OPINION:
Baseball gives the last bat to the home team, and with it comes the decided edge of knowing what score wins the game. Custom in American politics provides the same advantage to the party that holds the presidency. Democrats were up first, holding their quadrennial convention virtually last week, on account of COVID-19, and nominating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as their champions. Republicans step up to the plate Monday, dividing their 2020 confab between Charlotte and cyberspace. Incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence don’t have to hit it out of the arena (or off the screen). They only need to beat the Biden bunch, which shouldn’t be too hard.
Coronavirus concerns have combined to pare down the Republican presence in North Carolina’s largest city. Instead of a full complement of 2,550 delegates at the Charlotte Convention Center, each state and territory has sent just six, for a total of 336 representatives “to meet capacity and social-distancing restrictions in place,” writes convention social media coordinator Mary Eveleen Brown. That’s more live presence than Democrats dared: They abandoned their plans for customary conventioneering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and apportioned their proceedings between remote pre-recordings and livestream.
Not that there is anything wrong with living online. If the coronavirus has taught Americans anything, it’s how to communicate from a small box on someone else’s screen. Zoom meet-ups for both Republicans and Democrats have come to resemble “Hollywood Squares” — without the laughs. Joe Biden sheltered from party enthusiasts in his Delaware home until appearing in his own on-screen box to accept the party’s nomination on the Democratic convention’s final night. Even the free press is locked down in 2020. Only a small troupe of reporters are credentialed to cover convention events, says the Republican National Committee, “given the in-person capacity limitations by the state of North Carolina due to COVID-19.” No matter. With only a skeleton cadre of delegates present, there is not much blabbering to report.
Even the usual argle-bargle that goes into the party platform is absent. Republicans blew the dust off their 2016 policy document and recycled it for 2020. It begins, “With this platform, we the Republican Party reaffirm the principles that unite us in a common purpose.” Reaffirmation is sensible: The wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented, and neither do enduring values.
In contrast, Democratic platform writers didn’t dare mail it in. In 2016, “wokeness” wasn’t a thing yet, but for their party circa 2020, it’s everything. A task force comprised of representatives of the Biden left wing and Bernie Sanders’ far-left wing hammered out a fresh document that warmed the communism-cuddling cockles of Mr. Sanders’ heart and caused him to blurt that a President Biden could become “the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” That’s exactly what angry street mobs welcome and patriotic Americans fear.
In addition, convention viewers are traditionally treated to individuals with a story meant to put a human face on party catechism. Democrats featured Kristin Urquiza, who holds President Trump responsible for her father’s coronavirus death: “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump. And for that, he paid with his life.”
It’s Democrats’ overarching campaign meme that the president’s incompetence led to his failure to contain the pandemic. Evidence is scant that their candidate would have better succeeded. In her understandable grief, Ms. Urquiza may have overlooked the fact that when Mr. Trump banned flights from China, the source of the virus, on Jan. 31, Mr. Biden’s initial response was to accuse him of “hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering.” In an April about-face, he grudgingly endorsed the travel ban.
Republicans plan to Zoom with Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis couple facing criminal charges for brandishing firearms to stop Black Lives Matter protesters from threatening their persons and property. Nicholas Sandmann, a MAGA hat-clad Kentucky teen defamed by major media organizations for meeting the gaze of an agitated Native-American protesting near Washington’s Lincoln Memorial, is also slated to appear digitally. As victims of anti-American causes that Democrats endorse, they’re more likely to prove their point than the doleful daughter who implied her father would still be alive if he hadn’t been a Trump-supporting Republican.
The contagion of 2020 has forced both parties to play small ball within the four corners of a display screen. Considering how modestly the donkeys performed, the elephants can hardly come up smaller.
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