So....I wasn't gonna do it until the end. But...hey, this is "my" party, and I have a lot to say. There's a lot of speakers, some I like, some I didn't, and I have mixed opinions on the whole thing.
Day 1
Here they actually leaned into economics, and I found it disappointing. Sorry guys, it felt milquetoast to me. I dont buy into the whole "ra ra work" crap, and they put that on FULL display with this convention. Like, full stop, in your face. And it was cringe. To me, a society in which working people get a fair shake is like, THE BARE FREAKING MINIMUM! And most of the speakers on that matter didn't resonate. Even AOC, who other progressives cheered, rang hollow to me.
I mean, people like AOC and Kamala Harris who "know what it's like" to be minimum wage workers...should probably be more negative and cynical about work. I'm sorry, but that's how I see it. I don't know regular working people who actually think POSITIVELY about work for the most part. And something that happens a lot with the politician class is you get these higher ambitious people who live for work and then tell the little guy that they should have the same ideas. I'd like working class people to actually be like "yeah, this kind of sucks." It feels like gaslighting.
I mean, I expected this at the DNC, but given MY values, leaning HARD into it just turned me off. In America, we have this weird circlejerk with work being a part of our national identity, and it's literally a civil religion, or as I would call it, a cult. And they just LEANED into that way too hard.
I also felt disenchanted with the platform. No public option. I feel like this is a complete betrayal. I mean, Kamala Harris is "the healthcare lady" in 2020. She was the third most progressive candidate in the race, behind Bernie and Warren. And I admit, even I'm kind of moderating on healthcare where I'm like, okay, maybe single payer is too expensive. I mean, I have UBI ambitions, ya know? I cant afford that AND a $2+ trillion M4A plan. I mean, MAYBE we can, but if we could implement something that's cheaper and still works, I'd be fine with that. And....nope, abandoned. It feels like a betrayal for me. Yes yes, Harris has some decent proposals on some of my lesser priorities, but between the in your face work virtue signalling and the lack of universal healthcare, I've soured on Harris's candidacy fast. LIke really, the whole honeymoon period is over, and we're stuck with what we're stuck with.
But, to discuss other things, eh, it was okay. A few highlights that stood out to me were the HRC "lock him up" moment. She didn't say it, the crowd did. And it was hilarious. She smiled. I might hate HRC for a lot of reasons, and I even said on a democratic subreddit (and got modded for it) that I hoped that having to give this speech hurt her. I have no love for her. But honestly? There were so many fake controversies surrounding her in 2016, and the "lock her up" thing was always in bad taste from Trump. i like to see the reverse uno 8 years later.
Biden's speech, meh...I got BORED with it. Like, really. It started out strong, and he gave a strong impassioned argument about fighting fascism, but then it devolved into his accomplishments and because it was going on for like 4 hours by this point, I got bored and turned it off. Sorry Joe, I'm bored. You're boring me.
Other than that, it was kinda cringey. it leaned super hard into the identity politics and civil rights and blah blah blah. It doesnt resonate with me as a white guy. Sorry, it doesn't. I feel like the obsession the dems have with identity politics is kind of offputting, and while I understand they cant have a democratic national convention without it, it always felt cringey to me. Again, too in your face. There's having it present, and then there's dialing it up to a 10 to the point it's irritating. This is the latter.
And then they had that ALS guy grunting on stage. Not sure who thought that was a good idea but it was cringey AF. Who finds this endearing? Come the frick on.
Anyway. I left day 1 completely and utterly disillusioned with the party. THe mask was ripped off, I realized it's the same democratic party it's always been, the one that I hate and can barely bring myself to vote for, and UGH. Sorry guys, I just ain't enthused.
Day 2
That said, after Day 1, Day 2 is...better. The shift was more all over the place. A lot of talk of abortion rights. I wish they'd talk about universal healthcare and UBI like they talk about abortion rights. There were some more economic oriented speakers talking about labor rights, and they weren't as obnoxious with the work worship on the second day.
There were some speakers I want to talk about. As I said, bernie REALLY did it for me. Best speech of the convention. I heard it didn't go over well with a lot of democrats, and of course, when asked about it online democrats were salty and saying stupid crap like if not for him hillary would've won. Funny how they get to say that crap on certain democratic party subreddits, but I can't say I don't like hillary. Well, screw them. Bernie appeals to me for the exact same reasons...no one else does. Because I don't do the whole "team player" thing. I speak my mind and don't care what people think.
The roll call came off as creepy and propagandistic like it always did (everyone paying fealty to "dear leader"), but it had flavor this year with music playing with each state. Lil Jon showed up with Georgia, and other states also had rather colorful showings that I found entertaining.
Michelle Obama...she was okay. She had some good moments, I remember her calling the presidency a "black job" (in reference to trump's comments about black jobs) and i thought it was hilarious. if you are gonna do the identity politics stuff, this is how.Go after trump and his brand of obvious racism. That's fair game for me.
However, then Michelle Obama said the wrong thing. If I recall she said it last time too. She started going on about how the party doesnt have time to appeal to every voter or something, and how we gotta "do the right thing". So just fall in line then? Screw you. You're lucky trump is literally a threat to democracy. Otherwise I wouldn't do it.
Barack Obama was better. He actually had a pretty strong speech, and was pretty conciliatory. One of the best moments of the night was him saying that sometimes we(they) old people need to understand they're behind the times and listen to the next generation, and that we shouldnt talk down to people or try to invalidate their concerns or complaints. I AGREE BARACK, TELL THAT TO REDDIT MODS! Yeah, I'm bitter about that.
Heck, I'll go a step further. Once again, let's discuss healthcare. I understand that in 2010, the ACA was the best plan you could pass at the time. But should it be the plan we're stuck with for all time because it hurts your legacy if we pass something better? That's my going for the jugular with that one. I feel like the dems pass legislation, and then they tell us this is the best we're gonna get and to screw us and fall in line and we can't do any better, and it's all about LEGACY LEGACY LEGACY. Like it hurts their pride, or it hurts their legacy, if we dare pass something better. Should we be stuck with a mediocre plan with flaws to make YOU feel better? As part of the next generation, something to think about. Thank you for trying, you did the best you could, but let's face it, the ACA was a compromise, and it was a flawed one at that. If anything, the fact that it hasnt solved the healthcare issue and we're STILL debating this almost 15 years later is kind of a testament of it not really working.
I came to my views on healthcare, around 2012-2014ish. And I formed my views...by studying the effects of the ACA. I studied how forcing insurance companies to cover everyone just made health insurance more expensive for everyone else. Made it cheaper for sicker people only to make it more expensive for the young and healthy. Then it forced everyone to buy insurance including the young and healthy, only to be hit with like $400+ a month premiums and $5k deductibles and really, man? Really? I mean at one point my dad's job at the time was offering us some crappy plan for like $1200 a month. $1200 a month? Who the hell in the working class can afford $1200 a month for health insurance? That's like 40% of our income at the time. Oh, and if we didn't buy it, we had to pay a fine. It was only $600 but still, really, man, really? So force us to buy something unaffordable or tax us. Then SCOTUS repealed the tax. There was the requirement that anyone working over 25 hours a week was entitled to insurance, and then....suddenly minimum wage companies made sure we never worked a minute over 24 hours and 59 minutes. So now people need to take on 2+ jobs...and then foot their own healthcare, yay! The medicaid expansion was a mess. it only covered people up to like 138% of the poverty line, with a hard cutoff, above which you were expected to buy your own insurance. And that was like...$17k at the time. So....yay, this is worthless! And then the expansion was left up to the states, most of them run by republicans, and they kept sabotaging it and ensuring we couldn't get it expanded at all because they literally dont want people to have healthcare. And in my state they implemented it in some crappy way where i have to navigate this healthcare bureaucracy and fill out a FREAKING 32 PAGE FORM that asks all of these extraneous and invasive questions that apply to other welfare programs to get it. And UGH. THIS IS NOT THE SOLUTION WE NEED.
I don't deny it, Barack, it was better than nothing, it did some good things. Don't get me wrong. Democratic ideas always do SOME GOOD THINGS. But they are often like band aids on a gunshot wound. Like, they try to address the solutions in some half baked mediocre way that doesn't actually FIX anything and then the dems resist any further change because rich politicians care more about legacies than actually helping people.
I came to support single payer because of this. Because THIS isn't working dude. It's NOT WORKING. WE NEED TO DO BETTER. And okay, again, dont wanna do single payer? Too expensive? Fine, how about a public option? Automatic enrollment of the uninsured, so we DONT have to fill out 32 page forms, costs scale automatically with income with poor people getting free care and cost responsibility scaling with income, and yeah. Everyone gets covered, everyones' costs in line with what they are deemed to be able to afford. it's only fair, right? Can we at least have that? Please?
But yeah, other than that, Barack's speech was kinda fire. And Night 2 actually hit far better than night 1.
And that's my views so far.
I might do day 3 separately tomorrow, or i might do day 3 and 4 together. Idk. But yeah. Overall, pretty meh convention, but hey, democrats can't actually enthuse me to save their lives and I really do feel like I don't actually belong with the democratic party here and these guys ARE far more centrist than me, and they get excited over nothing but vibes, and not policy.
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