In the 1972 presidential election, Democratic candidate George McGovern was soundly defeated by Richard Nixon. It was a bloodbath. He lost 49 states, a result widely attributed to his positions being “too liberal” for the American mainstream.
Four decades later, in a more liberal America, McGovern released a book called What It Means to Be a Democrat, outlining core values that define the Democratic Party. Because, he argued, in his day, during the “1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. . . it was obvious that a spirit of wide embrace was missing both inside and outside the convention hall.” The party had “splintered” into warring factions. This, McGovern argued, could never be allowed to happen again.
Here we are again, 50-plus years later, back in Chicago, back at the Democratic National Convention. There’s the version that’s inside. And there’s the one that’s outside, with left-wing demonstrators in the streets demanding the party forcefully oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, beseeching Democrats to somehow precipitate an end to capitalism and support various other identity-related progressive causes.
They marched and shouted, faces swaddled in N95 masks or tightly wrapped with keffiyehs, beneath a sea of Palestinian flags, punctuated by the occasional hammer and sickle. There was only one American flag to be found—a prop to be doused in lighter fluid and set alight.
Inside the convention hall, we passed countless people in red, white, and blue dresses and jackets and hats, while volunteers handed out signs that simply read “USA.” And while all those stuffed into Chicago’s United Center seemed energized by the Kamala coronation, we found divergent views on what it means to be a Democrat.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, there were no divergent views. No Never-Trumpers. No holdout Nikki Haley supporters. No contingent of free-traders, tax-cutters, or libertarians. The MAGA faction had fully purged the dissenters.
A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that while 86 percent of registered voters said they knew what Donald Trump stood for, that number fell to 64 percent when the same question was asked about Kamala Harris. Some of this can be attributed to her many policy flip-flops, some to her decision to avoid almost all interaction with media. . . and some to the Democrats’ emphasis on vibes over policy.
So we came to Chicago to ask the question: What does it mean, in 2024, to be a Democrat?
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Too, too many common insipid commercials and promos! Aside from point of view, these are no different from traditional noisy media. Listening to them is painful. Honestly, listening to your ads is indistinguishable from AM radio. Sure, make a buck. But stop betraying your founding goals. It's very disappointing.
Wow that was hard to listen to. Does anyone in America know how to say words that are connected to what they believe? Or do they really only have the beliefs they have been told to believe? Most of it was one thought-free cliche after the next. I am personally really struggling in this election. Trump is erratic, Harris is, as John Podhoretz at Commentary puts it, a "cipher" a stand-in for a real president. I think I am more afraid of the illogical gibberish of the Democrats themselves than the lunacy of Trump. Forget the faculty lounge they talk like they are from planet no-truth, where all opinions are true so long as you just say them. "You know the Arab tent is more complex than the George Washington Bridge." "The entire substructure of Capitalism is built with the intent to kill subalterns and eat their sheep." It seems this is more an election about the electorate than the candidates themselves. I dislike Trump but I cannot see this diaphanous Harris as much of anything. I do know most Democrats seem to me more dangerous as people than most Republican people. In other words I like to spend time with Republicans more than with Democrats. Republicans never tell me they are Republicans, but Democrats never stop telling me to be a Democrat. (I already am; maybe just STFU?... a little??)