The Democratic National Convention – A confederacy of dunces

 

 

 

The Democratic National Convention is meant to be a chance to showcase the Democratic platform from which a road to a better future is to be sprung.

 

Though barely touching on the big issues of the day, such as the riots and lootings in US cities; of how the Covid-19 situation will be resolved; of Hong Kong’s loss of freedom; or of the Iranian situation, the DNC turned out to display the unconscionable hypocrisy of the Democratic Party on the hash-tagged issues they themselves apparently champion.

 

Here are just some of the unselfconscious ironies to mull over.

 

 

#MeToo

Bill Clinton spoke at the DNC, where he criticised Trump’s behaviour in the Oval Office. Clinton had fondled and fellated multiple times with a 20-something intern in the Oval Office. He is also creditably accused by four independent women of sexual assault and rape.

 

This history is additionally festooned with the allegation under investigation of Clinton’s association with Jeffery Epstein.

 

Clinton had been on Epstein’s private jet, the ‘Lolita Express’ 26 times according to flight logs, several times without his security detail. He had also been spotted on Epstein’s private island, where young girls were allegedly presented to various VIPs for sex. The witnesses are Virginia Giuffre, a victim of abuse, and Steve Scully, an IT contractor who serviced the island.

 

With a CV like that, in the era of #MeToo, one might have thought that inviting the increasingly decrepit ex-president onto centre stage is unwise.

 

Indeed, many people on the left, including Rose McGowan, an extremist champion of the #MeToo movement, are at least consistent on the issue and were disillusioned to see Clinton given prominence.

 

 

Race

Elizabeth Warren was invited to participate at the DNC Native American Caucus. The organisers of the DNC seemed have forgotten that it was only last year when Elizabeth Warren apologised for identifying herself as a Native American for decades. And earlier this year, more than 200 Native Americans called on her to denounce her family’s claim of Native American Ancestry.

 

Warren mostly likely advanced her career by identifying as ‘American Indian’. She did so on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas in the 1980’s and in the Association of American Law School Directories from 1986. Harvard Law and the University of Pennsylvania hired her after this and both proudly brandished her as evidence of their diversity hiring.

 

When goaded by Trump in 2018, Warren took a DNA test which showed she is at most 1/1,024 Native American. This means she conceivably has less Native American ancestry than a typical white American.

 

But it turns out people, especially Native Americans, haven’t forgotten this dreary episode and didn’t take her appearance at the Native American Caucus kindly. In fact, there were so many people online mocking her that the DNC disabled the chat feature half an hour before she was scheduled to speak.

 

 

Voter fraud

Hillary Clinton appeared to lament her loss to Trump in 2016 again. She prepared the ground for the possibility of a fraudulent election by Trump, conveniently forgetting her own party’s behind-the-scenes machinations to favour her at the cost of Bernie Sanders during the rigged 2016 Democratic Primaries.

 

The Democrats have been insinuating and trumpeting the Trump-Russia collusion story for years, finding nothing after an exhaustive, multi-million dollar investigation. However, they never mention the multiple links to Russia from the Clintons.

 

Hillary facilitated as the Secretary of State the Russian purchase of 20% of US uranium assets, coinciding with the corrupt Clinton Foundation receiving more than $140 million in donations by shareholders involved in the purchase. The accusations that the Clinton Foundation was a backdoor to Clinton’s favour was strengthened by the fact that as soon as she lost the 2016 election, donations to the foundation dropped by 88%.

 

What is also forgotten, and maybe funniest of all the ironies, is that during the 2016 election, when all the polls suggest Hillary Clinton would win, the Democrats were in full favour of the rigors and legitimacy of the electoral process. When Trump questioned the integrity of the election, the Democrats were outraged.

 

Now it is the Democrats who are insinuating possible election fraud. They are pushing for mail-in voting, despite actual evidence of fraud occurring this year. The Heritage Foundation lists 192 convictions for “Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots” since 2000.

 

 

Coronavirus

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, speaking about the coronavirus is perhaps the most jarring of all.

 

New York under his leadership had by far the most deaths of any US states, double of the second place New Jersey. Deaths in New York makes up a fifth of all deaths in the US, while only containing six percent of the nation’s population.

 Cuomo’s forcing of nursing homes to take back Covid-positive patients surely played a big role in the rapid spread and high volume of deaths, chiefly in the elderly. Yet he refused calls for an independent probe into his handling of the situation.

 

Yet Cuomo had the gall to say during his DNC speech that “Covid is the symptom, not the illness. Our nation is in crisis, and in many ways, Covid is just a metaphor.” The families of the more than 32,000 dead will undoubtedly have something to say to the man who perhaps bears the most responsibility for this ‘metaphor’.

 

But the biggest slap in the face to those who suffered under Cuomo’s leadership isn’t even the speech – apparently while dealing with the pandemic, Cuomo had the leisure to write a book titled American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, which is due for release in October. Cuomo has refused to disclose financial details of his book deal.

 

 

Flawed leaders

The combination of Biden and Harris as the candidates do not fare well in any of the categories mentioned here.

 

Biden has a long history of inappropriate touching of women and girls, including accusations of sexual assault.

 

Kamala Harris has a history of an anti-#MeToo, having had an affair as a 29 year old with the then 60 years old and married San Francisco politician Willie Brown. Brown subsequently aided her in gaining two high-paying positions.

 

On race, Biden frequent leaks his inner thoughts, such as his infamous claim on The Breakfast Club that black voters who are considering voting Republican “ain’t black”. He had said that "poor kids are just as smart as white kids." and he had called Obama the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean". Even his vice-president running mate Kamala Harris implied he was a racist during the primaries. Either she has no principles and is willing to be vice-president to a racist, or she lied during the primaries.  

Kamala Harris, of Indian and Jamaican descent, angered her father, an emeritus professor at Stanford, with her casual stereotyping of her Jamaican heritage and smoking weed. Tulsi Gabbard, in the Democratic primaries, vanquished Harris’s chances with references to her harsh prosecution of people for precisely smoking weed as District Attorney of California.

 

Both have embraced the politics of identity that has infected the Democratic Party and is the cause of much of the unnecessary miseries facing the US. Harris, of Indian and Jamaican descent, suddenly is 'black'. When Biden said he will choose a black woman as running mate, effectively ruling out about 94% of the US population due to sex and race, you know the party is in some serious trouble. 

And it might shock the Democrats to realise that most black people may not take kindly to this sort of theatrics and obvious pandering, with the latest poll showing support for Trump, whose tenure saw the lowest black unemployment on record, having 36% support from blacks according to Rasmussen. Historically, the Democrats cannot win the election without about 90% of black votes. 

These ironies, and many more, reminds one of Frederick Douglass, who wrote that “Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.” Such is the DNC.

 

Trump, with all his bombast, pettiness and incoherence, in this case seems to be playing the devil whose job it is to judge the priests. And given the blatant display of hypocrisy, the voters might find the priests wanting.