I wonder whether Jason Isbell ever envisioned himself wearing a tux and singing this song to a bunch of Democrats at their national convention in Chicago.
We didn’t get to hear James Taylor perform — Sweet Baby James got the hook as various The Honorables ran long — but I think Jason pretty much got ’er done.
If I were to give anybody the hook so James could slip in a pertinent lyric or two it would’ve been Dick Durbin, who really phoned it in. Meanwhile, the Hilldebeast reminded us all that she will always be The Smartest Person in the Room, which for my money is one of the reasons why she topped out as secretary of state. But she had the room from jump, so what the hell do I know?
I certainly wouldn’t have cut Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Baptist pastor and reliable Bringer of the Fire. Not even for Sweet Baby James:
“We must choose between the promise of January 5th and the peril of January 6th, a nation that embraces all of us or just some of us.”
And speaking of fire-bringing, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett dropped a few well-placed rounds in you-know-how’s AO while discussing the differences between the two major-party candidates:
“One candidate worked at McDonald’s, while she was in college at an HBCU. The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and helped his daddy in the family business: housing discrimination. She became a career prosecutor, while he became a career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments, and one porn star to prove it.”
“Kamala Harris has a résumé. Donald Trump has a rap sheet.”
We were up way past our bedtime watching night one of the DNC and we will not be doing that again. I figure to start paying attention again when Kamala Harris and Tim Walz take the stage as the real, sure-’nough nominees.
Joe Biden was up past his bedtime, too. Swear to Dog, at one point I thought he was talking like the top of the ticket again. But then the boisterous crowd knocked him off track a bit, he started to ramble, and we closed the iPad and called it a night.
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I don’t blame Uncle Joe as much as I do the crowd, who should’ve known better than to interrupt him in mid thought.
There’s a love for Biden right now that I couldn’t have imagined 10, 20 years ago. I get it, they wanted to send him off in style. But leaving him up there wondering if they hard heard his last half-sentence wasn’t a great look.
Gotta say, never was much of a Whitney Houston fan — she was obviously technically gifted but just too Top 40 for my taste – but that version of Steve Windwood’s Higher Love does a number on a crowd.
Yeah, whoever was stage-managing that crowd noise definitely overcooked it. I was yelling “Shut the fuck up and let the man speak!” as we watched the iPad in bed instead of reading. Not the ideal preamble to a good night’s sleep.
Tonight should be interesting. The one-two punch of Shapiro/Buttigieg. Those two pack a wollop. (Whollop? Whallup? Apparently it’s wallop.)
Oo, yeah. I wanna watch Buttigieg. I’ve not given him nearly enough attention. Charles Pelkey’s daughter worked on his 2020 campaign, y’know.
James Taylor, si. Hillary Clinton, no. She will just get the haters stirred up more, if that’s possible.
James Taylor, si. Hillary Clinton, no.
I don’t doubt that she’s smart and a hard worker. But jeez, if you’re all that you don’t have to broadcast it all the damn time. Let the folks sort of stumble across it. We all love a good surprise.
I kept expecting the “basket of deplorables” but I guess she learned from that miscue.
O, that was a big hit. She was too genteel to say “cousin-humping hillbilly halfwits,” I guess.
Or, or mother stabbing father rapers from the Group W bench.
I always favored creating a nuisance, myself.
Thank you for the Cliff Notes that I could only dream of for prior conventions. Not a hint of the good stuff you pulled in my scanning of the NY Times.
Glad to oblige, Mark. I like sniffing around in the corners for tidbits. I have an NYT account too, but sometimes you get a better perspective if you take a squint at a public figure’s hometown newspaper. If you can find one. So many of them have become Gannett RoboRags, or worse.
We kept hoping Old Joe would quit while he was ahead. Then it was on to “…and another thing…and another….and oh, by the way…”. I kept hoping he would wrap up before he had a major brain fart.
I got into it this morning with the SFNM’s editorial page editor on X/Twitter after the WaPo did a fact check on the various speakers. Sure, they are allowed to spin a little yarn at a convention meant to rouse the rabble, but are fair game for someone to call out “hey, buddy, your fly is down”.
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Jason Isbell? Lemme think.