers, musical performers, etc. a few shots of young black people being “ostentatiously” in the front rows doesn’t mean that the vast majority of crowd shots were primarily middle aged white people.
I mean, you're the one saying "older white people making up only 60% of the audience" is "screaming contempt and cultural exclusion." Your only point is that you think any plurality of people of color in the frame is a threat.
Let me see if I can explain this to you. The intersectional kiddies were fine and lovely and inspiring. They are not the point. The issue is a cultural one. A convention is an assembly, a gathering together of many people, from many cultures, who mingle and create the event. But the event I saw reflected one culture, the culture associated with educated elites, with very specific values that many (even most) Democrats don't share. The implicit message is "we are in charge, this is the culture of true Democrats, and if you don't get in line with this culture, you don't belong here" It is a kind of forced celebration determined by power from the center. It's clear to me that the words of moderation, patriotism, solidarity (on behalf of a candidate who won't talk to the press) are just words; the Democrats will govern the country the way they governed the convention, and that is appalling to me.
Nothing could better express what the party has become since I started voting the straight blue ticket in 1984. Hence the sadness.
Rock: What culture was missing from the convention? There were, of course, mostly white people there, so you are obviously talking about something more than race. But race, gender, and age are pretty much all you can tell from images. So I'm genuinely confused as to both what culture you think was missing from the convention and how you came to that belief.
Not so. You can tell a lot from the way people behave and present themselves, and the context in which they are presented. At the risk of stirring things up, I'll focus on the cultural meaning of the young people up front. The idea of having a bunch of young people of all different kinds representing the future is a lovely one. In the hands of the party, it was curated to convey the upper-class progressive values of centering and decentering people by race, and of the importance of imposing this as an act of morality. This bothered me personally because the concept is repulsive to me, but I also think it very much a minority view among actual voting Democrats, whose party this supposedly is. I don't think this progressive element would do anything to help elect the candidate. Rather, it was what the upper-class people in charge liked to present to themselves, in the spectacle they created and that belongs to them. I doubt it would have occurred if it had been an event that reflected an assembly of Democrats, as in the past.
We all must have different views of the auditorium depending on the media, but from my vantage point it was all upper-class people as far as I could see into the darkness. The young people did not look at all like most young Americans, they looked like the privileged upper-class young people at prep schools and expensive colleges. I did not see in the audience, or in all but one of the interviews, what you might call regular working people (odd, in what was once the party of FDR and the common man). That's the culture that is missing. As superficially diverse as the interviewees looked, I heard no truly personal views, independently arrived at. They looked different, but thought the same. Democrats are supposed to be more unruly than this (as H. L. Mencken said, "I belong to no organized political party - I am a Democrat"). The only Democrat I like these days is James Carville. Nobody is going to take away *his* individuality.
That is VERY different than what you said.
In past Slow Boring posts, I have complained about Democrats under Biden have allowed Trump to own the issue of the economy by being too passive, in spite of the fact that Trump's proposed economic policies (tariffs/mass deportations/tax cuts for the rich) are terrible. In last night's speech, I felt like Harris had actually listened to my advice. She openly promised to grow the economy (e.g. she's not in bed with the ultra-progressives who believe that economic growth is bad). And she called Trump's planned across-the-board tariff for what is is - a de-facto tax on the middle class.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to see more of in the campaign. The fact that voters have been saying so far that they trust Trump more on handling the economy is absolutely ridiculous, and it's time to change that.
Late to the party, but Harris was really good at threading the needle on Israel/Palestine. Just wanted to throw that out there.
She was quite good. However, I couldn't help but feeling nervous from the fact that, should Israel and Hamas refuse to compromise and no cease-fire materializes, that Harris is setting herself up to take the blame, even though it would be totally unfair, as the intransigence of Israeili and Hamas leaders is something totally out of the U.S.'s control.
"Why not act consistently on this knowledge?"
Simplest explanation would be: because there wasn't a primary this time, and it's primaries that bring the pressure to play to the base. If Harris wins, someone should seriously start pushing for the return of smoke-filled-rooms.
Excellent analysis of what this convention means for the campaign and the party. In convention mode, we saw the pulpit lead the pews. That's a welcome shift from a near decade of the party being driven and riven by the bully pews.
3 observations:
1 -- Man, do Democrats want to win/beat Trump. That trumps everything. Demand a conservative, Republican-favoring border bill? Bring it on!
2 -- She refused to "balance" the American parents of the hostage by caving in to the demand to also feature a Palestinian speaker. Maybe that shows lack of moral balance, but it sure shows that she and her folks know how to read the polls.
3 -- Gretchen Whitmer was fine -- at most. (Actually, I thought "meh" about her speech.) Not only did the Democrats pick (luck into?) the absolutely right nominee, but it shows how ludicrous the Ezra Klein-type open convention would have been. It's not democracy -- it's a four day infomercial, people! And it's putting together a massive national campaign under incredible time pressure. The Harris team pulled it off (mostly by emerging, Alien-like, from the body of the Biden campaign). The idea that the open-convention winner would start *right now* to put together a national structure and campaign is so stupid that it pretty much disqualifies anyone who advocated for that.
Yeah Whitmer kind of flopped tbh. Shapiro also was not that great imo. Maybe if they had more time and there hadn't been 4 days with so many speakers it would have been better but I think a sense of fatigue sets in with the non-headliners at a certain point.
I think we can all be satisfied that it was clearly the right decision to make Biden step aside, and it was also clearly right to have a coronation, not a second primary.
Let's the the W, everyone! Democrats solved a massive collective action problem. The GOP wanted to dump Trump multiple times in 2016, but they lacked the wherewithal to do so. The Democratic Party is a real party. It acts as its own entity, not simply a shell for its most fanatical elements.
1. I think being a good speech-giver is a overrated aspect of being a good candidate. Most of the campaign is spent doing things other than giving speeches.
2. I think Harris' speech last night was very good, but it's not the first big political speech she's ever given, and her performances in the past have been fine but not memorable. It's important to remember that she and Walz weren't just in a room somewhere writing these speeches on their own and unveiling them on live TV -- these aren't school assignments. Because they are the nominees, they have an army of Democratic speechwriters and message-makers editing their drafts, suggesting improvements, and helping them with their deliveries. You don't need to do all that for the "regular" speakers like Whitmer, you just need a quick vetting.
1. is definitely true, it's just funny how people were hyping Whitmer over Kamala
I mean, those people were clearly right. Whitmer has won two statewide races by solid margins in a key swing state. Harris has only ever run in one contested statewide race vs. a Republican, and she barely squeaked by in a very blue state. In a vacuum, Whitmer would clearly be the stronger candidate. Of course, given the circumstances of having to make a switch from a reelection-eligible incumbent, the choice was *not* being made in a vacuum and Harris was the right choice.
I think had Biden dropped out in, say, January 2023, it would have been really interesting to see Whitmer and Harris fight for the nomination. In July 2024 -- uh uh.
It definitely would have been awful in July 2024, but if anything I think it would have been even worse in January 2023! The last thing we ever need to see is a head-to-head presidential primary between a black woman and a white woman, especially without the disciplining pressure of an imminent general election vs. Trump. The social media takes would have been utterly deranged.
Speech quality is surprisingly low amongst politicians. Like Obama is fine…for a professional public speaker. Like fine. Not great. But politicians in general suck at giving speeches. I’m better than all of them and there are plenty of people better than me. But our public speaking pays our bills ultimately. It really doesn’t for politicians. Clinton in his prime had his moments. Reagan was very good. JFK was quite good.
Saying Obama is just fine with his universally regarded as an incredible orator is pretty funny. Even maga Republicans respect the speaking skills.
Then again there might be a whole different world, professional speechmaking that I’m just not aware of that might put it into perspective
I always thought it was notable how much more fired up Obama was in his famous 2004 convention speech, than in his later speeches. He sounded much more like MLK Jr. in 2004 and then dialed it way down later on
She does it so rarely that I forget just how good Michelle Obama is. What is so amazing about her is that she apparently really doesn't like this line of business. Great orators are in part great because they are extroverts and get pumped up on adrenaline in response to the crowd's reactions. But I don't get the feeling she responds much to that at all; she simply goes out there and gives an awesome speech just because she's a unicorn.
Like he said, she's better at it than her husband.
Clinton is interesting because he had both incredible highs and incredible lows. Like I thought his speech at the 2012 convention was the best of the year, but his 1988 debut was one of the most famous bombs in convention history. I guess it's sort of consistent with his overall character. Guy with off-the-charts talent who doesn't prepare but goes out and wings it is going to have results all over the map.
"American people are not obsessed with the specter of warmer weather"
Well, doesn't that depend? If you live in Phoenix and "warmer weather" = "more 100+ days and higher risk of heatstroke," shouldn't you be, if not obsessed, then at least somewhat concerned?
"...core convention themes seemed to get lost. Democrats were back in the land of the everything bagel, with lengthy digressions about climate change and assault weapons bans"
Christ in heaven. Climate change isn't a "digression," it's a really effing big problem that we have to try to solve, that will cause literally millions of people to die/lose their homes. Yes, yes, I know that China is now a much bigger polluter than America (in total, not per capita), but America ought to be a leader on this, it's the right thing to do!
"I acknowledge that nobody wants to eat shit on their personal pet topic."
Again, climate change is not my "personal pet topic," it's a freaking disaster in the making, and one that can only be solved by *collective* action.
Look, I understand that none of it is the Democratic Party's fault. The median voter, as Matt keeps reminding us, is a non-college-educated middle-aged white guy in a suburb, and that guy doesn't give a sh*t about climate change and he feels about a CO2 tax approximately the same way he feels about cockroaches. I really don't know what the answer is, persuasion doesn't seem to work, we just absolutely have to throw everything we can at clean energy (including telling the "but wind turbines ruin the view from my summer cottage" folks to STFU).
I agree that there is an issue, but to summarize points Matt made recently: the US can't "solve" issue because its a global issue that requires global answers acceptable to the developing world.
If the US stopped ALL emissions next year and everything else stayed the same, world emissions would be where they were in 2010. Except they aren't going to stay the same - the rest of the world is going to emit even more than it does now unless we can figure out the technology to provide low emission energy for cheap. Our best option is to subsidize solar, wind, and nuclear *technology* to delink energy production from CO2 emissions.
No, John E. We must mandate EVs, eliminate all domestic oil production and throw some paint on the Mona Lisa to solve climate change.
I was considering writing something to this effect. Matt's just doesn't seem to be willing to grapple with the the basic premise "monotonically worsening problem that is essentially unfixable once it occurs or worsens" is different in kind from "problem that can be fixed (or at least dramatically ameliorated) within a short span by policy changes if and when public opinion gets there."
Like, it may be a tone thing but it's hard to not to read the combination of the blithe dismissal of "warmer weather" and the necessity of meeting voters where they are to something like the following extrapolation"
[50 years hence:]
"Inasmuch as Arizona only saw 50 120-degree weather days, and excess heat deaths from this and 95-plus wet bulb temperatures in the humid South are still below 20,000 / year. While it's unfortunate that all the arctic and antarctic fauna are dead, we no longer have hard freezes to control pest insect and tick populations, and coral are dead, the American people are clearly not obsessed with the specter of warmer weather, so the Dems shouldn't make noise about it this election." It's disaster by induction.
(Alternatively, same scenario except now the voters do care, but it's far too late to do anything about it.)
Yes, obviously the Republicans are worse on this, but the status quo is actually in and of itself a problem that can't just be rectified by a down-the-line policy shift once people start caring enough. That's the whole problem!
A someone who top issue is climate change, and who also recognizes how low a priority it is for most people. I want Democrats to treat it the way Republicans do tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is to say, relentlessly push the policy while talking about everything except that. Popularism.
And there's many way to frame issues. Producing EV technology here rather than China is a national security issue, and can also be framed as bringing manufacturing jobs home. Building EV charging stations create jobs, and national infrastructure. EVs lower gas prices. Lots of ways to skin that cat.
This reminds me of what puzzles me about the climate change discussion and how much it is in the weeds. I hear a lot of specific ideas about concrete things that "must" be done, from mandating EVs to making gas stoves illegal. As if it's an engineering problem. But it's not. It's a political problem, so far badly addressed.
Capitalism is the only power strong enough to solve the climate change it created. The specific solutions will come out of that process, and they will certainly be different from what people dream up on their own based on what seems right to them. Climate change efforts need to focus on broad policies that turn the capitalist machine in the right direction. Unfortunately, most climate change activists are left-oriented and mistrustful of capitalism and capitalists, so this doesn't get done.
Well, it's also an engineering program, lol. And Matt has discussed how we'll need huge leaps in technology, which the government can invest in, as it did with NASA.
But yes, it does seem that ultimately it will have to be markets.
Climate change also feels difficult because the science of climate, the engineering of potential solutions, and the policies needed are all distinct and highly technical topics. Even having basic understanding of all three is extremely unusual. It's a terrible fit for grassroots activism, which is how the Sunrise Movement ends up fighting solar farms.
Agreed. The government has a role. I'm just advocating for a different role. It can facilitate, but not drive, the transition. In my view, broad tax and industrial policies are more important than detailed planning for investments in specific directions. We did this with aviation (in which the United States created supersonic aircraft, ballistic missiles, and transcontinental jet travel in about 10 years). The technical aspects were done entirely by scientists and engineers employed by the aerospace industry. The government (especially the military) created the environment and motivation for them to do that. NASA 's space shuttle was trouble-prone and impractically expensive. Now we have reusable self-landing boosters, a completely different approach, thanks to Elon Musk. As you say, climate change transition involves a great number of such technical innovations. We have to scale up many such efforts. I'm saying that we need the concentrated expertise of big corporations (e.g. Big Oil) to do it. So we need to figure out how that can happen. The climate change activists are an active hindrance to that.
"...the status quo is actually in and of itself a problem that can't just be rectified by a down-the-line policy shift once people start caring enough."
Why not though?
China and India probably drive most 21st century emissions, right? Most of China's population already live in places with hot summers, same with India of course. As the world gets hotter they have a very concrete stake in keeping things from getting too out of hand. As they start to care more about climate change, can’t they just reduce emissions then?
Solar panels and batteries only get cheaper. They get richer, which means they get pickier about particulate emissions in their air, which should mean less coal and oil. Maybe somebody even figures out cheap fusion or geothermal?
In any case, if future Americans become very unhappy with the climate that China and India are creating, can’t we just start doing geoengineering? My understanding is that it would be cheap and easy to go back to cold winters and cooler summers here at any time if we wanted to.
I'm *extremely* pessimistic about geoengineering effectiveness. Solar and batteries getting cheaper are reason for optimism about future emissions trajectories and should drive policy consideration.
I’d be curious to hear about why. Given what we’ve just seen with marine fuel sulfur standards and the crazy jump in ocean temps I would think we’ve got better evidence than ever that we could generate huge effects with geoengineering if we wanted to.
While I think it is conceivable that we could do it, I think that the fallout from dimming insolation enough to make a dent in global warming would have devastating impacts on various other systems, most obviously agriculture and basically everything depending on photosynthesis.
That doesn't agree with the assessments I've seen, and it doesn't make sense to me conceptually. Small changes in albedo cause very large changes in temperatures.
This is a fine example of the is/ought distinction.
You and I are firmly on the “ought” side. Voters ought to care more, god freaking damn it! I 100% agree with you!
Matt Y and commenter Lisa J are on the “is” side: welp, voters do not, in fact, give a fruit fly’s fart about climate change beyond paying some lip service to “climate change probably bad” that doesn’t involve any inconvenience or sacrifice.
And Matt and Lisa are factually correct!
[sigh]
[headdesk]
The thing is, Matt backs certain "ought" horses in the is/ought fight -- specifically, YIMBYism and One Billion Americans -- I just think that these matter way less than global warming, because the latter has far more serious consequences over a far longer time horizon.
I would guess that's because Matt felt enough books have been written on climate change, and he didn't have much to add that hadn't already been argued better by someone else. Not that he doesn't feel climate change shouldn't be a priority. He's said plenty of times he thinks policymakers should take climate change more seriously than voters do, and he was very positive about the IRA, which was a clear prioritization of climate change over other issues.
By contrast "One Billion Americans" is a much more novel - and interesting, to me at least - case to make. I can't recall anyone else making it as explicitly as Matt has. YIMBYism has been a bit more widely argued, but still much less so than climate change, and I think Matt saw a clear need to rebut some of the anti-YIMBYism arguments that have taken hold on the left.
I know you are very passionate about this but from my experience having worked to promote sustainable transportation as my job first the last 20ish years, the amount of talk about climate change at the convention was exactly the amount that Americans were clamoring for. As in, they weren’t. I get that this is a challenge for trying to address it given it is a real problem, but I don’t think Americans in general, including Democrats, are truly motivated by the prospect of climate change addressing policies. All you have to do is observe how presidential approval ratings track gas prices to see how concerned Americans are.
And I think Matt has a compelling argument that the way we will get the right policies is, err, obliquely (for lack of a better word). We elect people who do care and will do things IN SPITE of the lack of public clamoring not bc of it.
I should add, I don’t know what you do, so perhaps your experience of American opinion is different and I’d be very open to hearing it!
"perhaps your experience of American opinion is different and I’d be very open to hearing it!"
Sadly, it isn't.
I know you're right. Sigh.
Sorry about being a negative vibe merchant. And your passion is great! I just unfortunately have a somewhat low opinion of how much Americans are truly motivated by this issue. Like, as in, not just willing to tick a box on a survey, but do something.
Preach it, dros!
Climate change is probably not a disaster for America or China or Europe if they can defend their borders. Going whole big to save some equatorial countries is probably not in the cards.
"We've got ours, f**k the poorer/more tropical countries of the world, let's use our superior military to beat back waves of desperate climate refugees at our southern border" is not a great look, Seneca Plutarchus.
What targets does everyone supposedly need to hit to avoid equitorial apocaplypse?
Not having a named policy bundle I think is helpful. No Build Back Better, Green New Deal, or Project 2025 type name to go after. Great for normies painting whatever they want onto Harris.
I saw a good example of "progressive Borg mind" at the Times where three different experts announced that not giving "Uncommitted" a speaking slot was the worst part of the convention: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/opinion/scorecard-night-4-democratic-convention.html Really, the worst? Seems to me like blowing them off had zero negative consequences and a better thing to point out is that OMB fanboys aside Leon Panetta in prime time is just a, well weird, choice.
My understanding is that there are roughly 30 some Uncommitted Delegates out of like 3,000 total. Why would anyone think that small a percentage deserves more than a cursory hearing at a non main hall hearing?
Toxic or not, they'll be received in the White House within a day or two of inauguration.
It's like when Larry grabs the mike at Sammie's Bat Mitvah because he's got a lot of important things to say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJM-b29KKo