For a few moments, the sound system here in the United Arena started the opening chords of “Sweet Home Alabama,” and then quickly switched to “We Are Family.”
Perhaps someone in charge of the playlist at the Democratic National Convention remembered the lyrics at the last second.
In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo, boo, boo!)
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me, uh-uh
Does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth
The governor in question is the infamous segregationist George Wallace, and the lyric suggest that Watergate wasn’t such a big deal. Then again, Wallace was a Democrat.
“Living in America” is playing at the DNC an I’m expecting Apollo Creed to take the stage any minute.
DNC pushes Biden past midnight, and Biden spends almost the entirety of his speech talking about himself rather than Kamala Harris. Checks out.
More than 45 minutes into his speech, Biden spends a few sentences trying to make the case about Kamala Harris, the actual Democratic nominee.
Biden touts his proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which he says “isn’t even the highest” corporate tax rate in the OECD. But Harris’s plan is to raise it to 28 percent, which is. Or, at least, would be.
Biden says we could raise $50 billion a year by jacking up taxes on billionaires. Does he have any idea how little money that is in the context of the federal budget?
In the same speech in which Biden said he ran because of Trump’s “very fine people” remark after Charlottesville, he says of the openly pro-Hamas demonstrations outside the DNC: “Those protesters out in the street. They’ve got a point.”
“Those protesters out in the street. They’ve got a point.” – Biden
Because Trump “killed the bipartisan” border reform bill, “I had to take executive action” which has put downward pressure on migrant contacts at the Southern border. But Biden had said that he could not take executive action on the border bill, which is why he needed the border reform bill in the first place. So, which is it?
Biden is going through all his greatest hits – one last indulgence – but we’re 20 minutes into what has to be a largely unreconstructed version of the acceptance speech he would have delivered at his nominating convention. And yet, it’s supposed to be a baton-passing speech. If that isn’t just a perfunctory exercise, and it cannot be, Biden will have to pivot soon or we’re going to be here all night.