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Pandering Not Politics on Night Three of Virtual Convention

Transparent emotional appeals may alienate more than they attract.

It was Pink Wave Night on Steroids for Evening Three of the Democratic convention on Aug. 19 and it was hard to imagine a more monumental insult to American women. According to the Democratic vision as presented in virtual fashion, female voters are emotion-driven infants who will swoon at the sight of children preaching to them on hot-button issues such as gun control, climate change, and immigration.

Additionally, they are a united monolithic entity that thinks and acts in lockstep unity rather than unique individuals representing a myriad of ideas and beliefs. This is the Democratic Party at its worst, and it was all there for an entire nation to soak in. Making things all the more strange is that these tired themes from an off-the-rails progressive primary season were the very inspiration that caused jaded Dems to push the escape hatch known as “moderate” Joe Biden and flock to him as their party nominee so late in the game.

It wasn’t only female voters who were demeaned by the Democrats’ conceit, stated repeatedly throughout the night, that you either agree with their policy views or you are profoundly damaging humanity. It’s an odd way to appeal to an entire nation, but Democrats are so locked in an airtight bubble that they can’t seem even to acknowledge differing points of view, much less respect them.

Child’s Play

A full 48 minutes of the two-hour spectacle was devoted to blatant Oprah-esque tugs at voter heartstrings, mostly from kids. A video devoted to a Children’s Crusade on gun control awkwardly featured passionate high school youths demanding action. “That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS,” Emma Gonzalez, a Parkland, FL, high school student at the time of the school shooting there, is seen boldly pronouncing in a 2018 public speech.

A very young boy was shown disgustedly asking at a climate change rally, “I’m a kid, and I’m gonna say to all those adults who are watching this right now, why don’t you get up and do something?” Yet another child warbled: “Dear Donald Trump, my name is Estella. I am 11 years old. My mom is my best friend. She came to America as a teenager over 20 years ago without papers.”

It’s no coincidence that this crass emotional appeal on serious and complex political issues came on Women’s Night at the convention. This is how Democrats see female voters. They truly believe American women are so pliable, such easy marks for manipulation, that they will cast all intelligence aside and turn to putty at the sight of a child precociously spouting off progressive political talking points.

Lackluster Voices

The first major speaker of the evening was former first lady and failed 2016 party nominee Hillary Clinton. Her tone was harsh. Clinton forthrightly told Trump voters that close relatives of theirs have died because they put him into the White House instead of her. “Remember back in 2016 when Trump asked, ‘What do you have to lose?'” Clinton reminded viewers. “Well now we know: our health care, our jobs, our loved ones, our leadership in the world, and even our post office.” It was an ice-cold statement delivered with white-hot intensity. Four years later and Hillary does not seem to have lost a drop of the bitterness accrued from her crushing defeat.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was up next, playing the female card for all it was worth. “As speaker of the House, I’ve seen firsthand Donald Trump’s disrespect for facts, for working families, and for women in particular. Disrespect written into his policies toward our health and our rights, not just his conduct,” Pelosi declared. “But we know what he doesn’t: that when women succeed, America succeeds. And so we are unleashing the full power of women to take their rightful place in every part of our national life.”

How? “By championing a woman’s right to choose and defending Roe v. Wade,” was the first thing mentioned by Pelosi.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the also-ran primary candidate who banged the gender gong louder than any of her rivals, gave an unremarkable speech on behalf of Biden. Appearing at a closed child care center in western Massachusetts, Warren was surrounded by toy blocks spelling out BLM for the Black Lives Matter movement. She rigidly burrowed through pat statements extolling Biden’s “really good plans” to combat economic and racial “inequities” that were noticeably bereft of details.

Former two-term president Barack Obama was the only male principal speaker of the evening. Falling back into his old lecturer-in-chief mode, a pained Obama expressed a feeling of being personally let down by Trump’s failure to match up to the lofty standards set by himself. “I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision,” Obama said with a disappointed-father face. “Or continue my policies. I did hope for the sake of our country that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously. That he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care. But he never did. In close to four years, he has shown no interest in putting in the work.”

“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama continued, “and the consequences of that failure are severe.”

‘No Vaccine For Racism’

Finally, vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) gave her acceptance speech. It was most noteworthy for her use of the Coronavirus crisis as an entryway into a larger discussion on systemic racism.

“And while this virus touches us all, we gotta be honest, it is not an equal opportunity offender,” Harris asserted. “Black, Latino and indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately. And this is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism,” she continued. “Of inequities in education and technology, health care and housing, job security and transportation. The injustice in reproductive and maternal health care. In the excessive use of force by police. And in our broader criminal justice system.”

Then she said something a touch bizarre, apparently offering up the idea that the virus opportunistically seeks out and exploits racism. “This virus, it has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other — and how we treat each other,” Harris stated. “And let’s be clear – there is no vaccine for racism. We’ve gotta do the work.” It was an appropriately cloying comment to conclude an evening devoted to progressive schmaltz. There is a bottom line here that was strongly reiterated by Virtual Gender Night.

And that is that Democrats are an urbanite party. Their entire vision and outreach are wrapped around the particularist lifestyles of crowded city and congested inner-ring suburban Americans. They are unable to make any meaningful connection whatsoever with the remainder of the population that does not live on a densely populated grid, be they male or female. Fortunately for the party, tens of millions of voters do indeed inhabit that grid. Unfortunately for them, appealing solely to cosmopolitan sensibilities is still a recipe for Electoral College destruction.

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You can watch the final night of the Democrat convention and LN’s live analysis right here on Liberty Nation.

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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.

Read More From Joe Schaeffer

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