(I'm gonna talk about Kamala Harris's speech tomorrow, along with Joe Biden's.)
One thing I've appreciated about the Democratic National Convention this year is that the party has essentially stopped begging for the votes of white working class idiots who voted for Trump. Sure, sure, there have been the (retired) Republican politicians endorsing Joe Biden and the Republican voters who won't vote for Trump. But those have been more along the lines of how they're like us, not how we're like them. In other words, you gotta get on board with the gun control and the LGBTQ rights and fair treatment of immigrants and being pro-choice and dealing with climate change and providing health care. No one is crawling to appeal to the shitheels, fucknuts, and ignoramuses who are going to vote for Trump.
Instead, the real appeal has been to those who are thinking of not voting at all (whether for ideological or other reasons). We heard again and again last night, from Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, that sitting on the sidelines is a bullshit position. "Vote like our lives and livelihoods are on the line, because they are," Clinton said, and if it's not for your life, vote for the lives of people who will suffer under more Trump.
And most forcefully, and most shockingly, we heard from Barack Obama how fucked up shit is under Trump and how much more fucked up shit will get if Trump is re-elected. Like Michelle Obama scaring the shit out of us on Monday, the fact that President Cool Guy, Mister Hope and Change himself, is saying things like "This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes for them to win" is downright terrifying. All I can think about is the access he has to information that we don't know and the shit he must have seen, even beyond the distressing daily fuckery, to make him break an unspoken protocol in modern times that ex-presidents don't flat-out attack sitting presidents.
But more than any previous president, Obama deserves the right to come at Trump. President Fucko the Buffoon lies on a daily basis about Obama's accomplishments, whether it's shitting on the smooth-running economy that Trump inherited (and claims was in shambles, which is demonstrably, factually false) or taking credit for the passage of the Veterans Choice Program (which was signed into law in 2014, when Trump was conspicuously not president) or making up a fictional tale about Obama ordering "spying" on the Trump campaign (when it was the Justice Department concerned because Paul Manafort and others...you know what? Fuck it. Either you know it or you don't).
So Obama put it out there, talking to us like he's still president, saying that we're in fucking danger and we better fucking well act like we are. "Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t, and the consequences of that failure are severe," he said. "170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs, gone, while those at the top taking more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before." And that's now. Imagine the devolution of the nation in another four years. Fuck, I can't even imagine there will be a nation as we know it in another four years if we have another Trumpering.
To show how bugfuck insane things have gotten, Obama rattled off what Biden and Harris believe in, like the right to vote, the president isn't above the law, the press is necessary, and "our ability to work together to solve big problems like a pandemic depend on a fidelity to facts and science and logic and not just making stuff up." This is basic, everyday shit that we used to all at least have a tacit agreement on, but now that's thrown out the window, along with empathy and decency, the return of which is the overarching theme of this DNC. It had to be hard as hell not to give in to despair and fear for Obama.
It's not just that there was real fear in Obama's eyes and real concern in his voice. There was a barely contained rage, as if he was saying, "Don't be stupid. Don't be lazy or discouraged. Don't crawl up your own ass because you didn't get the candidate you want. Don't be selfish dicks. And don't let the motherfuckers prevent you from voting." That message, the power of the vote, is one that he returned to again and again, telling us about GOP efforts to suppress the vote, "That is how they win. That is how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected. How our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers until it’s no democracy at all." And, goddamn, he knows that from the utter failure of Democrats to show up for the 2010 and 2014 midterms so that the warped and racist Tea Party narrative could have such power.
Look, I've been watching and writing about politics since Reagan. I have never seen a president tell us in such stark terms that we're hanging by a thread. And that it came from the man we used to call "No-Drama Obama"? That should punch all of us in the gut. Gird yer loins and vote for your life, for all our lives, motherfuckers. Shit's gonna get crazy.
