US election: Democrats need this to be the Covid referendum to beat Trump
Joe Biden does not want to talk about this: the most aggressive progressives have radical plans to transform America should they seize power in November.
Having a Desperate Housewife as the face of your political party’s most important quadrennial ritual might be seen as a not-so-subtle comment on the state of America in this year of COVID-19, lockdowns, urban chaos and widespread strife.
However, the role played by Eva Longoria, who once starred in the hit TV series, as opening host and general facilitator of the Democratic National Convention on Monday night was simply of a piece with the slightly surreal nature of life, politics and presidential elections in this most miserably singular of years.
Convention season is a fixture of the US election cycle. Every four years, in high summer, having completed the long season of primary elections to choose their candidate for November’s presidential vote, the two main parties gather in some carefully chosen city to formally anoint the man or woman they hope will lead the nation.
This is the plague year, though, and nothing is the same. Forced to cancel the formal event, the Democrats this week, and the Republicans next, have been trying to get creative within the confines of a television studio convention.
Hence Longoria on Monday, alone on set, introducing the various speakers in their homes and offices around the country, all socially distanced, all delivering their rousing applause lines, comic asides and expressions of deepest empathy into the silent void of an unblinking lens. Subsequent nights were hosted by the actresses Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana Ross’s daughter), Kerry Washington and, tonight, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It’s a list that emphasises the Democrats’ commitment to ethnic diversity, if not that of gender, ideology, or personal wealth.
The 2020 Covid Convention, carefully sterilised and denuded of risk, is in many ways the apotheosis of a process that has been under way for decades. There was once a time when conventions were real political dramas, as delegates fought (sometimes literally) for the cause of their candidate, and the result of the final ballot was in genuine doubt.
However, after the debacle of the 1972 Democratic event, when floor fights went on so long that George McGovern didn’t get to deliver his acceptance speech until almost 3am, parties have decided that conventions will be showcases of unity and purpose.
They steadily became studiously scripted and stage-managed affairs, with dissent marginalised and ranting radicals replaced by beautifully coiffed celebrities introducing tear-jerking stories about the nominee’s personal history.
This year has merely accentuated the tedious nature of it all, and audiences have dropped significantly as viewers have decided that made-for-television events are perhaps not what television is made for.
That won’t worry the Democrats much. The curiously low-key event has its uses. For Joe Biden, who will take to the small screen tonight, the pre-packaged occasion makes the task of framing the election, which is now just ten weeks away, much easier. The boringness of it all fits his objectives perfectly.
With a sizeable lead in the opinion polls over President Trump, the biggest risk to the Democrats and their leader now is themselves. The turmoil and suffering of the last few months have presented them with the nearest equivalent to an open goal politics can provide. All Mr Biden has to do is tap the ball into the empty net.
A president who has never been popular but who was at least for a while getting things done is now widely regarded, even by many who voted for him last time, as an incompetent, uncaring figure, exacerbating the worst public health and economic crisis in modern history through a lack of basic leadership.
For Democrats this needs to be the Covid election. Speaker after speaker this week has been talking about the virus, blaming the president’s failures, while conveniently ignoring the performance of their own state governors in handling it.
However, they know the risk they face too. The Democratic Party that Mr Biden leads has shifted well to the left. Operating under the primary rule for radicals – that you should never let a good crisis go to waste – the most aggressive progressives have seized on the opportunity to get the party to adopt a plan to transform America should they take power in November.
Mr Biden doesn’t want to talk about this, but next week, when Republicans stage their own packaged-for-television event, it is pretty much all we will hear about.
Mr Trump and his fellow Republicans know their best hope lies in diverting attention away from the health and economic crisis and focusing the public’s attention on those they will portray as their socialism-loving, police-hating, white privilege-dismantling, radical-as-never-before opponents.
Republicans want all the housewives out there, desperate or otherwise, all the anxious men and women, employed and unemployed, young and old, to look beyond the immediate context of their simmering despair.
They want them to see through the avuncular appeal of the Democratic candidate to the ideological fervour they insist lies beyond him.
If Mr Trump can pull it off, it will be perhaps the most remarkable outcome of this unconventional year.
The Times
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