We watched a decent amount of the Democratic convention last week, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. My expectations were low for what was shaping up to be four evenings of infomercials, and while some of the "candid" videos felt like that I'd say overall all the marks were hit that needed to be hit. For me, the two highlights were Obama's speech where he laid out the case for how bad things are, but how people should not give into cynicism and vote anyway because people faced harder things in the past in this country but still participated and overcame them. (Kamala after was merely okay, IMO, but it was a tough act to follow.) Biden though, wow. Definitely the best convention speech I've ever seen a candidate give- to be fair, I think they knew so much rode on this in terms of candidate exposure in the pandemic times. But wow, I confess I got a little teary eyed when he addressed people who had lost someone in the epidemic and saying he knew a little about what people were feeling, and I saw he was getting emotional in that moment. I'm not saying the bar is low, but how insane is it that we are about half a year into this pandemic and this is the first time a national authority figure has really done that. And it was such a stark contrast to making you think why the heck the current administration hasn't done that basic decency (because of course if they did they'd be acknowledging things are bad, and can't have that!).
Meanwhile, the Republicans are full on fascist now with "no more platform beyond we support Trump!" I guess if you were still the Republicans claiming "it's about principles and not just his party!" you have little to stand on, but I'm sure they'll make some crap up. I'm not planning to watch though, I'm sure we'll get the highlight reel later.
