Democrats, day 2

Yes, day 2. I'm not caught up, and probably won't be. I watched part of Tuesday live and some more on tape, but I skipped Wednesday altogether and left it entirely on tape, and I probably won't watch much of today's live either. Urgent deadline awaits: not enough time to watch hours of speechifying. I may not get around to the rest for a couple of weeks, actually: time is that tight.

What I watched live on Tuesday was the roll call, because this was history-making. And now a woman - not any woman, but this particular woman - is a major-party presidential nominee. So I've changed the icon I use on political posts, and if you can't read the label because the print is too small, here's the full-sized original, which will show you why, given LJ content restrictions, it's probably a good thing that you can't read it.

Like the icon text, the speakers kept pointing to Hillary's knowledge and experience and willingness to work hard on issues. It made calls of corruption look petty, and was intended to. (So why didn't similar citations to experience work on me when it was Nixon? Well, you mean besides the fact that Nixon really was corrupt and always had been? How about how Nixon's experience, while extensive, was far more frequently unwise and, more obviously, ill-considered. I doubt you would catch Hillary Clinton saying something like "I don't give an [expletive deleted] abut the lira.")

But I do wish they'd stop calling her the most qualified presidential candidate of all time. First, anybody considering voting for Trump obviously doesn't care about qualifications at all. Second, the most on-paper qualified presidential candidate in American history was probably James Buchanan, which only goes to show that qualifications aren't everything.

Also not of particular help was the speaker pitching Hillary's diplomatic experience: something like "She's been at the table facing Russia. Facing China. Facing Canada." Yes, I thought: our three most traditional enemies.

The roll call is always amusing. Some states, usually the ones without many Democrats, were succinct, having nothing but their natural beauty to pitch. Others went on at such length as to make the secretary wonder if they were done. Some passed the microphone around so that everyone could have a say. But one of those provided the most moving moment of the convention: Larry Sanders invoking his parents' names as he cast his vote for his brother.

Bill's speech: He knows his role here, he's candidate's spouse, and he pulled it off. Biography of her achievements - mostly, it seems, reports written - interspersed with personal anecdotes to remind you this is a human being we're talking about. Did oversell a few points - I really don't recall that children's health thingie as following directly on the failure of HillaryCare - but as convention prevarications go, that was minor.

Democrats, day 4

(I'll have to get back to day 3 later.) We did watch some of this while cooking and eating dinner, and on the couch afterwards. Missed various critical moments because the cable kept going out briefly.

But when the Woman in the White Suit stepped out, that was a historic event. I've often before heard the words "I accept your nomination for President of the United States," but it did sound different spoken in a female voice.

The best speakers of the convention, however, were a couple men unknown to me who appeared a little earlier. One was Khizr Khan, who was there, with his wife, in their capacity as parents of a US soldier killed in Iraq. This man looked entirely ordinary - middle-aged, bald, heavy-framed glasses, dark suit - but his speaking was extraordinary. The slowness of his words and the thickness of his accent only emphasized the poignancy and sincerity with which he spoke of his son's sacrifice, and - even more powerfully - of his deep-felt patriotism and love for the US, the country that gave him freedom and his children opportunity.

And these are the kind of people Trump would bar from the country just to be "safe". The killer moment came when Mr Khan angrily asked if Trump had ever read the Constitution, upon which he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a copy, and offered to lend it to him.

Then there was the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, one of those evangelical preachers who starts low and builds into a tower of passion. A big, bear-like man, he walked slowly to the podium (he has a severe form of arthritis, I read) and then loomed over it. His firm application of evangelical creed to liberal moral principles, the way he quoted from the Constitution with the same spiritual emphasis he used when quoting from the Bible, and his call for his audience to restore the democratic heart of America from those who would stop that heart, all delivered in that increasingly powerful blast, made this altogether the most extraordinary such sermon I'd ever heard. And the cap came with the amazing closing metaphor in which he called on his audience to be the moral defibrillator that would restart that heart.

This was great speechmaking I heard tonight.