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The Democratic convention in Chicago has been a huge success, I suppose. The party has rallied around Kamala Harris and “Coach Walz,” rebranded her as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, and connected the campaign with Barack Obama’s inspiring 2008 race for the White House.
On top of that, the anti-American, antisemitic flag-burners who promised to turn this city upside down haven’t materialized en masse. The hoped-for 1968 redux is more like a sad, echoing whimper.
In other words: The vibes have been spectacular!
And yet.
It’s unclear what these people are peddling.
Certainly not Harris’s proposal to cap the cost of groceries. The only speaker at the convention who has bothered to talk that up has been Bernie Sanders. Everyone else drones on about Harris being a dog lover and a fighter and, most importantly, Momala.
While (rightly) pummeling the GOP–Donald Trump cult of personality, Democrats have mythologized Harris and turned her into an alternate-Harris who would have been unrecognizable to Harris herself just a few weeks ago: tough, caring, super-smart, results-oriented. Hillary Clinton 2.0.
But no one has ventured to say what this alternate-Harris would do in office. Or, more broadly, what her party wants to accomplish over the next four years. There is no program.
To be fair, the Republican agenda is a mosh pit of confusions—a free-market, tariff-laden, stick-it-to-the-establishment, fuck-China, go-America mélange of half-baked, sort-of proposals.
But the idea behind that confusion is straightforward. It is America first. Americans first. And every bill, initiative, executive decision can be, should be, viewed through that lens. Whether that amounts to a coherent theory of government remains to be seen. (The Republicans seem to be trying to figure out in real time the how behind the what.) But there is a focal point.
No one says what the Democrats’ North Star is. They have wielded enormous power for most of the past two decades, and they insist they won’t “turn back,” but no one says where we’re going. Or what they want beyond the blandest of platitudes about “freedom” and “choice” and “identity.”
