A Tale of Two Parties

[Joanne98]

This year's conventions represent two distinct Americas.


Harold Meyerson | August 25, 2008 | web only



Anyone who insists there's no difference between our two political parties should be made to attend their conventions. Even the high-dollar wing-dings thrown by the same lobbyists and law firms at both conventions look and feel different depending on whether it's D's or R's who are knocking back the drinks. And when you're actually inside the convention halls, looking down on a sea of delegates, you never have a nanosecond's doubt, no matter what or how much you may have imbibed, about which convention you're at.

That's because Democratic conventions are among the most integrated gatherings in America, and Republican conventions, not to put too fine a point on it, are all white. The transition, for people who attend both conventions -- chiefly, journalists -- is always a little jarring, and this year, it will be more jarring than ever, inasmuch as the conventions come back to back, inasmuch as the Democrats will have a black nominee and the Republicans a white one.

Conventions, after all, are a gathering of tribes. A century ago, nearly all the delegates at both conventions were likely to have been white males who drew most of their income from their work in politics. But Democratic conventions were national reunions of Irish and Italian Catholics (among others), while GOP gatherings were overwhelmingly Protestant. But beginning with the 1972 convention that nominated George McGovern, large numbers of blacks and Latinos -- and equal numbers of women and men -- filled the Democratic delegates' seats. The Republicans played catch-up with the Democrats on gender equity, but as their party moved steadily rightward and became more Southern at its core, each successive convention looked even whiter than its predecessor. Or maybe it's just that the Democratic conventions looked more diverse. Either way, to hop from one to the other, as I've been doing now since 1992, feels like you're looking at two different countries.

For the past several conventions, the Republicans have sought to disguise their whiter-than-white essence with their speakers list. This year, according to the list their National Committee put out last week, their featured speakers will include former Treasurer Rosario Marin and former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele of Maryland, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida. Back at their 2000 convention in Philadelphia, seemingly every African American in Texas who'd ever had a pleasant encounter with then-Gov. George W. Bush was trotted out to attest to Bush's liberality on race. The point of the blackface act wasn't, and isn't, really to delude blacks into thinking they have a home in the GOP but to convince a certain credulous swath of old-line Rockefeller Republicans -- the Christie Todd Whitman, Lincoln Chaffee set -- that there was still room for them in the modern Republican Party.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_tale_of_two_parties

[qwlauren35]

1. Fascinating.

Maybe I'll peek at the RNC just to see how real this is.