With an excessively emotional event on gun violence, the Democratic National Convention planners aimed to stir up aggression toward lawful gun owners. Following the usual anti-gun script, they carefully ignored the question of whether or not their demands for increasingly invasive restrictions on legal gun ownership would make criminals more inclined to comply with the law and give up their guns.
One needs to look no further than Sweden, which has Europe’s highest rate of gun violence, to see what the ban on legal gun ownership can do to a society.
After the heavily scripted gun policy segment and a brief performance by the singer Pink, the convention entered its home stretch. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense under President Obama, took the convention off its carefully scripted path that thus far had left foreign policy off the table. This deliberate strategy had been meant to not stir up conflicts of words—or worse—with the large groups of protesters outside the convention.
Panetta changed that. He did so because someone needed to beef up Kamala Harris as a hawkish leader on the world stage. But with his speech, Panetta exposed a glaring chasm between the Democrat leadership and its core electorate. When he promised that a President Harris would ‘stand up’ to “tyrants like Putin,” Panetta sounded exactly like a George Bush or Dick Cheney neocon war hawk.
When he promised that Kamala Harris would get America deeply and unwaveringly involved in Ukraine, it was almost like he spoke to an empty room. His neocon talking points confused the convention delegates, whose applause died down precipitously.
It was not until he attacked Trump that they came back, but without the passion or drive that other speakers were met with.
There was only one reason for Panetta’s speech: Kamala Harris is notoriously inept at portraying herself as a strong leader. Centrist voters lean toward Trump on issues related to national security. By bringing neoconservative rhetoric straight into the Democrat convention, Panetta tried to reach those voters.
It may work to some degree, but as the delegates showed by quieting down their applause during his speech, the bulk of the Democrat electorate wants nothing to do with neoconservatism and overseas wars. Panetta likely does not understand this, but the typical Kamala Harris voter is ensconced in the belief that America’s military activism around the world has a colonialist smell to it.
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican Congressman who gained notoriety as a Trump opponent when he participated in the January 6 Commission, gave a speech that could almost pass for a sketch-like intermission. Perhaps he was trying to outdo actress Eva Longoria, who spent her speech pandering to ethnic divisiveness rather than American unity.
When Kamala Harris herself eventually took the stage, she portrayed herself in the image of that little girl who grew up with a single mother. It was a picture that stood in such stark contrast to the picture that Panetta tried to paint that you had to wonder if you had accidentally switched between Republican and Democrat conventions.
When she tried to come across as tough, she touted her history as a prosecutor going after human traffickers who illegally cross America’s border. In doing so, she brazenly reshaped herself as that fresh outsider candidate who has not at all been vice president and responsible for securing the U.S. southern border.
Without flinching, she echoed the sentiments that had been brought to the stage by numerous other speakers before her: the presidential candidate Kamala Harris has had no part in the Biden administration, and if you question that you are weird.
As the Democratic convention delegates make their way home, America is left wondering who their party really nominated. Is it the vice president who has been working closely with President Biden, who has giggled at tough questions, and who ran away from major political challenges? Or is it the contrived “fresh air” outsider who has been roaming the vice president’s office with no clue what her government has been up to for the past four years?
Democrats Wrap Up a Confused Convention
U.S. Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks on the fourth and last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, on August 22, 2024.
Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP
With an excessively emotional event on gun violence, the Democratic National Convention planners aimed to stir up aggression toward lawful gun owners. Following the usual anti-gun script, they carefully ignored the question of whether or not their demands for increasingly invasive restrictions on legal gun ownership would make criminals more inclined to comply with the law and give up their guns.
One needs to look no further than Sweden, which has Europe’s highest rate of gun violence, to see what the ban on legal gun ownership can do to a society.
After the heavily scripted gun policy segment and a brief performance by the singer Pink, the convention entered its home stretch. Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense under President Obama, took the convention off its carefully scripted path that thus far had left foreign policy off the table. This deliberate strategy had been meant to not stir up conflicts of words—or worse—with the large groups of protesters outside the convention.
Panetta changed that. He did so because someone needed to beef up Kamala Harris as a hawkish leader on the world stage. But with his speech, Panetta exposed a glaring chasm between the Democrat leadership and its core electorate. When he promised that a President Harris would ‘stand up’ to “tyrants like Putin,” Panetta sounded exactly like a George Bush or Dick Cheney neocon war hawk.
When he promised that Kamala Harris would get America deeply and unwaveringly involved in Ukraine, it was almost like he spoke to an empty room. His neocon talking points confused the convention delegates, whose applause died down precipitously.
It was not until he attacked Trump that they came back, but without the passion or drive that other speakers were met with.
There was only one reason for Panetta’s speech: Kamala Harris is notoriously inept at portraying herself as a strong leader. Centrist voters lean toward Trump on issues related to national security. By bringing neoconservative rhetoric straight into the Democrat convention, Panetta tried to reach those voters.
It may work to some degree, but as the delegates showed by quieting down their applause during his speech, the bulk of the Democrat electorate wants nothing to do with neoconservatism and overseas wars. Panetta likely does not understand this, but the typical Kamala Harris voter is ensconced in the belief that America’s military activism around the world has a colonialist smell to it.
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican Congressman who gained notoriety as a Trump opponent when he participated in the January 6 Commission, gave a speech that could almost pass for a sketch-like intermission. Perhaps he was trying to outdo actress Eva Longoria, who spent her speech pandering to ethnic divisiveness rather than American unity.
When Kamala Harris herself eventually took the stage, she portrayed herself in the image of that little girl who grew up with a single mother. It was a picture that stood in such stark contrast to the picture that Panetta tried to paint that you had to wonder if you had accidentally switched between Republican and Democrat conventions.
When she tried to come across as tough, she touted her history as a prosecutor going after human traffickers who illegally cross America’s border. In doing so, she brazenly reshaped herself as that fresh outsider candidate who has not at all been vice president and responsible for securing the U.S. southern border.
Without flinching, she echoed the sentiments that had been brought to the stage by numerous other speakers before her: the presidential candidate Kamala Harris has had no part in the Biden administration, and if you question that you are weird.
As the Democratic convention delegates make their way home, America is left wondering who their party really nominated. Is it the vice president who has been working closely with President Biden, who has giggled at tough questions, and who ran away from major political challenges? Or is it the contrived “fresh air” outsider who has been roaming the vice president’s office with no clue what her government has been up to for the past four years?
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