The last Democratic National Convention held in Chicago was 56 years ago.
In 1968, a deeply split Democratic Party found its convention surrounded by thousands of militant anti-Vietnam War demonstrators. What would later be called a police riot exploded. Tear gas drifted from Grant Park into the convention center.
The American people watched what was essentially a civil war within the Democratic Party on live television. Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential nominee, found himself much closer to the presidency at the end of that week.
This year, the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz team was hoping for a much quieter and more successful convention. Their issueless theme has been captured in recent articles about the so-called “politics of joy.”
The great challenge for Vice President Harris and her team is the “politics of joy” will be completely tone-deaf for many Americans.
According to RealClear Politics, 65% of Americans say our country is on the wrong track. Only 25 percent say we are moving in the right direction. This isn’t exactly “joyful” given Harris is the current vice president.
If your family budget is squeezed by the 20% price increases under the Joe Biden-Harris administration, you are not likely feeling joyful.
If you have no hope of buying a home because Biden-Harris policies have made it too expensive, you have no joy.
If your loved one was killed in the disastrous collapse in Afghanistan, you don’t feel joyful.
If your community is overrun with illegal immigrants allowed in under the Biden-Harris open border policy, you don’t likely have a great sense of joy.
If you are worried about the threat to Israel’s survival — and the rise of antisemitism on college campuses and in the Democratic Party, you don’t have much joy.
If you consider Walz’s failure to bring in the National Guard during the Minnesota riots in 2020 — or Harris’s effort to help bail out the rioters — you are not likely joyful.
Further, if you are paying attention to the Democratic ticket’s clear anti-police, pro-criminal records, you have no joy.
If you reject men competing in women’s sports, tampons in middle school boys’ restrooms, and parents being told they can’t stop their children from having gender-change operations, you have no joy.
At virtually every level, the practical real-life results of Harris and Walz’s “politics of joy” are angering Americans and killing their joy.
The Democrats’ reaction has been to develop a series of phony promises and an agenda that bears no resemblance to their past behaviors — or what they actually intend to do if given power.
As you hear each new false promise and nice-sounding agenda item, you should ask yourself two simple questions:
Why haven’t they implemented them over the last four years?
And why should we believe they would now?
Those two questions will reveal how phony and staged the entire Democratic National Convention really was.
A good example is Harris’s brand-new position on fracking. She has always said she opposed fracking. Now that she needs to carry Pennsylvania — which has two of the four largest natural gas fields in the world — she has suddenly softened her position.
Which Harris do you believe: The old San Francisco radical who has always been for the Green New Deal and against fracking, or the new vote-hungry candidate eager to say whatever you need to hear to get your vote?
The most interesting political gymnastics will be on Israel and Hamas. Having rejected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish and pro-Israel, Harris will have to walk a narrow line.
There is already growing anger with Harris in the activist pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism wing of the Democratic Party over the current administration’s stance. In one recent event, as anti-Israeli demonstrators were disrupting her speech with demands for a free Palestine, Harris felt compelled to say, “I respect your voices.”
To further complicate Harris’s dilemma with traditional pro-Israel Democrats, NBC Montana reported that Walz “once praised a pro-Palestinian Muslim leader who is allegedly responsible for spreading antisemitic content, including a pro-Hitler film.”
It will be interesting to see how the Democratic platform handles the growing split in its party between the declining pro-Israel wing and the growing antisemitic wing that favors the destruction of Israel.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was worth every American watching — simply as an exercise in detecting hypocrisy.
You learned how much more radical they are than anyone you know.
You saw just how much they are willing to lie to get your vote.
You will be able to decide for yourself if the Democratic National Convention represents “the politics of joy” — or the same old radical leftwing baloney disguised by the propaganda media.