{"id":50774,"date":"2020-08-17T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=50774"},"modified":"2020-08-16T08:32:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T12:32:28","slug":"the-election-and-the-national-mood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/08\/the-election-and-the-national-mood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Election and the National Mood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democratic National Convention<\/a> begins today, ending on Thursday, marking the formal beginning of the 2020 Presidential Election campaign.\u00a0 (I know, it has already dragged on too long, but with the official selection of the party\u2019s nominee, the final contest will be joined.)<\/p>\n

Poor Milwaukee<\/a>.\u00a0 The city\u2013I used to live in one of its suburbs\u2013was all excited about showcasing itself when it got the nod to host the convention, but now the convention will be mostly digital.\u00a0 Not even the convention\u2019s candidate will come to town.\u00a0 Four years ago, some 15,000 journalists covered the convention in Philadelphia.\u00a0 This year, there will be fewer than a hundred, and no anchors or celebrity reporters.\u00a0 Just a few hundred operatives voting by proxy, with Zoom meetings and video productions.<\/p>\n

\n

You can watch the proceedings online<\/a>, if you really want to, but network TV<\/a> will only devote one hour per night\u2013and a late hour at that (10:00 p.m. ET)\u2013to convention coverage.\u00a0 You can watch more on the news networks, but I suspect the ratings will be low. Everything has been decided and there won\u2019t even be colorful delegates at the roll call of states, so there doesn\u2019t seem too much point in watching.<\/p>\n

John F. Harris, in his Politico article The Epic Blandness of the Joe Biden Campaign<\/a>, says that Joe Biden\u2019s weaknesses are his strength.\u00a0 His \u201cepic blandness,\u201d his \u201ccult of nonpersonality,\u201d his status as an establishment politician who has been around seemingly forever, is the polar opposite of Donald Trump\u2019s flamboyance, \u201ccult of personality,\u201d and anti-establishment insurgency.\u00a0 Harris believes that the American public overall is sick and tired of presidents who are charismatic, inspirational leaders who promise grandiose solutions to our problems.\u00a0 Which is why Biden is so far ahead of Trump in the polls.<\/p>\n

I think Harris is onto something, but I don\u2019t think his distinction between the \u201cbland\u201d and the \u201cflamboyant\u201d quite captures it.\u00a0 I think the distinction is between \u201cnormalcy\u201d and \u201cdisruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2020\u2013what with the coronavirus epidemic, its accompanying shutdowns and restrictions, the protests, the riots, the economic turmoil, the daily dramas\u2013Americans yearn to get back to normal.\u00a0 Not in some ideological sense, but just being able to do ordinary things with impunity:\u00a0 going shopping; being part of a crowd; traveling; going to church; seeing an unmasked human face.<\/p>\n

We crave a \u201creturn to normalcy.\u201d\u00a0 That was Warren G. Harding<\/a>\u2018s campaign slogan when he was running for president exactly 100 years ago, in the election of 1920.\u00a0 In reality, he was a corrupt philanderer, but he exuded normalcy,\u00a0<\/em>and when he died in office\u2013a herald of what could happen to our elderly office-holders?\u2013he was succeeded by an even greater virtuoso of blandness and normalcy (who actually was a pretty good president), Calvin Coolidge.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden is the closest thing we have today to Warren G. Harding.\u00a0 No wonder he is leading in the polls over Donald Trump!\u00a0 He is the great disrupter.\u00a0 That played well in 2016.\u00a0 We wanted someone to disrupt the Washington establishment\u2013the political parties, the bureaucracy, the \u201cswamp\u201d\u2013and his fiery personality, his anger, his willingness to say whatever is on his mind, his capacity to shock fit well the national mood.<\/p>\n

Today all of that falls flat.\u00a0 The general public is tired of his schtick.\u00a0 Even among\u00a0 his devoted followers, one sometimes hears, \u201cI don\u2019t like him personally, I just agree with him\u201d and \u201cI wish he would stop Tweeting.\u201d\u00a0 His attempts to rile people up, as he did in 2016, just turn people off.\u00a0 They are tired of being riled up.<\/p>\n

But there is hope for Trump\u2019s re-election.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t the only disrupter.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t the only threat to normalcy.<\/p>\n

Average Americans may be weary of Trump\u2019s rage, but they are also weary of the Democrats\u2019 constant outrage.\u00a0 The general public does not like rioting and looting.\u00a0 They don\u2019t like public shaming, virtue signaling, or the cancel culture.\u00a0 They are sick of having to walk on egg shells lest they offend someone and lose their livelihood.\u00a0 They are wondering, do we really want to put the people who perpetrate these disruptions in charge of the government?<\/p>\n

This desire for normalcy rather than more disruptions pre-dated the coronavirus.\u00a0 Democrats got to choose from a whole array of disrupters, including a socialist who vowed to start a revolution, and yet they chose the seemingly least disruptive, most normal candidate of them all in Joe Biden.\u00a0 These were rank-and-file\u00a0Democrats<\/em> who chose him over the other candidates.\u00a0 Black Americans, while affirming that Black Lives Matter, chose Biden over the radical disrupters.<\/p>\n

The question now is whether Biden will try to reinvent himself as a disrupter.\u00a0 Or will he be so bland and normal that he will let the radicals in his party have their way with him?\u00a0 Though Biden overwhelmingly defeated the radicals in his party, he now seems to be trying to model himself after them.\u00a0 His Vice Presidential choice, Kamala Harris, is a disrupter.\u00a0 He has been talking about \u201ctransforming\u201d this country, rather than bringing it back to normal.\u00a0 \u00a0He has called for a nation-wide mandate requiring all Americans to wear masks for three-months<\/em>, even when they are outdoors.<\/a>\u00a0Will that appeal to the normalcy vote?<\/p>\n

The coronavirus has made Americans feel the hand of government on their personal lives as never before, both in its largesse (stimulus checks, business bailouts, unemployment supplements) and in its coercive power (orders to shutdown your business; orders forbidding going to work, school, or church; mandates to stay inside your house).\u00a0 All of that might have been necessary due to the public health emergency, but most Americans feel that their government\u2013on the national, state, and local levels\u2013have been responding with both over-reach and incompetence.<\/p>\n

Strangely, though it was Donald Trump who first imposed the nation-wide restrictions, he gets neither credit nor blame for doing so.\u00a0 But at least he wants to get things back to normal with the virus, even though he might be accused of trying to do that prematurely.\u00a0 The Democrats seem to want to crack down on Americans\u2019 lives even more, even though they might be accused of dragging their feet.<\/p>\n

Again, who will win the normalcy vote?\u00a0 That remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

By the way, I am not here giving my own political views\u2013I myself think that some disruption of the status quo is needed\u2013simply trying to describe what I see as the national mood.\u00a0 Feel free to offer your own assessment of the national mood and its political implications in the comments.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo:\u00a0 Warren G. Harding, by Harris & Ewing \/ Public domain via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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