Democrats Just Can’t Quit Saving Our Souls
Say what you will about the otherwise calorie-lite first fortnight of the Kamala Harris/Tim Walz campaign, at least it eased for a moment the shrill catastrophizing that has marked Democratic messaging against former President Donald Trump over these past nine years.
“Gone are [President Joe] Biden’s sober exhortations about the battle for the soul of the nation and a democracy under attack,” The Washington Post observed earlier this month. “In its place are promises of ‘freedom’ and ‘a brighter future’ and, at times, audible giggles and laughter.”
Well, the darkness came back with a vengeance in Chicago during Monday’s opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Staged as a somewhat awkward and late-running “Thank you Joe” celebration, Day One demonstrated that the party remains in thrall both to the millenarian temptation and its flip side of messianic zeal.
“We’re facing inflection point, one of those rare moments in history when the decisions we make now will determine the fate of our nation and the world for decades to come,” Biden barked, familiarly. “That’s not hyperbole. I mean it literally. We’re in a battle for the very soul of America.”
As puzzling as it may seem to those scores of millions of us who never once voted for the man during his half-century in elected office, we heard serial testimonials during Biden’s valedictory night about the president’s soulcraft. “He has brought us together, and revived our country, and our country’s soul,” Convention Chair Minyon Moore claimed, improbably. Sen. Chris Coons (D–Del.) extolled the president’s “determination to heal the soul of our nation.” Daughter Ashley reassured us that “He never stops thinking about you.”
If only these sentiments were merely the good-natured embellishments of retirement banquets. Democrats, as they did massively for former President Barack Obama and are already cranking up for Harris and Walz, positioned Biden as a benevolent, borderline omniscient parental figure, ennobling citizens with meaning through the munificence of their gaze.
“They saw us, they fought for us, they heard us,” Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said of Biden and Harris. The 2024 ticket, Harrison continued, “will invest in our hopes, and our dreams, and our futures.” Hillary Clinton posited that “We’re not just electing a president. We are uplifting our nation.” California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis testified of the Democratic nominee that “She cares. She cares so much that if you are lucky enough to be her friend, she called you on her birthday, and sometimes she sings to you.”
It was only the Democrats’ miserable show-running organization that prevented Biden from being serenaded by James Taylor with a rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend,” a song he also performed for Obama at the 2012 Democratic convention, and that Carole King dedicated to both Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016. These politicians seeking access to the nuclear codes are not some distant, calculating power-seekers, but rather neighborly types who just want to lend a hand!
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D–Ga.), a Bap
Article from Reason.com
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