Conventions for political parties used to be actual events where the nominees were selected. They were a living demonstration of how ‘the people’ selected their representatives. Or at least they were meant to appear that way, even if the actual deals were done in dark smoke-filled rooms.
And then the convention became theater. The nominee was selected long before the convention and the convention became a coronation. What had been a free-wheeling debate, an explosive democracy, had become an opportunity to shower the nominee with praise and show off the lack of dissent within the party.
The sort of thing they misleadingly call ‘unity’.
If the modern convention was still an event, it was a propaganda event. Nothing of substance happened at a convention anymore. But at least there was the physical spectacle of large numbers of party delegates crowding in from around the country for a huge party, and important people appearing on the stage to give speeches.
Subtract that and what do you have? The un-convention.
The DNC’s convention planners struggled with the question of how to stage a convention consisting of video clips and a senile nominee, and decided, possibly wisely, to keep them short.
As short as Biden’s attention span.
It’s not an actual nominating convention anymore. It’s a curated collection of short video clips to propagandize Democrats and anyone else watching. It’s a 21st century un-convention that has discarded the convention part, nothing and no one are being convened after all, and reduced it to a bunch of pitch video clips.
Call it the un-convention. And a very conventional un-convention.
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