Cancel the Democratic National Convention

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Okay, okay. I know that the Democrats are not going to cancel their 2024 convention in Chicago the way they all but tanked their 2020 event in Milwaukee. But with the party facing a pandemic of boredom they'd be better off. After all, there essentially was no convention four years ago and they did fine. Do we really need conventions at all anymore? 

Here's my case. 

If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really are going to be the ticket again (and it's not too late!) Democrats will dribble into Chicago the way you line up at the DMV. Death. Taxes. Joe Biden.

So, lacking any real enthusiasm for Biden/Harris they'll do three things. First, they'll fake enthusiasm for Biden/Harris, which will be just too painful to watch. Pols and celebrities will get up to say things they clearly don't believe. Slickly produced videos will portray Joe and Kamala as about a thousand times more popular than they are. AI may be employed to produce images of Biden looking and sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his youth, but without the accent. Biden's actual record, which is really quite good, will be droned on about the way I'd hear the rosary recited in church when I was a kid. The mind will wander.

The next thing they'll do — actually, this is the main thing they'll do — is attack Donald Trump. Now, I'm not sure this is possible, but I'll be watching to see if they can pull it off — they'll go overboard. That's right. They'll actually go over the top in criticizing a guy who faces 90-some criminal charges, who's already been found liable for sexual assault and for cheating in his business dealings, and who quotes Adolf Hitler. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm just saying it's possible that they will go so far that they'll make Trump into a sympathetic figure. I mean, at this point, do you really need to convince anybody who can be convinced that Donald Trump is an awful human being and a threat to everything we believe in? Is there really any percentage in just beating that obvious truth into the ground? Don’t you get nothing and risk a backlash? Just asking. 

And third, they won't be able to control their hard-left wing. There will be demonstrators and delegates and hangers on who will go on about banning your gas stove and paying off everybody's college loans and making everybody drive an EV and reparations and so forth and so on. It’s not that the activists won’t have some valid points on some of those issues but it will be as if somebody scoured polling data to find the issues and the language that turns off the maximum number of average Americans and they'll put those things on signs and carry them around. The signs might as well read, "Don't Vote For Us! You're Not Worthy of Us!"

The Democratic National Committee might be seeing this coming. I visited their website for the convention the other day and it's a remarkable thing. It's all about how vendors can apply to sell and build stuff at the convention. It feels like a trade show for, I don't know, carpet installers or something. There's nothing in there about policy or issues or the future of the country, though the theme is "Our Future is Created Here." Given that the nominee is likely to be 81 years old, that comes off to me as trying too hard. Really, it's more like "The Past Continues Here." 

And one more detail that might shake your confidence in the DNC. It doesn't list the dates of the convention. Anywhere. Not even in the FAQ. For the record, the convention will be held Aug. 19-24, but it just seems like, I don't know, when you're having a convention you might want to start out by telling people where (Chicago! Check! Done!) and when (need to do some work on that one).

So, let's sum up. If you cancel the convention you don't have to watch people feign excitement when they actually feel like they're in a funeral procession, you don't run the risk of making people feel sorry for Trump, and you don't offer a platform for your hard-left activists to push away more voters with unpopular ideas and rhetoric designed for maximum annoyance. 

And, bonus! You let the Republicans have their convention in Milwaukee, where at least they’ll spend some money to boost the local economy. You just pop some popcorn and settle in while their hard-right (which will include absolutely everybody who shows up) scares the bejesus out of the country and makes people say to themselves, "well, okay, fine, I guess it's Biden then, where do I have to sign?"

But this kind of insightful, outside the box, cutting edge thinking is only available here at Citizen Dave. You won't find it at the DNC.

Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.