Today the Democrats will open their convention. The biggest news in the party is that Debbie Wasserman Shultz has resigned her post as Chair of the DNC. That was something that a lot of people have wanted for some time.
According to the statement, she is resigning effective immediately at the end of the Nation Convention this week. Too bad, she should have made it immediate and stayed away from the convention completely.
It seems weird that leaked emails from her and her staff was her downfall. Yet, she really hasn’t done all that much to help the DNC since she became the chair. She has been a lightning rod now for a couple of years and her departure is long overdue.
Some “hard-core Berniacs” will be there and some may even protest. Some might try to upend the VP nomination of Tim Kaine. That is probably unlikely, but we shall see. Bernie Sanders got a lot of compromise from the DNC over the platform. No, he didn’t get everything he wanted, but he was able to change it some to lean a bit more left.
I don’t foresee too much turmoil at this convention. See, Democrats have a long history of controversy at their conventions. Unlike the Republican Party which usually rules with an iron fist, the Democrats are mostly open at their conventions. Which results in more squabbles than at Republican parties.
To me, the biggest thing to watch for is the tone. At the Republican Convention last week, the tone was very dark and problematic. Nothing in this country is going well, according to them. There are plenty of groups to blame for the mess, excluding the Republican Party. And, we are all going to wake up one day and find we have been murdered in our beds by these nefarious groups unless we elect the next dictator, Donald Trump.
Some simple facts of reality. In 2008 the country elected Barak Obama as the first Black President in our history. That same year, during the election, the economy collapsed. When Obama took office in January 2009, we were losing about 850,000 jobs per month.
After a year of trying to stop the carnage, we began to see things turn around. We have had over 75 straight months of private sector job growth. That despite the lack of participation of the Republican Party in governing. The Republican Controlled House of Representative has been the least effective House in our history.
Each year of their control, they break new lows for how ineffective they are. Two years ago, the Senate came under Republican Control. Mitch McConnell said we would “now see just how to govern under Republicans”. We are still waiting because they haven’t done anything more than the House, which is nothing. Hell, even Donald Trump said we need to rebuild our infrastructure.
What he didn’t say is that there has been a Transportation and Infrastructure Bill intended to do just that languishing in the Republican Congress for SEVEN YEARS! Republicans are not interested in passing that bill nor in creating the millions of good paying jobs it would ensure.
So, the tone of the Democrat Convention is very important to me. I am very interested in just how they conduct themselves. Will they fall into the trap and start bashing Donald Trump or will they tell us what policies they plan on to build on the progress we have made since 2008.
Are the speakers going to produce innuendos about the other side, or are they going to compare what their plans are to their opponents? That should be easy since their opponents don’t have a plan.
Democrats need to spell out exactly what they see as problems and challenges facing our nation, and tell us exactly what they intend to do to address those problems and challenges. People want to know that someone is interested in their future. They need to know that if they vote for Democrats, the people’s wishes will be considered and not the special interest groups. That is going to be huge challenge for Democrats.
The middle-class is disappearing. We need to know what is going to be done to bring it back. We need to know how public education will improve for everyone. We need to know that our children’s future will be bright and promising.
What is going to be done about climate change and the environment? What is going to be done about income inequality? What is going to be done about our crumbling infrastructure? What are we going to do about health care and its costs? How do we combat terrorism and not strip our citizens of their right to privacy? So many problems and we need solutions not 20 second sound bites about who to blame.
Too many people are talking like this is a binary election. Meaning we have a choice between two bad candidates. That does not have to be the choice. Since the Republicans failed to provide any details about their policies, except “believe me”, the Democrats have an opportunity to separate themselves from the Republicans and show that they deserve our votes.
The Democrats have an opportunity to give us real policies and real choices. Or, they can give us a mud wrestling match. I would rather choose between policies rather than a mud wrestling match. Trump wants a mud wrestling match. That is the only way he figures he can win.
All we can do now is wait and watch. I know that there will be some fights during this week. I know that everyone will not be totally happy with everything going on this week. That is usual for Democrats.
It is the tone that matters. It is policies that matters. It is ideas that matters. Last week we got a very dark tone. We got no policies. We got no ideas. All we got was “I am the only one who can fix the problems, believe me”.
That ranks right up there with the “check’s in the mail” and “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning”. It is all up to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. This week will let us know if this is really a binary election or one based on ideas, policies, and hope.
Let’s hope it is about ideas, policies and hope. We have had too many mud wrestling matches in the past, and they provided us with nothing but division and hate.
