Welcome to the Donkey Show

Another political convention is upon us; the Oscars of politics. Who doesn’t love to watch a red carpet event where the privileged get to strut around and be unilaterally embraced by all their friends and fans?

And the 2016 version of this gala is no exception.

Whether it is Corey Booker auditioning for a future presidential candidacy by yelling at the audience, or Al Franken using stale jokes that have been already used on this site, or Elizabeth Warren recycling the same old message over and over, or Michelle Obama advertising herself as a women for the people (beautiful women, Princeton/Harvard grad, married the future president, real relatable huh), the first day of the Democratic convention was just as pretentious and supercilious as all other iterations.

But what makes this version even more troublesome to this life-long liberal is threefold:

1) Bernie Sanders fans holding disruptive yet childish protests during some of the speeches. It reminds me of 4th grade, when my class decided to disrupt the teacher when we all coughed in unison at precisely 1:00; annoying and ineffective all at the same time.

2) The fact those Sanders protesters had good reason to be upset. I mean when DWS and Co. is out to sabotage your campaign, ire is bound to occur. I mean at least she stepped down in shame and hopefully will never be heard from again, but there is still some damage repair needed.

3) The overall elitist feel of the day.

This third one really bugs me. The appeal of the Democratic party was one that supposed to work for the common man by not granting tax breaks to the wealthiest, to monitor big business, and to provide aid to the downtrodden. However all we saw were famous music acts, celebrity comedians, and a bunch of East Coast Ivy Leaguers lecturing us about ‘building bridges’ despite never having a political track record of challenging the true wall builders…big money donors.

Now I may be a bit biased; I have been a Bernie Sanders fan for years now. I think he understands more than any other high level politician that the biggest issue in America is not racial relations, homeland safety, or even ISIS. It is the distribution of wealth, which looks like a Gamma distribution heavily skewed right. I know there has been talk about this being written in the platform, but all I saw last night was a return to the ‘limousine liberal’ days of the 50’s.

This is what scares me and why I think Trump will win come November (more on this in am upcoming Spew, we have 3 months of this nonsense, so I have some time). It seems that the Democratic party is losing touch with the blue collar worker. Trump has captured some of that demographic; be it by lies or by illusion, it doesn’t really matter. The reality is Trump is getting his 45%+ of the vote from somewhere, and not all of it is coming from GOP faithful. I feel there is no sense of urgency to appeal to Trump voters; simply bashing Trump over and over will not win back some of those disenfranchised workers. It certainly hasn’t yet.

We will see how the rest of the week goes. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. And it shouldn’t. We have known Hillary Clinton for 25+ years; one speech or one convention should not sway anyone too much. But I hope for the sake of the party that the next few days are way better than this ‘scorched earth’ approach that is being currently utilized which may alienate instead of persuade.