I continue to be fascinated by what a difference the un-conventional convention makes, and I hope that this becomes the standard. One of the highlights was the nomination reel with every state and territory casting their votes.

This was a heavy instant favorite of the internet: Joe Biden’s iconic aviator glasses!

For Wyoming, the parents of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard presented the roll call vote made me gasp.

It was the breadth and depth of the roll call vote I’m going to remember fondly, not the assorted pontificating poltroons (and someone needs to get a hook to pull Bill Clinton off the national stage) with focus-group tested messages. And for Dawg’s Sake, what was up with all the eff’ing Republicans on the DNC, um, broadcast?

Give us more We The People, and less preening from the past.

The other moment that stood out was Second Lady Jill Biden’s introduction and her speech. 1) She’s always been a force of nature, her story is compelling and what an amazing First Lady she would be, and B) whoever chose to have her give her speech in an empty classroom where she once taught is a genius.

If you didn’t know, since 2009 Jill Biden has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College; before that Biden taught English and reading in high schools for thirteen years, and also taught adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital.

Mother Pence teaches art at a Christian school that kicks out LGBTQ kids. Compare and contrast.

And an empty classroom is a metaphor for our time and it was not overbearing stagecraft.

And meanwhile, we’re getting a peek at what next week’s RNC will bring:

• Trump will accept the nomination from the White House (setting up everyone around him to violate the Hatch Act, not that the DOJ will do anything about it; Hell, Bill Barr will probably order his goons to flash-bang any witnesses.)
• Convention speakers will include the St. Louis gun couple and, the Covington Catholic High School kid, Nicholas Sandmann, whose encounter with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips went viral in 2019.
• The RNC has filed a permit to set off fireworks at the Washington monument.

As I said above, compare and contrast.

Republished with permission from Mock Paper Scissors