Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Aside From The Spoiled Children...

I don't know why, exactly, but I have been moved to tears at several points during the convention.  Michelle Obama certainly moved me in ways I didn't expect.  As I've said, she isn't a natural, which is what makes her so natural.

Tonight, the Mothers of the Movement...I mean, what can you say?  How do you look at a parent whose child has died with anything but love and compassion?  And if that child was taken wrongly, unjustly?  How do you confront that grace and that heartbreak?

As I posted on Facebook, Bill Clinton could talk paint off a barn.  We all know he's a shitty husband, but I think we also know he's probably a great one, too.  As someone said, he's been waiting a quarter of a century to give this speech.

I know he glossed over the troubling aspects of Hillary's long record in public life.  But he portrayed Hillary Clinton as the person who people who know her are devoted to.  I've been a "hard" Clinton supporter, as opposed to those who say, "I'll vote for her, but..."  One reason is that I'm a grown up.  The other, bigger reason, is I see who her character witnesses are.  People who work with her and for her don't have bad things to say about her.

At the end of the Mothers of the Movement video, there is a moment where HRC asks for a prayer.  It doesn't sound natural.  She sounds like she's forcing it.  But I honestly believe she means it.  She is not a naturally emotive person.  Unlike her husband, unlike many of the speakers, including Michelle Obama, she doesn't lay her emotional core out there to see.  She's been attacked too many times, her armor is too tough.

This makes her, in her husband's words, a great change maker.  It does not make her a natural stump speaker.

The vision that is being put forward in Philly is so different than the one put forward in Cleveland.  Maybe that's why I find myself tearing up.  We are being called to be our best selves by my party, not our worst.  I want to live in THAT world.  I have hope for THAT world.

And we have two more freaking nights?  When does Scott Baio speak?

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