As the Democratic Party winds up its convention in Chicago I have to wonder: Do they really think they are ready for this election?
I haven’t watched the television coverage. I haven’t read many articles online. But I did note the article about the release of the party platform.
Election platforms are convenient expressions of potential policy, but not many people take them seriously. Leaders change their minds. Circumstances necessitate changes. Promises are broken. So they don’t mean all that much.
Still, the party has known for a month that Kamala Harris, not Joe Biden was going to be their presidential candidate. Would it not have been worth the effort to update the document to express that? Especially since it hadn’t been published yet?
It isn’t like the old days, with paper and typesetting and printing thousands of copies to be ready when the campaign starts in earnest. A couple of clicks, and it would have been done.
Did no-one think it was important? Did the person tasked with the job forget? Did they expect the convention delegates to reject Harris and put Biden back on top of the ticket?
It doesn’t matter what the answer is. From my vantage point it makes the Democrats look like they are not ready to govern. If you can’t get the paperwork right, what can you be trusted with?
random thoughts from lorne 
So are you saying you would prefer a candidate whose every pronouncement could well be a lie over a candidate whose party may have missed a deadline for paperwork? Does lying incessantly prove you are ready for power in a way that missing a deadline disqualifies you?
If the liar/dissembler does get his paperwork in on time, does it matter if he can’t be counted on to do what he said and his followers don’t care because somehow they think he’s the second coming?
He’s certainly not the second coming of Jesus who also didn’t get his paperwork in and had to rely on apostles to get out the word.
Mr Trump intends to be the second coming of himself. That’s good enough for his followers. Surely you are not one of those! That, I doubt!
You are reading things into what I said. For the Rec Rd, I wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump if he was the only candidate in the ballot. Which might be the case in 2928 if he wins this year.
My point though is that the Dems have had weeks to make a simple change and didn’t bother. That is the sort of sloppiness that loses elections
So we agree, more or less. You stand more firmly with the bureaucrats than me but I wouldn’t disagree with the old aphorism that “lose lips sink ships” and sloppiness should be avoided.
The funny thing is that Trump is never criticized for his sloppy arguments by his followers. Maybe it’s not his fault. The average age when senility sets in for American men is 75. At 78, he seems well over the hill now we don’t have Biden to compare him with.
Trump’s followers are angry, fearful and disenfranchised. For years their concerns were ignored by Washington. They follow Trump, a supposed billionaire who claims to speak for the little people, because they feel ignored by the establishment. Yes, he is also establishment, but not a Washington insider.
In their despair for a time that can never return they no longer care if the country is destroyed. They think it has been anyway.
Over the last 30 years globalization has facilitated literally billions of people to escape poverty. At the same time, much of the wealth increase was coming, along with well-paying industrial jobs, from the US where living standards for the middle class stagnated.
My father and I, for example, were both university professors. When I inflation adjusted my salary to make it comparable with his, forty years before, we were making the same amount.
Trump’s supporters have seen no improvement in their living standards over their whole lives while constantly being told to work harder. They’ve seen many of the best jobs offshored to benefit people other than themselves.
The irony, never stated, is that the greatest supporters of unfettered globalization – the best for us in Canada – were Republicans. Until Trump!
So I agree. It’s this strong sense of generational disappointment that drives the Trumpian faithful.