CSotD: Juxtaposition of the DNC
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David Parkins, a British-born cartoonist working for the Globe and Mail in Toronto, has captured the mood down here as the Democratic National Convention rounds up.
A lot of my favorite overseas cartoonists don’t seem to quite grasp our political system, but I do keep an open mind and, given that Parkins’ political cartoons are mostly behind a paywall, I’m glad someone shared it where I could see it. Perhaps I’ll get to meet him at the Canadian/American editorial cartooning convention in Montreal in October.
He nailed this one, because it’s not just that the Democrats have got themselves excited — that’s part of every political convention — but that the Republicans have largely failed to engage.
Ratings for the Democrats’ convention were significantly higher than the GOP had for theirs, and what the Republicans have countered with, when they weren’t stepping on their own red ties, simply seems flat.
Example: Recently, Kamala Harris and her husband dropped in at a convenience store where they chatted with folks and she picked up some Doritos, her announced favorite snack. The MAGAt commentators were outraged that it was plainly a set-up situation, as if every candidate visit in history wasn’t arranged in advance.
Well, maybe not every such visit, because they sent their boy JD and a camera crew to a donut shop where the guy behind the counter didn’t want to be seen with him. It got a lot of laughs on social media, but looking like a putz shouldn’t be among your campaign goals.
And that includes mocking Harris for liking Doritos. I don’t know that Dorito-lovers are a well-defined voting bloc, but the company seems to sell a lot of those tasty little triangles and, if I were running a campaign, I wouldn’t go out of my way to alienate the folks who like’em.
And while I’ve always considered Elizabeth Hasselbeck a lightweight, I’m still surprised that she would contrast Harris with Vladimir Putin and Qasem Soleimani as if they were admirable.
“Can you imagine Putin, how he deals with things? Chugging down a bag of Sour Patch Kids because he’s depressed about something not going his way? Or back in the day, Soleimani — what is he binging on Funyuns?”
Who are these people? Kirk Anderson suggests that it’s not a particularly difficult question to answer, and he managed to do it without even quoting Maya Angelou.
But while most people were openly weeping over Guz Walz’s excitement, Ann Coulter called him weird and she wasn’t the only MAGAt to vent inexplicable hatred on the kid.
What is wrong with these people?
Matt Golding makes the point that Trump has seemed disengaged lately, with a limited appearance schedule and much of his efforts seeming lackluster.
It could be that the major media have been tied up in Chicago, but they covered his press conference at Bedminster and it was flat, while his appearance with Elon Musk was a technically inept snoozefest.
Trump’s advantage has always been that, while he may come across more like a carnival barker than a serious businessman or politician, carnival barkers are very entertaining.
Lately, he hasn’t been.
Joel Pett (Tribune) suggests that, while he may be flattered to be mentioned under the promoter’s theory “Say anything you want about me, but spell my name right,” the notion that there’s no such thing as bad publicity has its limits in politics.
He may not be lounging around in his underwear, but he hasn’t been responding with a whole lot of gusto, which brings up another marketing cliche: “When you don’t promote, something terrible happens: Nothing.”
Pat Hudson picks up on a switch in the overall campaign: When Joe Biden was the prospective Democratic nominee, MAGAts warned that electing him would effectively give us President Harris, since old Joe wasn’t likely to make it through four years.
Turns out a lot of people want President Harris, while the twist in candidates has left Trump as the aged candidate who seems diminishing in both energy and wit, while his understudy is unable to buy a donut without coming across as a stumblebum.
Juxtaposition of the Day
We’ve had far too many pass-the-torch and hand-off-the-baton cartoons lately, but this pair is worthy because they each illustrate a critical matter.
Davies continues today’s established theme, that momentum is on the side of the Democrats. Walz made a football analogy the other evening, that it’s the fourth quarter and the Democrats are behind by a field goal, but they’ve got the ball and they’re driving.
You don’t, however, have to understand football to understand faces, and I’m reminded of the Super Bowl between Denver and Atlanta, when there was a shot of the Atlanta bench in the third quarter and they were clearly done.
You could read it in their faces and posture. They ended up losing 34-19, but it might as well have been 134-9 for all the fight they had left.
The Republicans aren’t beaten yet, but they’re back on their heels and they had better get a grip. They have, as Davies suggests, taken over the atmosphere of despair that the Democrats had previously held.
As for Zyglis’s take, while the elephant isn’t dead in terms of being able to rally voters in key states, it’s certainly dead as the “Party of Law and Order,” not because the other party is running a former prosecutor but because they’re running a convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender who has surrounded himself with liars and con artists.
Or, as the saying goes, “birds of a feather.”
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Bok and Gorrell fight back with denial for which they offer no justification other than their insistence that everything is just fine, things are completely under control and nothing can possibly go wrongongongongong.
Mike Lester (AMS) reminds us that Trump can only lose if black and brown furriners are brought in to vote illegally, though the GOP wasted millions of dollars trying to find such illegal votes just four years ago.
In response, however, Steve Brodner illustrates the testimony heard the other night: Truth no longer matters.
It all depends on how often you say what people want to hear.
We’ll find out in November what people want to hear.
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