Let’s Pile On: Re-Create ’68?

The conventional wisdom about conventions was that the Republican convention would be a fraught and contentious affair, possibly with major protests in the street, while the Democratic convention would be a smooth affair now that Bernie had officially capitulated to Hillary. The first aspect of the GOP convention (contention in the hall) lived up to billing, but the protests fizzled out.

As John notes immediately below, it now it looks like the Democratic convention may be more . . . interesting than we thought. Maybe it won’t be 1968 all over again, but I am reminded of how expectations can be dashed in a hurry. Roll back the tape to January 1968, when everyone thought Lyndon Johnson would breeze to a re-nomination. “We know who our nominees will be,” the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, John Bailey, said on January 8. “I’m happy to be able to say the Republicans have all their bloody infighting to look forward to.”

Well, we know how that turned out. I still wonder whether Hillary is going to make it all the way to November. Wonder what will turn up in the Wikileaks cache of Clinton Foundation emails?

Meanwhile, remember how the media was in a tizzy last week about Melania Trump plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s clichés? Well. . .

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I think it was the art critic Clement Greenberg who came up with the perfect phrase to describe this kind of sycophantism: “a herd of independent minds.”

Seen this morning in Philadelphia:

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Coming soon?

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