Chicago Then and Now: From Swinging to Passing the Baton

BINGE BINGE:  I’ve always loved conventions, but no doubt for all the wrong reasons. As a kid, conventions meant we could watch TV. In our house, TVs had been excommunicated on the grounds that they caused ant infestations. (TVs, kids, food, crumbs, ants — you know, it’s a well-documented ecological cycle … ) Exceptions were made, however, once every four years.

That’s when my parents would rent an old black-and-white Motorola with rabbit ears to watch Democrats hammer out who they’d nominate, accompanied by the droll side-of-the-mouth commentary of David Brinkley. My brothers and sisters, so cruelly denied, would have watched anything. And so we did. We watched political conventions.

I had no idea what the hell was going on. That didn’t matter. It was TV. That was the point. I watched.

In 1968, the light went on. That’s when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sicced his baton-swinging cops against the skulls of anti-war protestors in Grant Park. Then we changed the channel and watched Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, reminding the Czechs under whose thumbs they were destined to live forever. The images became interchangeable.

Chicago. Prague.

This year is something else altogether. Again, Chicago. On Monday night, I popped a bottle of pricy red wine and hunkered down to watch Joe Biden shout his forced-march-off-a-steep-cliff swan song. If I were Joe, I’d shout too. Like a lot of people, I think Biden was a great president. But in politics, it’s the messenger, not the message. At age 81, Biden has ceased to function effectively as either. Failure, noted Nancy Pelosi — now 84 — is no longer an option.

Cruel, but true.

It’s been like watching reruns of The Sopranos.

What I was not expecting was the love.

What I was not expecting was the joy.

What I was not expecting was the hope.

Where was I? Had I stumbled onto some televised Anne Lamott book club?

Yes, there was Hillary Clinton on the stage. I still blame Hillary’s hubris for Trump’s victory in 2016. She failed to wage the necessary ground campaign in crucial fly-over states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

These were the same states her husband’s internationalist trade policies — no doubt good for the economy — laid waste to with NAFTA, a policy that accelerated the rust-beltification of those industrialized states already then in decline. Under the Clintons, the Democratic Party slinked away from its traditional blue-collar constituency and into the warm embrace of college-educated, latte-lapping voters, such as myself.

When you look at all the so-called deaths of despair over the last decade, you will note a disproportionately high number happened to involve rust-belt victims. You will also note a strong correlation between high numbers of such deaths and high numbers of Trump voters.

But I digress.

Taking an indelicately large sip, I watched Biden — who actually kept the faith with blue-collar voters throughout his career — take in the crowd. “We love you, Joe,” the crowd shouted. “I love you, too,” he shouted back at them. And back and forth it went.

No batons.

No tanks.

Love?

Wow.

Even accounting for the inherently performative nature of all conventions, this was nothing I’d ever experienced.

Jill Biden brought us back to earth. Yes, she has wonderful bright teeth and wonderful bright yellow hair. And she looked absolutely fabulous, poured into that spray-on dress. But make no mistake; she is a warrior queen: a score-keeping, never-forget-a-face, take-no-prisoners, über-alpha badass.

For a moment, I almost felt sorry for Trump. The camera then panned to Nancy Pelosi. For a nanosecond I almost felt sorry for Trump. He’s messed with the wrong crowd. This time, the women really mean business.

The days when he thought he could yank on women’s pussies and get away with it have come and gone.

For Joe Biden, Monday night was his last hurrah. He hollered up a storm for all it was worth, reminding us of everything he had accomplished. And what that was is truly historic. He showed he still has energy. But mostly, I was struck by how this man defenestrated himself for the good of the party. And for the good of the country.

Nobody in a billion years has anyone ever wanted the office more. He had won the nomination fair and square. Now he was giving it up. Sure, he was shouting. But he was shouting with grace. He was shouting with generosity of spirit. And he was flashing that patented Joe Biden grin as he hemorrhaged in front of the entire nation from the pain of his sacrifice.

Then I flashed to January 6, 2021. Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. He got out-worked, out-hustled, and out-muscled. But after concocting one scheme after the next to intimidate state election officials to find him a few thousand extra ballots here or there, Trump invited his supporters to Washington, D.C., to physically stop the election results from being finalized. He packed the theater, locked the doors, and then shouted “Fire.”

But naturally, he was not there when the fire started.

That’s all I could think of while watching the convention.

What I saw was the guy who gave up all, even though he won. And the other guy who refused to acknowledge reality when he lost.

I don’t like using phrases like “existential threat” when describing Trump. Or “the death of democracy.” They’re not inaccurate. Just too histrionic for my tastes.

If the women don’t save us — and we don’t all save ourselves — other images flash across my brain.

Of tanks.

And billy clubs.

But probably by then, they’ll be superfluous.