last half of that last one….
…..Inside the hall, speaker after barnstorming speaker takes the stage to make the absolutely unarguable point that Hillary Clinton, whatever her faults, is a better presidential prospect than Donald Trump. In a signal that organizers are aware of divisive their candidate is, every half-time advert played on the big screen is about how scary Trump is, rather than how great Hillary is. As someone who recently watched their country fall apart over the failure of lesser-evilism as political strategy, it’s chilling to watch.
Particularly since there’s more at stake here than the presidency itself. The saccharine pageantry and drawn-out hype of the endless American presidential race is designed, to paraphrase the late, great Douglas Adams, not just to decide who wields power, but to distract attention away from it. Whoever is crowned King of the Free World at the end of this will have far less actual power to push through change than, for example, the new British Prime Minister, who was anointed two weeks ago after a campaign that lasted not more than 90 minutes. I come at this both as a foreigner and as a person who believes that democracy neither begins not ends at the ballot box, a person who believes that any vote cast by an ordinary member of the public in a General Election is a vote for the least worst option. My lack of faith in the party system protects me from heartache of the sort sloshing madly around the convention floor in Philadelphia tonight.
The heartache, however, hangs in the air too thick to dismiss, and it’d be great if those calling for instant unity could show some respect and give the people five minutes to grieve.
Outside the bear pit, the ground is hot enough that if you were to drop all your hopes for a fair deal for workers on the asphalt they would fry in seconds. A huge promo poster declares that 8 out of 10 “politically affiliated” millennials are Facbook users. I realise I am no longer politically affiliated. I did have opinions, once, long ago, in happier days somewhere three or four security gates back, before I came to this post-political hellconvention on the surface of the sun.
Those opinions are all gone now, and I am prepared to offer my vote and also my firstborn child to anyone giving out bottles of water.
At the Rally For Bernie, I was given a glass of seltzer by a very nice lady in a floppy hat, who told me that she didn’t believe a word the press wrote about Hilary Clinton. I explained that I was from the press. She took pity on me anyway.
Inside Media Tent City, by contrast, there are a great many free pens and stickers and several thousand complimentary copies of the New York Times, but nothing to eat or drink. At least in Cleveland there was coffee. Welcome to the desert of liberalism. That’ll be $4.50 for water.
Back in the hall, the Bernie or Bust contingent will not shut up. It’s hard to hear the actual scale of the dissent on the floor from the video feeds, which may not be accidental. Take it from me, though, that every speaker is having a very hard time. Bernie’s people yell over Elijah Cummings as he tries to talk about abortion rights. They yell over Cory Booker. They holler over a young black military widow who is on stage to talk about how Trump University scammed her out of her life savings, and she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. They even boo Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama! A woman who has eaten progressive goodwill for breakfast every day for eight years!
The comedian Sarah Silverman, who was and remains a proud Sanders fan, tells the Bernie Or Bust bros screaming at her from the stands that they are “being ridiculous.” Then she tries to start a chant of “unity, unity!” Al Franken, standing next to her, chants “Hillary, Hillary.”
Fuck that guy. He’s not helping. The only way this could get more embarrassing is if they wheeled out Paul Simon to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Which is exactly what happens next.
Now, before I say what I’m about to say, I want you to understand that I have been a fan of Paul Simon and his work since my father first played me the Greatest Hits when I was six years old.
So you need to know that I’m not being flip when I tell you that Paul Simon subjects his second-finest song to slow and savage torture up there on that stage. His voice breaks on the word “bridge”. It’s too painful to watch.
Outside, an epic summer storm is breaking over the Democratic Demilitarized Zone like the world’s laziest metaphor. The wind howls like thirteen million heartbroken progressives, and the media tent creaks and buckles as hacks from every nation scramble for their devices and start to evacuate.
I spend an hour sheltering ineffectively outside the Wells Fargo building with Susie Cagle. Next to us, an independent internet journalist wearing a giant crystal pendant and no shirt starts explaining how he’s hoping for a Trump presidency to usher in the coming collapse of civilization. Inside, party svengalis plead with the delegates to be reasonable, to consider the greater good, to vote for the lesser evil. The problem is that ordinary decent people around the world have had thirty years of lesser-evilism, and they’re sick of it. Hilary is not talking their language. Trump, lying through his lacquered teeth about bringing back union jobs, just might be.
Here we are in the desert of moderate liberalism. The storm has hit, and nobody was prepared. I make a dash across the street to pay more than the minimum wage for a cup of lukewarm coffee, which spills down my front in the howling gale, and I stand for a second in the hurricane, drenched and starving and disheartened, ready to welcome the Old Ones in their terrible glory.
I try to imagine what the protesters, quarantined a mile away behind a mile of staged checkpoints, scaling fences to be arrested one by one, must feel about this. Then I remember that they’re a bunch of hippy idiots with big stupid notions about fairness and democracy who don’t realise that they’re not allowed to have feelings about any of it. They should know by now that they owe their votes, their conscience, and all their personal data to the Democratic party and its donors. Anything less is purity politics and not to be stood for.
Dissent will not be tolerated. Protest will not be permitted. You will shut the hell up and get on the Clinton bus as it rolls towards a future slightly less terrifying than Trump nation and you will goddamn smile about it.
The Democratic Party, like the British Labour Party, has decided in advance what is politically possible- but they may have made a terrible mistake. In the face of the collapse of the centre-left consensus, the right is terrifying in its grudging unity, and the left is terrifying in its disarray. Consider that after some initial brouhaha, the Republicans cheered on cue as their party was taken over by a giant evil baby. This is because the right runs on fear and is generally good at being told what to do. Meanwhile, Democrats who didn’t get the candidate they wanted were all but throwing punches on the convention floor. When you actually care about the world not sliding into fascism, compromise doesn’t hurt any less. It hurts more.
There’s a bad moon rising, the best lack all conviction and the worst have a million branded baseball caps and greasy little fingers grasping for the nuclear button. Good luck to us all.
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