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.
Yes, I’m feeling very good and very hopeful right now.
Except for that little niggling memory of November 2016 . . . . . . .
Yes, somebody said to me “looks at the former guy rambling. All the democrats need to do is buy TV time and air him.”
After all, they tried that eight years ago and it went so well.
Mike-
Thanks for the video clip. My favorite song and one with a great message in these troubled times.
S’funny…MSNBC’s right-of-center contributors this morning were countering favorable-to-Harris polls as being rather untrustworthy and that it’s still very much an even race. Minutes later they showed Fox footage of Trump claiming nearly the same thing (though that he was leading in all the polls), with the clear implication that, because it came out of his mouth, it was little more than belched bilgewater on his part. Well, which is it? Are the polls trustworthy, and if they’re off, why is it that these people are always claiming that it’s Republicans that are undercounted, when clearly (Red Wave for example) that’s never been the case on a wide scale after pollsters “solved” their minor errors in 2016? Or when they’re assessing who wins when RFK ceases his windmill-tilting, why does it seem like no matter to which side his followers were drawn from, it only aids Trump’s chances? Just a few weeks ago, RFK was going to cost Biden the win by taking precious votes from battleground-state precincts. Suddenly, they’ve decided, no, he was a drag on Trump’s numbers, and his endorsement will certainly make things closer than they are now. Yeah, it was the same people claiming both things. Cuz they’re experts.
It’s pretty simple…MSNBC is guarding against the complacency of 2016 by warning that everyone better get out and at least vote, and at most work for Harris’ election. That’s their job…media ain’t exactly the same thing it used to be.
Mike – I’m not sure how you can interpret my cartoon as “denial” and insistence that “everything is just fine.”
My intent with the cartoon – and I think it is very obvious – is to argue Kamala’s elevation to Democrat party presidential nominee was very UNdemocratic.
The nominee is decided at the convention. The delegates vote on it and sometimes they have to do some serious horse-swapping on the floor (or in a smoke-filled room) to avoid multiple ballots. There’s nothing surprising or unusual about making the decision at the convention. Look up Eisenhower, Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey for modern examples.
Bad examples, except for the first one.
Goldwater and Humphrey had it sewn up long before the convention started. Ike stole it from Bob Taft at the 1952 convention.
I’m touched, to the point of tears, by how concerned the right wing is that the rights and feelings of Democratic voters be respected, with every T crossed and every I dotted. Golly, it restores my faith in democracy. I can understand how they missed the part where Democratic delegates from across the country gathered online to nominate Harris a couple of weeks ago, and they may have mistaken the DNC’s ceremonial roll call vote a few days ago, where Harris got nearly all the delegate votes, for a dance party. Also the part where political parties can choose nominees however they want as long as they follow their own rules, as the Democrats did. Also the part where nobody can make Joe Biden run for president if he don’t wanna.
Some people are saying (I learned that rhetorical device from right-wingers!) that they just wanted to sow chaos and division among their enemy and have no strategy for handling a united, energized and popular opponent, but that’s too cynical. The party of insurrection, voter suppression, and jailing people who give bottles of water to voters standing in line has obviously had its “Saul on the road to Damascus” moment and fully embraces the rights of Democratic voters. I look forward to seeing their equally fervid support for voter rights in the weeks leading to November.
Eric:
Goldwater was a first-ballot nominee but it wasn’t clear until the convention and he faced serious competition from Bill Scranton until, as I said, some horse-swapping. His win was not unanimous, and he wasn’t the nominee until the convention.
Humphrey’s campaign in ’68 was a horse-swap from the start. He was Lyndon’s boy, but RFK had a serious chance until he was killed, at which point his delegates split between HHH and McCarthy. Humphrey won the nomination on the first ballot, but not only was it not unanimous but there was a scandalous level of manipulation of delegates — as many horse-thieves as horse-traders. And, again, he was not the nominee until the convention.
Oh please. If the same thing happened on the right side you wouldn’t have said boo.
Eleven months ago POLITICO wrote this headline/story:
Columnists call for Biden to drop Harris, pick new running mate
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/13/columnists-biden-harris-new-running-mate-00115559
Not sure I get the point. Politico writers say all kinds of things. What’s the significance?
The GOP is more than welcome to replace Trump with Vance if they so desire.
I assume you have no knowledge whatsoever about how it was done in the first half of the 20th century, or most of the 19th, for that matter. No convention has ever been locked into having to pick the winner of the primaries. In fact, the whole importance of primaries didn’t really take off until 1968, and didn’t get supposedly “locked in” until 1972.
Does the term “smoke filled rooms” ring a bell? Or are you just annoyed at “the way things should have gone” isn’t happening anymore. Contrary to your expectations, the Democrats aren’t just there to lose.
Hey Bob, it’s Democratic Party, not Democrat. But you knew that.
Ah, Ann Coulter.
Before Donald Trump, before JD Vance, before Tucker Carlson, before Jesse Watters, before Marjorie Taylor Greene, there was Ann Coulter. The original “insult comic” political commentator. Author of such fine books as ‘How To Talk To A Liberal 9If You Must)’ among others.
Such a erudite, wonderful and not at all deplorable person… right?
Princess was just sad about being totally irrelevant for the past couple years (again) and had to show her behind to get some attention. Same thing they all do.
The popular vote is how all other elections in this country are decided.
In 2016, Trump lost by 3 million votes, and 2020 he lost by 7 million votes. This year he may lose by 12 million votes…or more.
Yet this election, like the others, is still likely to be close. A rather glaring problem with our presidential electoral system, isn’t it.
I get perverse pleasure from the fact that Bob Gorrell and Mike Lester each apparently have skin made of gossamer.
Signed,
The Dep’t. of Dishing It v. Taking It.
Dialogue matters. I’m willing to have the conversations.