The Weekly Sift

With a near-perfect convention in Chicago, Democrats stole themes Republicans have been running on for decades: freedom, opportunity, tradition, patriotism, family, manliness, small-town values, and who the “real Americans” are.

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When they left Milwaukee, Republicans were happy with their convention. True, Trump’s acceptance speech had failed to stick the landing, and many were still uncertain that J. D. Vance had been the best (or even a good) choice for VP, but those seemed like quibbles. For four days — right up to the last hour of Trump’s 90-minute speech — the party had been united, put on a good show, and looked poised to do well in November against a Democratic ticket headed by Joe Biden.

And then Biden did something beyond Donald Trump’s imagination: He sacrificed his own ambitions for the sake of his party and the country. Republicans still resist grasping what Biden did: With occasional help from the NYT, they describe his voluntary withdrawal as a “coup” (as if January 6 hadn’t shown us what a coup really looks like) and keep portraying Biden as bitter and angry. Weeks later, Trump was still fantasizing that Biden would make a scene at the convention.

What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!

But Monday night, as in all his public appearances, Biden was gracious and generous towards Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic Party. If this was all an act, it was an act far beyond Trump’s abilities. Under no circumstances could Trump have contained his disappointments and resentments in front of a national audience for 50 minutes. And yet somehow, he imagined that “senile” Joe Biden could be such a brilliant performer. But Trump can hold those two thoughts together in his mind — Biden is senile and Biden can make an Oscar-worthy presentation — more easily than he can imagine the truth:

It’s been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.

Biden’s speech was just the beginning of a four-day master class in how to run a convention. All week, I felt like the Democrats were teaching Republicans how it’s done: You had Kid Rock and Jason Aldean? OK, we’ve got Stevie Wonder, John Legend, and Pink. We see your celebrity Hulk Hogan and raise you Oprah Winfrey. Your people waved signs saying “Mass Deportation Now!”, but we prefer “Freedom” and “USA”. Your rising talent was Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, but we could showcase people who are authentically gifted speakers: Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, AOC, Gretchen Whitmer, and Wes Moore.

Unsurprisingly, the DNC ratings were consistently higher, night by night, than the RNC’s. And that included Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech out-doing Donald Trump’s, despite him being only days past an assassination attempt and the (unfounded) media hype about how it had changed him.

And then there was the roll call that put the “party” back in political party.

And one-liners? Beat this one: Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett said,

Kamala Harris has a resume. Donald Trump has a rap sheet.

Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel had a line that turned an age-old NRA slogan upside-down:

I’ve got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the US Supreme Court: You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand.

Turning old Republican tropes upside-down became a repeating motif of the Democratic Convention. Republicans used to be the party that wanted to “defend marriage”, but now it is Republicans like the corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who threaten marriage, and Democrats like Nessel who pledge to defend it to the death.

But marriage was just one of the concepts that Democrats took back from a Republican Party that had owned them for too long.

Freedom. Republicans used to style themselves as the party of freedom, but Tim Walz yanked that word away from them:

When Republicans use the word “freedom”, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations, free to pollute your air and water. And banks, free to take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.

Josh Shapiro tied it to Trump’s efforts to stay in power through fraud and force after losing the 2020 election:

It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. And it’s not freedom to tell women what they can do with their bodies. It sure as hell isn’t freedom to say, “You can go vote, but he gets to pick the winner.” That’s not freedom.

Freedom has become a central theme of Harris’ campaign, with Beyoncé’s “Freedom” as its theme song.

Family. When Ronald Reagan ran on “family values” with the support of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Republicans meant the (implicitly White and Christian) Mom-Dad-and-2.1-perfect-children families of 1950s sit-coms. But this week the DNC showcased and celebrated American families as they actually are.

It started with the candidates. On the surface, no family’s story could be more Reagan-era normal than the Walzes: Two White Midwestern high school teachers fall in love and are still together decades later, having raised a boy and a girl. But they are open about relying on fertility treatments to accomplish that feat, and they don’t keep their neuro-divergent son hidden at home. (More about him later.)

And then there’s the blended Emhoff-Harris family: A Jewish lawyer was married for 16 years and had two children (again, a boy and a girl). But then he got divorced, and five years later he went on a blind date with the Afro-Asian-American attorney general of California, who was herself the child of divorced parents. They got married and remain on good terms with his first wife (who produced a video for the convention). Doug Emhoff has always supported Kamala’s ambitions, and Ella Emhoff had tears in her eyes as the convention cheered for her apparently-not-wicked stepmother.

Family was everywhere in the convention speeches, with speaker after speaker quoting wisdom instilled in them by a parent, mentor, teacher, or coach. (You will search Donald Trump’s speeches in vain to find a comparable passage. In his stories, he has always known everything.) Harris presented her own it-takes-a-village childhood like this:

My mother worked long hours. And, like many working parents, she leaned on a trusted circle to help raise us. Mrs. Shelton, who ran the daycare below us and became a second mother. Uncle Sherman. Aunt Mary. Uncle Freddy. And Auntie Chris. None of them, family by blood. And all of them, family by love.

Family who taught us how to make gumbo. How to play chess. And sometimes even let us win. Family who loved us. Believed in us. And told us we could be anything. Do anything. They instilled in us the values they personified. Community. Faith. And the importance of treating others as you would want to be treated. With kindness. Respect. And compassion.

In the Democratic world, as in America, family is defined by love rather than blood. Your family is made up of the people you can count on when you need them, and not just the people who share your DNA.

Masculinity. The Republican Convention was nothing if not masculine. Trump entered the hall on Day 3 to James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World“. And prior to the candidate’s acceptance speech the next night, Hulk Hogan tore off his shirt and lumped together Trump’s fraud convictions, his lost civil trials, and his assassination attempt as the work of a mysterious “they” who need to be punished.

When I look out and I see all the real Americans, I think about how Donald Trump, his family was compromised. When I look out there and I see Donald Trump, I think about how his business was compromised. But what happened last week when they took a shot at my hero and they tried to kill the next President of the United States, enough was enough. I said, “Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother! Let Trump-a-mania rule again. Let Trump-a-mania, make America great again.” …

You know, guys, over my career, I’ve been in the ring with some of the biggest, some of the baddest dudes on the planet, and I’ve squared off against warriors, ooh, yeah, savages, and I’ve even, like I said, body slammed giants in the middle of the ring. I know tough guys but let me tell you something, brother, Donald Trump is the toughest of them all. …

This November, guys, we can save the American dream for everyone, and Donald Trump is the president who will get the job done. All you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question, brother. Whatchya gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you, brother?

But the DNC presented a different model of masculinity, whose manliness is unlikely to “run wild” on anyone: Tim Walz — coach, teacher, soldier, mentor, neighbor, father. I’ve heard a new phrase used to describe Walz: tonic masculinity rather than the toxic masculinity of dominance and violence. Ben Ingman, who remembered Walz as his geography teacher and 7th-grade track coach, started his speech with this:

Tim Walz is the kind of guy you can count on to push you out of a snowbank. I know this because Tim Walz has pushed me out of a snowbank.

Ingman invited members of Walz’ state-championship-winning football team up onto the stage, and they cheered for their former coach.

He described Walz’ coaching style, which also took the track team to a state championship:

Coach Walz got us excited about what we might achieve together. He believed in us, and he helped us believe in each other.

Walz stepped up to be the first faculty advisor of the high school’s gay/straight alliance. The gay student who came out of the closet to start the club recently said:

It was important to have a person who was so well-liked on campus, a football coach who had served in the military. Having Tim Walz as the adviser of the gay-straight alliance made me feel safe coming to school.

Walz’ masculinity fits with Harris’ vision of strength.

Over the last several years there’s been this kind of perversion that has taken place, which is to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down, when what we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.

To the best of my knowledge, Tim Walz has never body-slammed anybody in the style of Hulk Hogan. But he has consistently lifted people up. And occasionally he has pushed them out of snowbanks.

Walz was only one of many examples of tonic masculinity at the DNC. Another was Astronaut/Senator Mark Kelly, who wordlessly walked his wife Gabby Giffords onto the stage and literally served as her right hand, managing the iPad that contained her speech so that she could gesture with her left hand, the one that still functions. He filled his role so egolessly that I did not even realize what he was doing until I watched the video a second time. (You can bet that if Melania ever needs that kind of help, Trump will move on to Wife #4.)

And then there was Biden himself, sacrificing personal ambitions so that the country he loves will not slide into autocracy. I was reminded of the ending of Lev Grossman’s The Magician King (the middle book of his Magicians trilogy). After plans have succeeded and the day has been saved, the god Ember appears to enforce the rules that have been broken along the way: Quentin (the trilogy’s main character) is to be banished from Fillory, the magical realm he has loved since childhood, when he thought it was fictional.

Quentin protests that he deserves better, because he has been the hero of this story, and “the hero gets the reward.” “No Quentin,” the god replies. “The hero pays the price.”

If American democracy is saved again in 2024, it will be because Joe Biden was willing to pay the price. That’s what a real man does.

One moment from the convention brought the two parties’ divergent views of masculinity into sharp focus: When Walz told the cheering crowd about the importance of his family — “Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you.” — Gus burst into tears, saying “That’s my Dad.”

That video went viral, but drew ridicule from Trumpists. Former conservative talk-show host Charlie Sykes described it as “the definitive Rorschach Test for the world’s worst human beings”. One of those human beings, Ann Coulter, posted a picture of Gus crying with the comment “Talk about weird …” Former congressman Mike Crispi called Gus “Tim Walz’s stupid crying son” and a “puffy beta male”. He also tweeted “Barron Trump is the future. Tim Walz’s children are nobody’s going nowhere.” And conservative radio host Jay Weber tweeted:

Sorry, but this is embarrassing for both father and son. If the Walzs represent today’s American man, this country is screwed: “Meet my son Gus. He’s a blubbering bitch boy. His mother and I are very proud.”

But Tim Walz is man enough to endure disdain from the Jay Webers of this world, if that’s what it takes for his son to share important moments with him. Personally, I have two reactions: First, you can fake almost anything in politics, but you can’t fake a reaction like Gus had. And second, I imagine most fathers saw Gus and thought: “I wonder if my children feel that way about me.” Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten tweeted:

I hope to inspire my kids so much that when they see me speak of the dreams and passion I have for my country they are moved to tears like Gus Walz was. @Tim_Walz has dedicated his life to service and has clearly exceeded in being an excellent, supportive, and loving father every step of the way. We should all be so lucky to know a love like that.

Religious writer John Pavolitz traced the roots of the Republican urge to bully those who don’t fit their cookie-cutter view of the world:

This week has reminded us how morally poisoned our collective bloodstream is.

And the sad part of all of this is, we all know how we got here.

We are witnessing in real-time, the cost of elevating someone like Donald Trump to power: of normalizing his ignorant name-calling, his exploiting of differences, his bullying of those who are vulnerable or different, his hatred of expressions of love that he is incapable of.

This pattern was on display nine years ago when he mocked a disabled reporter and what should have been a campaign-killing moment became the first in an expansive and still-growing resume of filth.

Tradition. Republican rhetoric is full of respect for tradition, from “originalist” legal theory to “that old time religion”. But the current Republican Party is trapped in the present by its worship of Trump. The Republican Convention honored no pre-Trump Republican tradition, and at times gave the impression that the GOP had not existed until Trump came down his escalator in 2015.

By contrast, some of the finest and most emotional moments in the Democratic Convention centered on what the Party owes to the heroes of its recent past. Joe Biden, of course, is not past yet, since he is still president. But he has stood for his last election, so the long ovation he got Monday night and the chants of “Thank you, Joe” that could erupt at any moment constituted a profoundly sentimental send-off.

The Obamas gave a pair of top-flight speeches, with many observers suggesting history will remember Michelle’s as one of the best convention speeches ever. No one could fail to note the appropriateness of Hillary Clinton addressing a convention trying once again to elect the first woman president. (In one reaction shot during Hillary’s speech, Gwen Walz was in tears.) Her mention of Trump’s felony convictions inspired a “Lock him up” chant, which Hillary handled perfectly: She neither encouraged it nor cut it off as she tried to suppress a smile.

But any Republican legacy had vanished down the memory hole: Mitt Romney? The Bushes? Dick Cheney? Paul Ryan? Kevin McCarthy? John Boehner? Mike Pence? They have all become unpeople, because there is no room for them in the Trump personality cult.

Who is really American? I’m not sure which politician coined the phrase real Americans, which I just quoted Hulk Hogan using. I first registered it in 2008, when Sarah Palin kept identifying the rural White counties where she was popular as “real America”. The phrase almost never gets defined, but we all know generally who it points to: White straight native-born Christians who speak English at home and have no obvious mental or physical dysfunctions.

A lot of the legitimacy of Trump’s claim to have won the 2020 election rests on this vague sense that some Americans are more real than others. Even people who understand the absurdity of Trump’s fantasies that vote totals were changed overseas or large numbers of non-citizens voted or mail-in votes were faked or some other less specific claim — even many of them feel in their hearts that Trump should have won, because so many of Biden’s votes came from Blacks, or naturalized Hispanic or Asian citizens, or gays, or Jews, or others whose American-ness is questionable. Real Americans, the people whose votes should count, overwhelmingly supported Trump.

A related question is what an immigrant has to do, beyond the formal naturalization process, to really be American. Melania Trump is a White Christian immigrant, and Usha Vance is a Hindu born in America to Indian immigrants. Presumably they are both OK, so it must be possible.

In a column for The Washington Post, Matt Bai examined how the two VP candidates articulated conflicting visions of what makes someone an American. Vance denied that “America is an idea” and postulated instead that “a group of people with a shared history and a common future”.

Of course there’s room for immigration and racial diversity in Vance’s worldview; his own wife is of Indian descent. But in his view of America, the outsider becomes American by adopting a set of cultural norms — living here “on our terms,” as he put it in his speech. In this way, he sees America as no different, really, from France or Russia or any other country with common ethnic heritage. The price of admission is cultural conformity.

But Walz presented a different view.

In the America Walz described in his convention speech, it doesn’t matter what language you speak at home or what god (if any) you worship, or whether you have kids (naturally or otherwise). Because as long as you believe in the American promise of liberty and adhere to its laws, you’re just as American as anyone else, and anybody who doesn’t like it should “mind their own damn business.”

Community, in Walz’s telling, isn’t defined by somebody’s idea of cultural norms, but rather by your connection to your neighbors. If you’re willing to help out with a stranded car or a bake sale, then he doesn’t care if you’re an atheist or a cat-owner (or, God forbid, both).

Walz’ view, to me, seems very appropriate for a high school teacher: America is neither an abstract idea nor an ethno-cultural nation like France. America is a project. If you pitch in, you belong.

How was this possible? Democrats were able to take these themes (and several others) away from Republicans because the GOP has spent years giving them little more than lip service. When Ron DeSantis began banning books and threatening teachers who taught inconvenient facts about American history, those actions raised no debate about freedom within the Republican Party. There has been no controversy about nominating a philandering, twice-divorced, pussy grabber to lead the party of family values. When one jury of ordinary Americans found Trump responsible for sexual assault, another ruled beyond a reasonable doubt that he had committed fraud, and he avoided his other felony indictments through delaying tactics rather than by challenging the evidence against him, members of the law-and-order party attacked the justice system rather than question their allegiance to a criminal.

The convention speech that brought this all home was by former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger:

I’ve learned something about my party too, something I couldn’t ignore: The Republican Party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself. 

Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim. He puts on—listen—he puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there. 

As a conservative and a veteran, I believe true strength lies in defending the vulnerable. It’s in protecting your family. It’s in standing up for our Constitution and our democracy. That—that is the soul of being a conservative. It used to be the soul of being a Republican. But Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party. His fundamental weakness has coursed through my party like an illness, sapping our strength, softening our spine, whipping us into a fever that has untethered us from our values.

Whatever they may have meant to past generations, in 2024 Republican values have become a “show” with “no real strength” behind them. That’s why Democrats were able to take them back this week.