The Democrats In Denver

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/27/kucinichs-convention-speech-edited/

Kucinich's convention speech edited.

The Hill reports that the Obama campaign has, at times, been "tightening the
reins on campaign speeches and stressing that speakers emphasize a
rags-to-riches theme." Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) had one line redacted
rom his speech, which suggested some conservatives need to serve time in
prison. The original line read: "They're asking for another four years - in
a just world, they'd get 10 to 20."

Chas Freeman wrote:
Norman Birnbaum wrote the following for Spiegel online. It's the sort of forthrightly insightful and witty commentary that is now almost entirely absent from the dumbed-down media in our country. Addressed to a foreign audience, it deserves to be read by those whose politics it is describing.

The Democrats In Denver Norman Birnbaum

I've been at Democratic conventions and regret missing some of the livelier parties at this one. There is very little else to regret. Television has given the essentials. For every Denver blog worth reading, there are ten which are evidence only for their authors' self-important obtuseness and querulousness . Why, however, should unknown citizens not have the same right as our media stars---to make fools of themselves? The major theme of newspaper and television reporting, sedulously repeated by bloggers claiming that they have independent perspectives, was entirely exaggerated. Would the Clintons, defeated in their bid to return to power, take their revenge by somehow sabotaging or stealing Obama's show? Of course not: the Clintons, above all, have no taste for permanent residence in the political wilderness. To give less than full support to Obama would be to risk being blamed for his defeat, should that happen. Should he win, despite their efforts to defeat him, his revenge would be pitiless.. In either case, the Clinton's chances for a return to power of some sort would be very reduced. The Clintons are intelligent. They know that each American election has its own dynamics, and that the outcome of this one does not depend upon their pushing their followers to the voting stations. They also know that those who voted for Senator Clinton in the primaries and are reportedly ready to vote for McCain or abstain will, in their great majority, vote for Obama. The rest are the candidate's to win, or lose, and that is not up to them.

The fact that the Clinton's twinned speeches calling for Obama's election were treated as great events attests only the absence of real events at the Convention. There have been Democratic conventions in which the issues facing the nation were openly, strenuously, sometimes violently debated: racial equality in the late forties and through the sixties, , the war in Vietnam immediately thereafter. One would never gather, in Denver, that the Democratic Party is quite seriously divided on war and peace, on the balance of state and market, on the contending powers of Federal and state government. True, conventions are supposed to unify parties, allow them to temporarily set aside their differences for the sake of winning the Presidency and achieving working majorities in House and Senate.

The difficulty is that they are not solely internal party gatherings. They are also supposed to be occasions on which the parties address the nation, reintroduce themselves to the voters, present new champions as well as honoring departing old Olympians. These functions are often in striking contradiction with one another. Honesty and openess were not salient at Denver, and the tiresomely repeated term "diversity" meant mostly that there are many ways in which to say "Yes."

Controlled and stage managed by the Obama machine with a rigour that would not have been out of place in a People's Republic (every speech was edited, and sometimes parts of these were censored), the convention was utterly devoid of debate. It was a fair, a Kermesse, with a fair showing of rock stars, film actors and actresses, miscellaneous celebrities of every sort (but few or no scientists, perhaps in deference to outreach to the Biblical literalists.) And, of course, there were the rich, buying shares of power or at least proximity to it.

There was, at the end, a very large compensation. Obama introduced himself to a surprised and even fascinated American public in 2004 with a speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston. The candidate (as he was then) for the Senate from Illinois had an unusual appearance, life history, and message: it was time for a new politics which would put the divisions of the past generation behind us. In Denver, with substantial numbers of Democrats and half the nation doubting his capacity to master the challenges of the Presidency, he met his critics head on. In a speech remarkable for joining specific policy prescription and larger vision, sobriety and passion, personal commitment and a call to the citizenry to rise, he took the offensive. For better or for worse, American Presidential contests are not only matters of competing programs and social projects, different cultural and social blocs, clashing political traditions. They are also personal combats. At Denver, Obama threw back at McCain the question of which of the two had a Presidential temperament. It remains to be seen how McCain and the Republicans will answer, but one consequence was instantly clear: the Democrats at Denver were inspired.

How did the speech affect the nation? We will not know, even when the polls give us their answers. There are some fifty thousand historians, political scientists, social psychologists, in our universities. Fifteen thousand political journalists were at the convention. There are thousands of chroniclers and writers, and innumerable veterans of recent politics not at all reticent about sharing the lessons they have learned. We can add the professional advisors and consultants who live not for but from politics---thousands in Washington alone. They have one thing in common: they cannot really predict how and why our citizens will vote. (The historians are still arguing about the elections of 1832,)

Now, on to the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota for the Republican convention. It will look different: :far whiter, and more masculine and older. The conventions will quickly merge, in public memory, with a campaign sure to be bitter and close. The larger world will make itself felt. The Europeans, whether they know it or not, are rendering McCain considerable service----by legitimating Bush's aggressive (and hypocritical) confrontation with Russia. The ultimate result, to be sure, will be a consequence of our own history. If it is as open as our progressivist ethos claims, Obama will win. If we suffer, as our pessimists fear, from what Freud called the repetition compulsion, McCain will enter the White House. The Democratic Convention (and its imminent Republican sequel) will count only as an historical footnote. Serious readers know, however, that frequently footnotes contain the key to the text.