Four Takeaways from the Democratic National Convention
Plus, how “densely packed” is Gaza, really?
Four observations after the Democratic convention:
The Middle Class versus Billionaire Class talk is baloney. Hardly a minute went by during the Democratic National Convention program without some speaker talking about how Kamala Harris is for the middle class, not the billionaire class.
“The middle class is where I come from,” Harris said in her speech accepting the nomination, drawing a contrast against Trump “and his billionaire friends.”
I find the class-based analysis has a Marxist tinge about it. It contradicts Harris’s later claim that “in unity there is strength,” because it categorizes Americans as economic class members rather than as individuals. It’s a kind of identity politics in its own way.
It’s also bogus, because the Democrats have their own billionaires. Alex Soros was posting to social media photos of his private meeting with Tim Walz on the sidelines of the convention. J.B. Pritzker and Oprah Winfrey got speaking roles. Mike Bloomberg’s group Everytown for Gun Safety got prominent billing from the convention stage.
Anyway, describing the election as middle class versus billionaire class is inaccurate. More accurate would be that both the Republicans and the Democrats have billionaires backing their campaigns.
Democrats have dialed back the “Democracy Is on the Ballot” messaging. As Harris has taken over from Biden, the effort to portray Trump as a threat to democracy has receded.
It’s not entirely gone, but it’s less central to the Democratic Party’s argument. There are at least two possible reasons for this. The Democrats might have finally figured out that it wasn’t working. Or the Democrats might have realized that Harris—a candidate who won no primaries and was installed as the party’s candidate by consensus of the party’s elites rather than by the votes of primarygoers or caucus attendees—is a flawed messenger for the “democracy is on the ballot” message.
The Democrats are portraying themselves as the national security hawks. After a Republican convention in which Trump declared, “I don’t have wars,” the Democrats brought out Leon Panetta to quote Ronald Reagan denouncing isolationism. “America must protect democracy in the world,” Panetta said.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin described a “stark” choice: “America retreating from the world or leading the world.” How the rout from Kabul fit into that, Slotkin didn’t explain, other than to claim, “we do not retreat.”
Harris said she would “strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership” and “stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.” Talk is cheap. The Biden-Harris administration has been constraining Ukraine's ability to strike Russia, and it surrendered Afghanistan and held back some arms shipments to Israel. Part of a general election campaign is always an effort to win over swing voters. The Democrats may figure they already have the pacifists, and the Republicans may figure they already have the national security hawks. There was plenty of tough talk against China and against Iran, and in favor of Israel, at the Republican convention, too. But the messaging at the convention should be somewhat reassuring to the non-isolationist wing of the Democratic Party, and to independents, like myself, who worry about rising isolationism in both parties. It was Leon Panetta, not Bernie Sanders or Shawn Fain, who seemed to be setting the tone on the foreign policy stuff. The cynical view is that some of that is driven by Goerge Soros and the Pritzkers, who care a lot about Ukraine, but the more hopeful view is that it’s driven by Harris and her inner circle understanding that there’s appetite in the American public for American international strength and leadership rather than weakness and retreat. It’s somewhat encouraging.
Talking about hope, opportunity, and endless possibility isn’t the same as delivering it. Mayor Pete Butigieg referred to “Trump’s politics of darkness” and said of Trump, “darkness is what they are selling.” Harris, by contrast, spoke of “an opportunity economy” and “endless possibility.”
Michelle Obama spoke of “being on the cusp of a brighter day” and pronounced, “America, hope is making a comeback.”
It’s one thing to talk about an “opportunity economy” and “endless possibility,” but Harris has been vice president for nearly four years and voters will have to assess whether she has delivered, or whether she’s been part of an administration that has fueled the inflation, failed to secure the border, and seen serious foreign policy setbacks. If America is “on the cusp of a brighter day,” does that mean that right now, it’s dark? How much of the darkness is Vice President Harris’s own fault? Harris is running as an insurgent or challenger, but she’s also an incumbent. It’s always a delicate task for a sitting vice president to find the right balance in distancing himself or herself from the incumbent and not trashing his or her own administration. At some point, Trump may remind voters that for all the talk about writing a new chapter and turning the page, Harris has been sitting in the White House at Biden’s elbow for the past four years.
Densely packed? Or just dense?: A Wall Street Journal news article by Abeer Ayyoub and Rory Jones begins, “Palestinians in Gaza have long lived in one of the most crowded places on the planet.” The print edition headline is “Palestinians Are Crammed Into Shrinking Area.”
Israel’s Defense and Security Forum has an article, “Is Gaza Really the Most Densely Populated Place in the World?” debunking this falsehood: “While the Gaza Strip is certainly a densely populated area, it does not even crack the top 100 most densely populated areas or cities in the world,” the article says. Paris, Manhattan, Mumbai are all more densely populated than Gaza’s cities were before the war, and “even the population density of all Israel’s 10 largest cities is far higher than that of Gaza.”
The watchdog group HonestReporting has filed a formal complaint to the Wall Street Journal about Ayyoub, citing, among other things, “she replied in Arabic to Elon Musk’s solidarity post with Israel on October 7, telling him to ‘Eat sh*t.’”
I would not want to be a civilian in Gaza, either before or after October 7. And the humanitarian situation in Gaza is a legitimate subject for newsgathering. It sounds pretty grim, despite efforts by Israel and others to ameliorate it by shipping in aid. But exaggerating the pre-October 7 conditions in Gaza by inaccurately describing it as “one of the most crowded places on the planet” is the sort of thing that erodes reader trust. It’s not a matter of opinion, but a checkable math fact involving population figures and land area.
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