Watching the Democratic Convention was like indulging in a Netflix rerun of the movie La La Land

But real politics is not at all like dancing on your car in the midst of a traffic jam

Everyone has their private take on the significance and impact of the now departed Democratic National Convention, so here’s mine for what it’s worth.

It reminds me of the opening scene of the acclaimed 2016 movie La La Land.

The scene starts with the grim, panoramic camera shot of thousands of idling automobiles gridlocked on a Los Angeles freeway to an accompanying din of honking and swearing from trapped motorists.

Then all at once and on cue the same myriad motorists materialize from their vehicles and begin dancing and singing about chasing Hollywood dreamlets, an extravaganza of flitting torsos and gamboling arms and legs that climaxes in an exuberant chorus about how “it’s another day of sun”.

As soon as the music concludes, the traffic jam dissipates, everyone climbs back in their cars, and the film movies on to the real story of daunting career struggles, a romance that seems hopeful but devolves into heartbreak, finally cutting to its this-is-what-they-really-look-like-years-later kind of bittersweet and ironic ending.

Both political conventions are over now, we’re back in our cars, and the real plot is starting to unfold. But you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream press.

Whether it’s Fox News or Politico, the choice is no longer between conservative and liberal mastications of the news.  You’re forced to opt for one of two alternate and highly surreal realities.

If you’re one of those people still dancing on your car and gushing that last week’s Kamala carnival was simply the glorious dawning with Richard Straussian trumpets blaring of Obama era 2.0, you probably won’t be easily persuaded that a franchise rerun of “hope and change” – pardon me, “joy and freedom” – isn’t going to deflect the needle very much with swing state independent voters who realized strawberries doubled in price in one week because of the Canadian rail strike, or their home insurance premiums shot up 25 percent over last year because of abnormal flooding in Nebraska and all those damn tornadoes in Oklahoma.

You will get giddy over “vibes” alone and your uncritical conviction the current VP all at once has the “big mo” even if there’s no Beyonce background music as you expected.   Yet if you talk to the guy in the apartment down the street whose rent just went up 15 percent from last year he may remind you what Clinton adviser James Carville famously quipped in 1992, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

If he’s not too young, he may also remind you that Obama’s hopey-changey shtick resonated so well back then because it was a Republican administration that was perceived as responsible for both a rotten economy and two intractable overseas wars. 

This time around it’s a Democratic administration that’s got all the baggage and the roses-and-rainbows Presidential candidate happens to be one of them.

That’s a difference that really does make a difference.

Aside from “joy” when it doesn’t seem there’s much joy these days in Mudville, there’s also the “freedom” deal, which really translates into “reproductive rights” aka abortion on my terms, thank you. 

We’re not talking at all about “freedom of speech”, are we, unless some cretinous college administrator cracks down on my constitutional right to scream “Zionist pig” as a Jewish student walks across campus?

Alas, my favorite progressive digital rag Vox warns that the so-called “low-propensity” voter, who will probably swing the outcome of the national electoral college tally, doesn’t really give a rip about abortion when it comes to deciding between Harris and Trump.

Again, it’s the economy, you nitwit!

Of course, the same low-propensity voter who cares mostly about the economy doesn’t give a rip about economics, it turns out.  

Which is why the Wall Street Journal laments that both Harris and Trump can easily make promises that violate basic economic principles and get away with it.

However, when it comes to making outrageous claims Trump undoubtedly emerges the clear winner.   

And even though a slim majority of voters, according to recent polling, trust Harris over Trump on the economy, those in swing states by a sizable percent put their faith in Trump.

It’s the swing-state, low-propensity voters who have more faith in Trump than economists, stupid!

So let’s dance on our gridlocked cars some more until the next recession blows in.  Anyone?

Seriously, something is happening here, and it’s not that nobody really has a clue.  It’s that both parties are grasping and lunging almost obscenely for the elusive brass ring of effective political agency while going out of their way to beguile and seduce that tiny turnkey segment of the electorate that doesn’t live in one of the two alternate universes and isn’t affected by ideological gridlock.

Dancing on your cars is what you do in La La Land, not in Chicago or Milwaukee or Washington D.C. when you happen just for now but maybe not tomorrow to have a mealy, minuscule edge in the seesaw battle for legitimacy, if not hegemony.

It’s the governance, stupid.  But governance is for grownups, and there are very few of them sadly in the room these days.

The conventional political wisdom is that the voters want style, not substance.  Or let’s call it distraction, even entertainment.

If you’re Donald Trump and his handlers, that probably means calling people names, viciously snarking during rallies packed with fervent supporters at the personal attributes of your opponents, all the while offering them serendipitous sugar highs from pie-in-the-sky promises that stand no chance in passing at all in a hyperpartisanly divided Congress.

If you’re Kamala Harris and her handlers, that probably means, well, er, um, calling people names, viciously snarking during rallies packed with fervent supporters at the personal attributes of your opponents, all the while offering them serendipitous sugar highs from pie-in-the-sky promises that stand no chance in passing at all in a hyperpartisanly divided Congress.

I forgot to mention how useful it is also as a political strategy whenever your adversary makes one of those insane and impossible promises to shout out – joyously, naturally - “me too” (think the border, abortion, and la, la, la, la, la).

And don’t neglect to propose creating an entire new federal agency that will cost several trillion more dollars but make your supporters’ dream come true. 

Call it the Department of Redundancy Department.

Let’s dance.

Of course, a tiny handful of aging curmudgeons – yea, I’m one of them -  refuse to hang out with all our partisan homies in La La Land and maybe are somewhat uncomfortable with the current rage for playing the game of PINO (“politics in name only”), insofar as “political” and “policy” derive from precisely the same Greek word.

As the curmudgeonly Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan points out, most of us believe that tiresome old etymology doesn’t matter anymore. She writes regarding the DNC circus:

The convention’s overall impression was summed up by a relative who, watching on the second night, observed: “This is what they’re saying: ‘We’re a grand coalition, we’re more of a vibe than a party, and we’re not him.’ 

“Him” whose name cannot be even whispered.

After coronating Kamala faster than two drunk Black Jack players can get married in Las Vegas, the Democratic Party made us swoon over the word “democracy” in the same way someone with high cholesterol reaches coyly on the supermarket shelf for thebrand in the yellow tub with the beguiling label I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

I can’t believe it’s not the party of Democracy, and the vibes are truly great.

There’s time for one more dance before it’s time, you know.

Noonan ends her meditation on the Democrats’ “vibey” convention with what she considers perhaps an acknowledgment to the few souls with sobriety out there.  The election itself, she self-confidently coos, is “going to be all about policy”.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

In real life the traffic snarl doesn’t magically melt away once the dancing is done.

There’s still the political gridlock, the anger, the desperation, and the persistence of the political powder keg we’ve been sitting on top of for almost a decade.

And the sun is blazing even hotter.

La La Land may just be overrated.

Things look to get very interesting after Labor Day.