(Thread) Democratic Convention Recap and Republican Convention Preview

Spoiler: The Democratic convention showcased the progressive view of history.

I expect the Republican Convention to similarly showcase the reactionary view of history.

1/ The progressive view goes like this: America was founded as a liberal democracy, which sounds great except for one big problem.

“We the people” meant white mostly landowning men. Slavery was legal. Women were chattel. Native Americans weren't citizens. You get the idea.

2/ The governing philosophy of 19th century America was a hierarchy with white men at the top and Black women at the bottom.

After the Civil War, we got the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The 13th eliminated slavery, the 15th gave black men the right to vote (well, sort of).

3/ I say “sort of” because they were mostly terrorized and bullied when they tried it.

The 14th Amendment provided that

Notice the part about how any “person” is entitled to “due process” and “equal protection of the laws.”

4/ The 14th Amendment sounds great, except for a few problems.

In 1896, the Supreme Court said that racial segregation didn’t violate the 14th Amendment.

19th-century courts held that women were not “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment.

So much for that.

5/ The rationale for excluding women was that infants are also "persons," but we don’t let them vote.

Things didn’t begin to change until after 1954 when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, the case that held racial segregation unconstitutional.

6/ Brown v. Board ushered in the Civil Rights movement, which gave rise to the Women’s Rights movement.

The Democratic ideal is that as “we the people” expanded to include more people, the union became more perfect.

Progressives view history looks like this:

7/ The Convention opened with a recitation of the Preamble and developed the theme of “we the people.”

On the second night, Kerry Washington said this (screen shot #2)

Thus the convention literally opened by articulating a progressive view of American history.

8/ The main themes of the convention included unity: Bernie Sanders talked about the need for unity and Kasich talked about why a life-long conservative was voting for Biden, etc.)

9/ Inclusion and diversity: The people showcased represented the true diversity of America–Native people, Black communities, Asian-American communities, LGBTQ, the disabled.

10/ Humanity and kindness: Biden’s stutter was brilliantly explained in the powerful speech of 13-year-old Brayden Harrington, who stutters.

Anyone watching that speech will think of the way Trump mocked a disabled reporter. It's here, if you missed it.

11/ The Democratic policy agenda included:

Deploying a national strategy based on science to combat Covid.

Creating fairness by bringing health care to all, raising the minimum wage, fairly compensating essential workers, eliminating racial injustice. . .

12/ . . . preserving the post office, and making the economy work for everyone.

Reversing climate change. Preserving the natural environment.

Protecting voting rights. This was a big one, touched on by most of the speakers.

13/ Each item creates a more fair society. (I’ve talked about how Democrats are the party of fairness here:
https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1256745424485928960)

I got the feeling that Obama lurks Twitter, so he knows that a lot of you think that it’s all over, and that the graph looks like this:

14/ Obama answered the doomsayers by talking about life in America in previous generations. (Screenshot #1)

Next, Obama explained what can cause democracy to die.
(Screenshot #2)

Finally, he tells us that the way to keep the slope moving upward (Screenshot #3)

(Read them!)

15/ The transcript is here:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/19/politics/barack-obama-speech-transcript/index.html

Shorter version: Nobody owes you a democracy. If you want it, take responsibility and make it happen.

We’ve advanced far in the years since Brown v. Board. The problem is that there are people working hard against progress.

16/ That brings me to the reactionaries, who look back longingly to the good old days.

They feel that something vital has been lost. They long to return to a bygone era. They think life was great back in the good old days.

Reactionaries view American history like this:

17/ The GOP yearns for the time white men had almost unlimited freedom, before the federal government stopped them from cheating and grabbing.

They feel that their “way of life” and something quintessentially American is being destroyed.

18/ In a way, they’re right, if by “America” they mean how things were from colonial days until the Civil Rights movement – which, admittedly, was most of American history.

Reactionary politics is based on fear: There is an enemy destroying “our way of life.”

19/ I expect the GOP Convention to embrace the reactionary view of history.

The message will be “Vote for Trump or the Democrats will destroy America as we know it.”

Key point: For them "America" is a 19th-century style patriarchy or all-white 1950s style suburbs.

20/ I tend to use the word reactionist because I've found more scholars defining and using that term.
https://twitter.com/WomensHoopsBlog/status/1297205293626032133

For example, see: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12540

I'm not a political psychologist, so I use their word.

21/ So annoying, right? Remember, for most of our history we've had a very "conservative" (I'd say reactionist) Supreme Court. https://twitter.com/Ratatosk4/status/1297208862118903808
The Supreme Court holding us back began at least as early as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

22/ The irony is that these things were the result of the New Deal and the very regulatory agencies that the current GOP wants to destroy.

So Fox viewers who think return to the good old days means a return to a 1950s economy are sadly misled. https://twitter.com/mavis26237212/status/1297209789215383553

I grabbed an unfinished version of the graph in Tweet 13. Here was what I intended to use, a graph representing the view of many Twitter Peeps. (I made it on photoshop!)

Back up to Obama's speech in Tweet 14 to see how to bend the graph back upward.