I never cared much for "Seinfeld." I haven't watched a half-hour sitcom since "MASH" ended, so it's not unusual for me to ignore an iconic cultural television show. This is especially true because "Seinfeld" was so self-consciously droll and urban.
It was, as Comic Book Resources points out, a show about nothing "because the plot never moves forward: each episode is structured like a joke, with the initial minutes setting up a conflict as the storylines of each character converge on a single punch line."
If that doesn't sound like the Democratic National Convention, I don't know what does.
The Democrats are a party that has run out of ideas. And the ideas that they want to turn into law frighten people. They are running a candidate that most people wouldn't recognize.
The Democrats, writes Peter Savodnik in The Free Press, "have mythologized Harris and turned her into an alternate-Harris who would have been unrecognizable to Harris herself just a few weeks ago: tough, caring, super-smart, results-oriented. Hillary Clinton 2.0."
The woman who was mocked from one end of the country to the other for mangling the English language, who failed at her sole job in Biden's government in trying to get a handle on the Southern border, has morphed into... Wonder Woman?
In truth, the Democrats have to make the convention about personalities and mythologizing because, besides abortion, there is a paucity of thinking in Chicago. What passes for an agenda are Biden-lite legislative retreads, Obama government goodies, and a socialist-lite economic program that would drive the nation into a recession.
No one says what the Democrats’ North Star is. They have wielded enormous power for most of the past two decades, and they insist they won’t “turn back,” but no one says where we’re going. Or what they want beyond the blandest of platitudes about “freedom” and “choice” and “identity.”
These people know how to throw a fantastic party, and it’s full of flashing lights and smiling delegates and Stevie Wonder and dancers and tears streaming down faces and wild roars of hope and love and drama. But for now, after three days of this four-day convention that is really just a supremely entertaining infomercial, no one can say whether the drama is a three-act play that takes us somewhere uncharted, or whether this is a gilded sitcom.
Republicans, on the other hand, were also short on specifics at their convention. But no one doubts their "North Star." It's America first, Americans first, and every proposal made during that convention should be seen through that lens. Whether that makes for a coherent plan of government remains to be seen.
I can't say that this surprises me. I recall the days when platform fights could derail a convention. The Platform Committees of both parties were places where ideas bubbled and churned and debate over important issues saw some delegates almost come to blows. It was a huge part of the democratic process and created unity behind more than one person. It's what that person stood for that mattered.
To me, that was the exciting part of politics. Personalities come and go, but ideas are the lifeblood of politics. At least, they used to be. Now, everything is sterilized, purified, and spun so that conventions are less about what a candidate is going to do after they're elected and more about what they're going to prevent the opposing candidate from doing.
I think the country is poorer for it.
