#2020 dnc

Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics:

Last night, one of America’s two political parties gathered in Illinois and heard from a former CIA officer and several military veterans. They waved American flags and chanted “USA” while homage was paid to John McCain and Ronald Reagan. A sheriff spoke about increasing police funding; a Tea Party lawmaker opined on what it means to be conservative. The party’s presidential nominee, a former prosecutor, promised to toughen border security and protect American freedom. No, it wasn’t a Republican convention. Just a new political reality. The Democratic convention in Chicago showed a party finally addressing a core contradiction of the past half-decade. Electorally speaking, the Trump years have been good to Democrats, with victories in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2023 raining down like manna from heaven. But from a messaging standpoint, the era has been one stumble after another, with the party bouncing around the ideological map in search of a narrative that clicks. The persistent sense has been that the Democrats have won more for being the “not Trump” party than due to any positive association in voters’ minds.

Polls show that the party has a brand problem — one they may be able to overcome while Trump is on the ballot, but which will surely be lurking afterwards. But conventions are nothing if not branding exercises; the Democrats’ this past week reflected a party trying to forge a new identity. So what if it meant pissing off some members of their coalition and cribbing several major Republican talking points? The convention showed a party was a party that wants to win — not just against Donald Trump, but after him too — and is willing to remake itself to do it. The Democrats appeared keenly aware of their worst stereotypes and came prepared with carefully calibrated, poll-tested responses to each one.

Soft on crime? “After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security,” Vice President Kamala Harris said, in an acceptance speech that returned repeatedly to her experience as a prosecutor. Weak on national security? “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests,” she declared. Afraid of military might? “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” Harris said. Judgmental? Nearly ever major DNC speaker took pains to offer grace to conservatives, instead of scorning them, from former President Barack Obama noting that when “a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people” to Oprah Winfrey promising that “we are not so different from our neighbors.”

Unpatriotic? When Harris walked onto the stage, the crowd didn’t chant “Kamala” or “We’re not going back” or any of the other slogans in their arsenal. They chanted “USA.” In fact, “USA” chants were heard every night of the convention, often during almost every speech. Attendees held aloft “USA” signs and American flags; later, when they were handed long “Kamala” signs ahead of her acceptance speech, many delegates stuck the American flag on top of them, so that when they cheered for Harris, the floor remained a sea of flags. Many of these epithets are labels that have haunted Democrats for decades, stretching back into the 1970s and in some cases even earlier. In that time, Republicans have reliably been the party that has wrapped themselves in the flag and projected a tough image on national defense and law and order, so much so that the scene from the United Center sometimes seemed straight out of an RNC. Harris also seemed to determined to break with the long Democratic tradition of condescension, from “egghead” Adlai Stevenson to “elitist” Hillary Clinton and her “basket of deplorables.” This convention was one of the first times they seemed conscious of it, and actively tried to move in another direction.

The whole event was a far cry from 2020, when Democrats allowed themselves to become the party of “defund the police” and the academic alphabet soup of DEI and CRT. In just four years, the party went from declaring in their platform that “Democrats believe we need to overhaul the criminal justice system from top to bottom,” because “police brutality is a stain on the soul of our nation,” to pledging to put “more police officers on the beat” in the 2024 version. “We need to fund the police, not defund the police,” the party’s platform now reads. Attendees cheered when a sheriff made that same point on Thursday, something that would have sounded unbelievable to 2020 ears. (As would the nomination of a former prosecutor.) It was also a departure from 2016, when identity ruled the day as Hillary Clinton reminded delegates that she was the first woman nominated for the presidency. Harris never once referred to the fact that she was only the second female nominee, and first Black female nominee, allowing the delegates wearing suffragette white to serve as the lone nod to her history-making nomination.

Other typically Democratic elements were airbrushed from the speech as well. Issues that poll well, like abortion, were emphasized. Issues that poll poorly, like climate change and transgender issues, were mentioned once and not at all, respectively, by Harris. (Democratic fears of yet another label — “woke” — were clear.) These decisions angered some activists, as did the exclusion of a Palestinian-American speaker, but after years of attempting to please every segment of their varied coalition, Democrats have made the cold calculation that the voters they truly need to target are the plurality in the middle. Just as they pushed out Joe Biden in service of chasing victory, evincing little emotional attachment to an aging leader, the party seems newly willing to spite its fringes to save its power.

[...] For me, one of the most enduring images of the convention will be the two young men standing near me who looked like they could have been straight out of a Barstool video — a demographic Democrats have struggled with — screaming “USA” with a fierce intensity. In reality, though, these young men are a Democratic minority: only 29% of Democrats told Gallup they are “extremely proud” to be Americans last year; 60% of Republicans did so. I think back to the conference of young Democrats I covered last year, when a speaker asked how many attendees are “patriotic” and only a scattering of hands went up. [...] The Democratic convention showed a party playing to win, unlike the Republican convention in July, which showed a party that believed it already had. The DNC also showed a party preparing for the future — parading its bench, shaving down its harsher edges to position itself for campaigns against post-Trump opponents — in stark contrast to the Trump-centric RNC. At the same time as Trump appears distracted, Democrats have never seemed more laser-focused on pursuing victory.

Backstage Bill Clinton filming DNC 2020 message.

Backstage of Hillary filming her DNC speech message in 2020

Aaron Rupar at Vox:

The day it’s set to begin, there is still much we don’t know about what will be happening at the 2020 Republican National Convention. But what we do indicates it’ll have a circus-like quality.

Confirmed speakers include Patricia and Mark McCloskey, the St. Louis couple best known for brandishing firearms at protesters earlier this year, and former Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, who became a symbol of white grievance last year after he was filmed in a viral video of a confrontation with Native American demonstrators. President Trump will likely deliver his convention-closing speech from the White House, flouting ethical concerns and laws prohibiting the use of government property for political gain, with other events set to take place on government property located conveniently near the downtown DC hotel he still owns and profits from. On Sunday, the RNC released a speaker list — with Trump scheduled to appear every day.

“President Trump accepting the GOP nomination from the White House would be completely unprecedented,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington communications director Jordan Libowitz told me in an email. “Giving a political speech of this magnitude and visibility on the White House grounds creates the appearance that it’s a government-sanctioned event, something multiple laws were written to avoid.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trump wanted to deliver his convention speech in front of a packed arena of his supporters and went to drastic lengths to make it happen. But Covid-19 had other plans.

The backdrop to the disarray is the coronavirus pandemic, which caused convention logistics to change several times this summer and forced officials to try to slap together an event at the last minute. But instead of doing the work necessary to get the virus under control and make sizable indoor gatherings reasonably safe, Trump engaged in wishful thinking and refused to listen to officials, some from inside his own government, who pointed out the obvious: that an in-person convention held during a pandemic could become a superspreader event.

The chaos is a microcosm of Trump’s coronavirus response. Short-term thinking repeatedly carried the day in a manner that scuttled the president’s hopes of triumphantly accepting the Republican presidential nomination before a throng of supporters.

In the end, the Republican National Convention seems likely to serve as a symbol of everything Trump and his Republican enablers have done wrong.

In the middle of a pandemic, it was never a reasonable idea to have a large RNC extravaganza in North Carolina

The 2020 Republican convention was originally supposed to be held in North Carolina, a swing state important to Trump’s reelection hopes. But as coronavirus cases in the state started to tick up in March, April, and May, it quickly became clear that packing tens of thousands of people from all over the country into an arena in Charlotte would be ill-advised.

Trump didn’t want to hear it, however. Instead of acknowledging reality, he tried to strong-arm the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, into allowing the RNC to go forward as though the pandemic didn’t exist.

“Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooper, is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena,” Trump tweeted on May 25, before presenting Cooper with an ultimatum.

“In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space,” he wrote. “Plans are being made by many thousands of enthusiastic Republicans, and others, to head to beautiful North Carolina in August. They must be immediately given an answer by the Governor as to whether or not the space will be allowed to be fully occupied.”

Trump went as far as to publicly suggest that Cooper’s reluctance to allow the RNC to go forward as planned was part of a political conspiracy against him.

Similar cajoling took place in private. The Washington Post reported that during an early June phone call, Trump told Cooper he didn’t “want to be sitting in a place that’s 50 percent empty” and therefore “can’t do social distancing.”

“I believe other states will do it,” Trump reportedly said on the call. “Otherwise, we’ll cancel the whole damn thing.”

Cooper responded publicly by politely pointing out the public health reality — that unless the convention agreed to dramatically scale down the proceedings, holding the event in Charlotte would be unsafe.

Cooper didn’t budge, and just over a week later, the RNC announced that most of the convention would be moved to Florida, a state run by Trump-loving Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been similarly willing to ignore public health for the sake of perceived short-term economic gain.

But events over the next month would make clear that a Jacksonville convention too was a bad idea.

[...]

The contrast with the DNC is instructive

The RNC chaos stands in contrast with the more realistic approach taken by the Democratic National Committee, which announced in June that this year’s Democratic National Committee would be almost entirely virtual. The convention went off without any major hitches, with many positive reviews.

Whether the RNC will end up going similarly smoothly remains to be seen. But one thing that can be said is that if Trump wanted to have an in-person convention this month, he needed to do the work back in February, March, and April. Instead, he spent that time insisting the virus would go away on its own and passing the buck to governors who lack the resources and jurisdictional authority to handle a pandemic that has shuttered economies and spread like wildfire across state boundaries.

So now, instead of serving as a symbol of Trump’s successes, the RNC will serve as a symbol of everything he’s done wrong. While other countries reopen schools and even sporting events with fans, the US continues to report 40,000 or more new coronavirus cases a day.

Trump has no plan to get the virus under control. On the contrary, he continues to insist the virus will go away on its own — the same talking point he used more than 170,000 deaths ago during the early days of the pandemic.

The pandemic has become the predominant issue in American life. It also represents Trump’s failures. And so instead of dealing with reality, Trump and RNC officials now seem intent on trying to turn the 2020 convention into another culture war spectacle.

The organization and preparation of this year's DNC and RNC conventions couldn't look more different. 

Daniel Funke at PolitiFact:

A former U.S. senatorial candidate says the virtual Democratic National Convention left the word God out of the nation’s most famous and solemn oath.

"The DNC omitted ‘one nation under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance," said Peggy Hubbard, who lost Illinois’ Republican primary election in March, in an Aug. 20 Facebook post.

Hubbard’s post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It’s similar to other claims we’ve seen on Facebook, so we wanted to check it out.

Some Democratic caucus members omitted "one nation under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance during DNC meetings. But the line was not excluded from any of the convention’s primetime televised spots.

On the first night of the DNC, participants sang the "Star-Spangled Banner" instead of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. On the second, third and fourth nights, "under God" was included in the pledge.

Conservative news outlets like the Washington Examiner have pointed out that, during the livestreamed Muslim Delegates Assembly on Aug. 18, one participant omitted "under God" from the Pledge. A delegate at an Aug. 18 LGBTQ Caucus meeting also abstained from saying it.

There were 30 caucus and council meetings during the DNC, according to the party’s website. They were not the scripted, highly produced sessions that aired on television.

The Pledge of Allegiance has existed in some form since the late 19th century, but in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill that officially added the words "under God." There is a long history of legal challenges and religious objections to the inclusion of the phrase, particularly in public schools, where students are often asked to say the pledge.

Dan Evon at Snopes: 

What's True

The phrase "under God" was omitted from at least two recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance at individual caucus meetings during the DNC in 2020.

What's False

The DNC did not issue any guidelines forbidding the use of the phrase. On the national stage, the phrase "under God" was used during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each night of the 2020 DNC.

A rumor circulated on social media during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August 2020 alleging that the DNC had omitted the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. The following text (also shown in the above-displayed meme), for instance, was copied and pasted to multiple accounts on Facebook:

The fact that the DNC omitted “under God” from the pledge of allegiance on a national platform should worry every believer!  

This statement is misleading at best. The DNC did not omit “under God” from the pledge, nor did they forbid its use. In fact, during every recitation of the pledge before each night’s events — the 2020 DNC lasted four nights — the phrase “under God” was included.

Eilish O’Sullivan at Daily Dot:

President Donald Trump on Saturday morning accused Democrats of removing “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance during the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

“The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention. At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was done on purpose. Remember evangelical Christians, and ALL, this is where they are coming from-it’s done. Vote Nov 3!” he wrote.

When Trump made the claim, Snopes had already debunked it, rating it as “mostly false.”

While at least two recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance omitted “under God,” those occurred at individual caucus meetings at the DNC, and the phrase was included at the start of each of the four nights on the national stage.

AP, via PBS Newshour: 

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin is sharing her struggles with a childhood illness to tout the importance of health coverage for preexisting conditions.

Baldwin said at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday that she was hospitalized for three months as a 9-year-old. Her grandparents were her caregivers, and their insurance did not cover her. Baldwin says she then struggled to get health insurance as an adult.

She asks: “Do we want to be a country where medical bills bury people in debt?”

Baldwin is touting her support under the Obama-Biden administration for the Affordable Care Act. It allows young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26.

Baldwin spoke from Milwaukee, the city where the convention was set to be held before the coronavirus pandemic forced most of the events to be held virtually.