This is the week of the Republican National Convention. In a \u201cnormal\u201d year, it would be a week of crowded convention floors in Charlotte, with funny hats and folks who spent last night (or even early this morning) \u201cpartying with the party\u201d. But it\u2019s not normal times. America is in the middle of a pandemic, and even the Republican Party has been forced to recognize it. So far in the United States, a little over 3% of those infected with the disease die. That\u2019s really the statistic that matters, one of the only \u201cfacts\u201d of COVID that seems to have held true since the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s the Republican turn to put on a \u201cpandemic\u201d convention. The Democrats set a high bar with their \u201cshow\u201d last week, and we\u2019ll see what the response will be. But there is one major difference. The Democratic Party held a convention, and they featured their nominee, Joe Biden. The Republican Party of 2020 is not a political party sponsoring a candidate. It is the candidate himself. We are watching the Donald Trump Show this week, with the President scheduled to speak every night, along with most of his immediate family (though clearly his sister and niece aren\u2019t invited anymore).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are in a polarized environment, when even the simple act of putting a political sign in your front yard has become an act of \u201caggression\u201d against your neighbors. Both political parties indulge in hyperbole: like a buffet menu, you can choose the issue that energizes you. And I certainly expect we will hear even more this week from Mr. Trump. In fact it started yesterday, before the convention even began. The President called an \u201cemergency\u201d media conference on Sunday evening, to tell about a miraculous advance in the treatment of COVID. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The President announced that \u201cconvalescent plasma\u201d (plasma derived from patients recovered from COVID) has a 35% cure rate, and that HE, the President, has ordered it administered nationwide. The problem is that it\u2019s already being used nationwide, and the best studies show that it\u2019s helpful in about 3% of the cases. But it was a great way to start out Convention Week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Donald Trump is absolutely right about one thing: COVID is his greatest weakness. The Biden Campaign would do well to hammer Trump\u2019s incompetence; it\u2019s something every American confronts every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We will hear a series of themes this week. Joe Biden is weak a puppet. That he has been \u201cradicalized\u201d by the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez-Socialist wing of the Party. That Black Lives Matters means burning cites, and it\u2019s coming to your town, your suburb, and your middle class white housewife neighborhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So let\u2019s bust some myths. Let\u2019s start with the one we\u2019re likely to hear the most about: DEFUNDING THE POLICE. There will be no police at all, and, to quote the Trump ad already running, there will be a five-day waiting line for 9-11 calls. Joe Biden, Kamal Harris, and a host of Democratic leaders have disavowed the term, DEFUNDING. But they have not disavowed repurposing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re likely to hear about Austin, Texas and the city council that has become the \u201cposter child\u201d for the DEFUNDING movement. You\u2019ll hear that Austin City Council CUT $150 million from the police budget. That\u2019s really not quite true, and it is a great example for understanding what the defunding\/repurposing movement really is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Austin had a $420 million annual police budget. Austin city council cut their police budget by $31 million, mostly advanced license plate readers and a cadet class. They then took $120 million for police activities that weren\u2019t direct policing functions, and moved them out of the police department. Those activities will still continue, but not as part of the policing role. And that\u2019s what \u201cDEFUNDING THE POLICE\u201d is about. Like public education, society has thrown more and more of its \u201cills\u201d on the police department, from drug addiction to suicide prevention. But those don\u2019t have to be primarily police responsibilities, just as public health and nutrition don\u2019t have to be public education responsibilities. The jobs are still done, just repurposed to folks not wearing \u201cblue\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are going to hear about socialized medicine, and how Democrats want to take away your health insurance and make you pay for some freeloader. And that\u2019s not true either. Joe Biden wants to expand the Affordable Care Act, and he would like to include a \u201cpublic option\u201d. That means a government insurance that is purchasable by regular folks, rather than just the private insurance available on the \u201cmarket place\u201d today. Public option insurance would increase competition in the insurance marketplace, driving costs down, especially in those places where few private insurance policies are available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Biden is not Bernie Sanders, and even Bernie is behind Biden\u2019s health insurance plan. Of course Bernie wants fully nationalized insurance, but his plan is NOT the Democratic plan in 2020. Conflating the two is the goal of the Trump campaign, but it\u2019s simply not true. And by the way, you ARE paying for the \u201cfreeloader\u201d without health insurance. You\u2019re paying for them by increased costs of medical care, every time you pay a bill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finally, we\u2019re likely to hear a lot about Hunter Biden, Joe\u2019s son. We are going to hear vague conspiracies about Joe protecting Hunter from prosecution in Ukraine, and about Hunter\u2019s checkered past: cocaine use, a Navy discharge, and high salaried board memberships. President Trump\u2019s own National Security Council has warned about Russia planting stories about Hunter and Joe Biden, but we will hear them anyway. For a President who employed Paul Manafort and was a party animal himself, sometimes with Jeffrey Epstein, it will be a lot of \u201cthe pot calling the kettle black\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it\u2019s going to be a week of Donald Trump. He\u2019s going to speak every night. And when it\u2019s not the President, it\u2019ll be the kid with the MAGA hat from Covington, or the couple with the guns from St. Louis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe the conventioneers are right. We should start drinking early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"