There were 36 people shot, including seven killed, in Chicago during the four days that Democrats gathered in the Windy City to crown Queen Kamala as their last-minute candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
The rampant gun violence did not affect the delegates who, unlike the rest of the city, were safe during their deliberations behind several steel rings.
There was nothing unusual about the massacre. It was a normal week in the undisputed capital of murder and street crime in the United States.
Naturally, no convention speaker made any reference to the blood running in the streets beyond the confines of their hermetically sealed convention hall. Nor did the party’s countless allies in the media draw attention to the matter. They were too busy cheering from the sidelines, abandoning any semblance of balanced reporting.
Democrats have ruled Chicago uninterrupted since 1931. When you aspire to govern the country, it is not politically sensible to highlight the fact that you cannot keep the streets of the third most populous city in the country safe.
Kamala Harris claims to have been “steeped in the civil rights movement” despite not being born until its peak in 1964, writes Andrew Neil
It may be a curious omission that the leader of his ticket in the November elections boasts of how tough she was on bad guys when she was prosecutor, but that was just one of many hypocrisies on display.
Donald Trump was criticized as a plutocrat (an easy target, admittedly) even though the Democratic scene was awash with billionaires (talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker) and mere billionaires (the Clintons, the Obamas, Desperate Housewives’ Eva Longoria, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi).
Democrats harbor the charming idea that they are still the party of blue-collar workers, when in fact it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the wealthy liberal elites who dominate politics, business, academia, entertainment and the media.
The hypocrisy didn’t end there. Barack Obama referred to Joe Biden as “my brother,” even though he had been the one sharpening the knives and handing them out with instructions to tell poor Joe that the game was up. Michelle Obama, in the convention speech, was more honest: she didn’t mention Biden at all, as she has her own personal issues with the First Family.
Bill Clinton was the most unctuous. Like so many others who want to ease Biden’s pain at being forced to resign against his will, he described him as a mix of Franklin Roosevelt (comparing his famous New Deal to Biden’s handling of the economy) and George Washington (for putting the country before himself).
Comparisons that are only convincing if one ignores the fact that Americans’ standard of living has been hit by runaway inflation, the economy is visibly slowing down and the federal government is drowning in record debt.
As for Washington, he did indeed resign voluntarily after eight years. Biden, for his part, was still clinging to the curtains of the Oval Office as the powerful in his party dragged him out.
The vice president will face a series of debates with Donald Trump, starting next month
No matter. Democrats think they have a winner in Kamala Harris, and despite the praise, Biden is already yesterday’s man and cannot be allowed to stand in the way of his victory – hence the decision to relegate his farewell speech on the first night of the convention to well after bedtime for most Americans, let alone Joe himself.
Democrats are not wrong to think they have a potential winner on their hands, either. In the eyes of the Democratic faithful, she has gone from being a fairly useless – and even embarrassing and unpopular – vice president to a Wonder Woman presidential favorite. It is a succession story like no other, one of the most remarkable transformations in American politics, even if it is largely a fabrication.
The Democratic Party and its media allies are on a roll, having spent most of the summer in a funk. Now all they have to do is convince the American people, which could be a bigger challenge.
One of the great mysteries of the universe remains what he would do when he had power. His speech to the convention on Thursday night gave few clues. These are not occasions to go into detail about policy, but a plethora of platitudes overshadowed even the slightest hint of substance.
Yes, she can read the teleprompter confidently, which is more than Biden can do and Trump has the discipline to do. But most national politicians can do that. It’s a necessary skill for the job. With Harris, it was the words that disappointed.
No clichéd rhetoric was left out. He promised “opportunities,” “a new way forward,” “bringing workers and businesses together,” “no turning back” and, in a rare gesture of specificity, lower food prices.
There was no clue as to how all this would be achieved. Even his recent enthusiasm for price controls was curiously absent from the script. It was, as one commentator put it, “empty trouser suit” politics.
Instead of politics, we get a new version of her life story. She is depicted as a poor girl growing up in a difficult environment. However, her parents were teachers and she grew up mostly in Berkeley, California, and Montreal, Canada, two cities not known for their ghettos.
She claims to have been “immersed in the civil rights movement” even though she was not born until 1964, near the height of the modern civil rights movement.
But this is old-fashioned criticism, because we now find ourselves in a politics of mood, where general well-being and contagious joy are more important than policies or facts – or so we are told. Over the next 12 weeks we will find out whether that mood translates into votes.
The omens are good, at least for now. She leaves Chicago with political momentum behind her as the campaign proper begins. Polls in key states are leaning in her favor, Trump’s campaign continues to flounder, with no idea how to deal with her and yearning for the return of Sleepy Joe.
Not even Robert F. Kennedy’s decision to drop out of the race and support Trump will necessarily save him. JFK’s highly unreliable nephew was getting between 4 and 6 percent of the vote in key states, and while Trump will get more votes than Harris, it is unlikely to be enough to win the election.
Just a month ago, Trump had a chance of losing the election. Now, she does. Her greatest ally is Trump. Her optimism, however unwarranted, is more appealing than her incessant negativity, which is irritating. Her childish insults only come to her in response. People are fed up with this kind of talk.
So far, the heavy lifting required to underscore his repeated policy shifts – from right to left and back to right again – has been beyond his capabilities. At his most recent campaign stops, he has looked tired, dispirited, more rambling and unfocused than ever, with no desire to fight or even the will to win. His people are no strangers to this. They just don’t know what to do about it. “He’s a complete mess,” one senior figure in Trump’s team wearily confided to me.
However, “which Kamala Harris would rule from the White House?” is a completely legitimate question, and as of yet, we have no idea what the answer might be.
She is not running based on the Biden-Harris administration’s record, perhaps because it is nothing special.
She claims to have abandoned all the left-wing positions she adopted just a few years ago, but she has never been asked to acknowledge this, as she has refused to give formal interviews to journalists other than her cheerleaders. It is clear that she is now trying to move further away from the centre, but we do not know what this means because she will not tell us.
But at some point he will have to stop hiding behind the teleprompter and a complicit media and allow himself to be questioned properly. Nor can he avoid the debates with Trump, which begin next month and could be his chance, provided he sticks to laying out his policies (or lack thereof) and doesn’t make it personal, which would only remind moderates why they didn’t vote for him in 2020.
And if he doesn’t change, I asked one of his closest confidants: what’s plan B? “Call 911. Or the Holy Spirit,” he replied. I’m not sure he was joking.