"I heard there'd be joy in Chicago but what I've seen is pure ecstasy, a rave instead of a convention. What has gotten into the Democrats?!" #DNC

If @willbunch wrote it, you should read it.© & I thread it. 🧵1/...

🎁 #GiftLink https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/chicago-dnc-democrat-vibe-ecstasy-20240821.html?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=gift_link&utm_medium=referral

2/ "...Atlanta hip-hop star Lil Jon bounced down the arena stairs chanting “We’re not going back” to celebrate Georgia’s vote for Kamala #Harris, when I saw a natural high of ecstasy take hold on the floor of the United Center.

The Democrats who’d descended on this heartland metropolis to pick their president couldn’t sit still."

3/ "Stripped of any meaningful political purpose, America’s political conventions have become the nation’s vibe checks. A month ago and just 92 miles north of here, at Donald Trump’s Republican confab, I witnessed a tent revival where a deified Trump with right-ear stigmata absorbed fictional testimonials and peddled his quack political patent medicine.

Since then, the political landscape has been hit by the neutron bomb of Harris replacing President Joe Biden."

4/ "The DNC had become a rave, and the partygoers were only hoping they wouldn’t crash before November...

The reversal of fortune in the polls that now mostly show the woman honored in that raucous roll call defeating Trump and the prospect of beating back the far-right extremism that threatens their playlist of American diversity."

5/ "But it’s clear that a much bigger prairie fire is burning in Chicago this week.

This is not the Democratic Party I’ve watched since I entered adulthood in the 1980s, blinded by the faux sunrise of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” so terrified of being called “liberal” or getting a bad headline that they ended up like a dog that’s been beat too much, spending the last four decades covering up. I could feel the shock waves of the vibe shift..."

6/ "But just like the Eagles prove every Sunday with their trademarked “tush push,” you don’t drive back your opponent unless you get just as low off the line of scrimmage. Obama paid brief lip service to civility before a “crackback block” on Trump’s racism that had caused the GOP cult leader to once claim her husband was not an American.

“Who’s gonna tell him the job he’s currently seeking might be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she roared, and the floor of the United Center shook..."

7/ "..Replacing Biden w Harris was more than shrewd polit calculation. It was signal for America’s political abuse victims to finally break free, to replace senatorial decorum w in-your-face memes, to speak their own truth abt.. Trump, Project 2025, right-wing extremism...

What strikes me about Chicago is seeing an escape route from near-death experience of a frail Biden succumbing to Trump’s wannabe dictatorship has made Dems not just giddy but more willing to bulldoze anyone who opposes them"

8/ "It’s different now, as folks flock to her stand this week to buy pro-Harris or anti-GOP shirts like the one she was wearing: “Make Stupid Embarrassing Again.” She said Democrats want to wade into the mud and fight Trump. “When they go low, we want to go smart-ass, and hopefully we’re filling that need.”

...We are watching America finally, belatedly, catch up with the rest of the world."

9/ "It turns out that millions of repressed Americans were dying inside to make their own statement for a kind of freedom that values diversity, a sleeper cell waiting to be activated...

You know who really hates this? Well, Republicans, of course..But even more freaked out seem the nattering nabobs of the mainstream media and the fact-checking industrial complex, who can’t handle liberals talking about how it really feels to be an American today."

10/ "The elite Beltway media is used to dictating the terms of America’s political debate — usually badgering Dems to move to the center-right —& clearly cannot handle this new power dynamic. That’s not surprising, but here’s what is: Dems, from Harris & her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, down to the rank and file, no longer care what the NY Times picks nits about. In a remarkable change from Trump’s 2016 victory, it’s now the Democrats who want to be taken seriously but not literally"

11/ "The exuberance here isn’t irrational, but Democrats have to remember that Trump’s defense of ancient hierarchies still gets him nearly half the electorate. Obama’s attacks on Trump were secondary to her main message that Democrats can still lose in the fall if the people listening don’t “Do something!”

They insist they will."