Dem Vibez: weird Gaza dance edition

How Harris can support Israel without saying it

Talk about weird. The vibez at the DNC in Chicago started off with a Jew-hating rant as a pro-Hamas shill ran on stage during the welcome reception. Such a fine young person, well-dressed, and quickly removed. I think this is only a taste of what Kamala Harris has in store for her this week.

Chicago is “bracing,” according to a USA Today report, for potentially “tens of thousands of demonstrators” marching against Israel. A tourist, seeing the armed camp vibe, called it “a bit barbaric.” But this is the level of security required to defend the A-list All-Star cast coming to the windy city this week for Harris’s coronation as the best hope for humanity since Barack Obama, or Stacey Abrams.

Remember Abrams, who refused to conceded her 2018 loss to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, calling the election rigged? She was the darling of the Democrats, earning a September 2019 Vogue cover under the headline “Can Stacey Abrams Save American Democracy?” Now, she’s sunk under an aircraft carrier of debt and financial mismanagement. Even her cameo as Star Trek’s “President of United Earth” can’t get her a speaking gig at this convention (though she will be there).

Chicago also has some history with this kind of vibe. Of course, there was 1968. Nobody expects that disaster to repeat (and Kamala Harris is not Hubert Horatio Humphrey). But in 2019, in the heat of the Women’s March fever, Chicago organizers fell into catty disputes about Jewish women marching along with all the other empowered females. This led to Linda Sarsour stepping down as one of the march’s leaders (two cheers for civility!).

Without offering any commentary on it, let me say there’s a lot of Jews in Chicagoland. The synagogues from Schaumburg to Long Grove are full of them every Shabbat, and overflowing on the High Holidays. Normally, the Jewish community in Chitown is used to standing against neo-Nazis, or the Jew-hating stylings of Louis Farrakhan (who heads the organization which gunned down Malcolm X). It’s a relatively new thing for these generally liberal upper-bougie real estate soccer moms and professional dads to deal with rabid progressives in such numbers.

But the money associated with Democratic voters and donors who think the idiots who race on stage to shout support for the rapists, hostage-takers, and indiscriminate murderers who planned and executed October 7th, makes it imperative that the vibe at the DNC not go against the grain on Israel. The hundreds of millions the Harris campaign and the DNC has raised in the last month isn’t enough to get to the finish line. If it was, we might be hearing more about rivers and seas. Just saying.

What’s also weird is that the President of the United States, who has only served one term and is now a lame duck, will speak on the first night, not the last night, of the convention. Tonight, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill will speak. I assume she’s there as emotional support and as an emergency backstop should POTUS lose the plot and think he’s running again.

Tuesday, it’s going to be positively Roman-empire, as Caesar Emeritus Barack Obama takes the stage. Wednesday, we get Gov. Tim Walz, who keynotes after former President Bill Clinton (who can still, at the same age as Donald Trump, talk circles around Kamala Harris, and be more engaging than either of the candidates). Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets to introduce Walz.

And the pinnacle will be Harris’s nomination speech.

The question is whether the vibez will be spoiled too much by events, like the things I mentioned in my earlier post: the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine is perilously close to disaster; chances of a hostage-for-ceasefire deal in Gaza seem to be as distant as ever; Walz faces increasing scrutiny of his military career and his run-in with the law; Harris proposed a long-debunked economic theory one step adjacent to communism. But not to worry, Donald Trump is reliable to say or do something so heinous (like trashing Medal of Honor winners) that it makes even the most troubling world news palatable, from a political point of view.

The biggest issue Democrats face is how to keep the vibez positive, even when the Gaza dancers are trying to spoil the debutante ball. This election is about swings and momentum. Right now, Democrats are hitting their peak—the open question is if they are peaking too early. This haunts them, like Hillary Clinton.

I think they’ll get what they need from the convention, and move on to the last stretch of the campaign, when voters start really paying attention after Labor Day. Until then, believe the polls, but don’t put too much predictive value in them.

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