RNC Apprentice

[PGage]

This has been a strange and stressful week - wakened around 3:30 am last Monday by the relatively rare California lightening storm that eventually started the now second largest fire in our history that surrounds the mountain I live on three sides. We have been under mandatory evacuation since Wednesday, with no estimate of when we can return; currently optimistic our home and community will escape the flames.

I did watch the DNC, but was too busy to ask what the the TV experts here thought if the production values (I of course dug the substance, but that is more on the “NoTV” side). Still interested to hear (pardon if I have missed a thread in that, I have tried to monitor but may have skipped it), especially in light of news in this NYT story that the RNC is basically going to be the Trump Show, with DJT speaking every night in the last hour, and two of his Apprentice Producers in charge. I have never seen the Apprentice, and am not familiar with either (one apparently is Burnett’s #2?), so wondering what to expect in terms of style.

Trump has great confidence in his ability to work a live audience, which I don’t think was part of the Apprentice set-up, but is what he has been jonesing for, and which led to the Tulsa fiasco he is still trying to recover from. I guess he plans to mainline 4 nights if it this week. I expect he fill find a way to smuggle more that 50 people into his hall, which is the DC COVID limit.

I have watched every convention, on both sides, since 1968.  Could only sample the 2016 RNC, and may not be able to do even as much this week due to my circumstances. Had to stay up late watching my Xfinity recording of the DNC the last two nights, and doubt I will be able to make myself go through that for the Trump Show.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/politics/republican-convention-preview.html?referringSource=articleShare

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[Doug Eastick]

DNC producer was a heavy hitter.

He's the guy that proposed to his girlfriend at the Emmys.

https://www.google.com/amp/news18.com/amp/news/buzz/meet-the-emmy-winner-who-hosted-the-us-democratic-national-convention-barefoot-from-his-living-room-2809781.html

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[Tom Wolper]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 1:05 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have watched every convention, on both sides, since 1968.  Could only sample the 2016 RNC, and may not be able to do even as much this week due to my circumstances. Had to stay up late watching my Xfinity recording of the DNC the last two nights, and doubt I will be able to make myself go through that for the Trump Show.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/politics/republican-convention-preview.html

In 2016 I went to a workshop for people interested in becoming delegates to the Democratic convention and I think I even posted about it here. I found out that the delegates have to pay for their own travel, hotel, and other personal expenses and a potential delegate needs to gather 250 petition signatures to have their name appear on the ballot. Veteran delegates said that potential delegates team up in groups of 5 and each goes door-to-door to get 50 Democrats to sign each of the petitions. I could do all of that and still not be chosen because the party is prioritizing the choice of women and people of color, which is fine with me, but I decided not to pursue it.

I also got the chance to ask what goes on at the convention for delegates and what makes it worth going to. The veteran delegates told us it was a great networking opportunity to get to know elected officials, campaign workers, and delegates from other states. Outside of the convention hall were lots of parties sponsored by lobbyists and corporations. My feeling about attending a convention is it's for people who have too much time and money on their hands, elected officials and people who are considering running for office, and people who work in nonprofits who have to coordinate with local government or people who in their business can profit by having political connections.

I gave up watching conventions years ago. The convention atmosphere felt too frivolous and inauthentic and I never felt the speakers were speaking to me. If someone said or did something newsworthy I'd find out about soon enough on the news. The fights over the party platforms never felt meaningful. If the candidate makes it into office the last thing that goes into decision making is the platform from the convention.

2016 opened my eyes to something else - the conventional wisdom as far back as I can remember is there are 3 signs to tell who will win a presidential election: who has the better convention, who wins the debates, and who is better at fundraising. Hillary came out way, way ahead in all three and lost the election. More than anything this dampens any enthusiasm I could have for the convention.

That said, from what I read about the Democratic convention they did an exceptional job of relating to people watching and being in tune with what is happening in the country. There was no need to go bombastic to rile up a live audience or insert applause lines to speeches. People appeared from their own homes dressed less formally that they would need to in a convention hall. Without a need to bring speakers to the convention they could have a much broader range of speakers. And the nomination roll call was cited especially as instead of having a delegation head yelling above the noise of a raucous audience there were remotes from each of the states showing the great diversity of the country.

I don't know what the Republicans are going to do and from what I have read of their preparations they really don't know either. Republican governors now have a lower standing in the party than Fox News personalities. The party committee already released their platform which is to support whatever Trump wants, and since he is so erratic, that means they have no platform at all.