Coronavirus Claims Another U.S. Institution!

Confirming this — but a GOP official familiar w/ the plans tells me the convention won’t be entirely closed door.
The Monday proceedings — incl the vote to formally nominate Trump — will be livestreamed. But no press on-site
RNC is blaming NC Gov social distancing restrictions https://t.co/6QwQYe85YS

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 2, 2020

I know the purpose of conventions back when conventions actually chose the candidate for the party. But that hasn't happened in some 50 years, and the conventions have become largely commercials for the party freely aired (though the convention itself ain't free) on network news without commercial interruption.

Everyone knows the outcome of the two conventions.  What happens at them now is so purely stage managed (that part goes back to '72, when Nixon was re-elected.  The script leaked and everyone freaked out.  Of course, everyone was appalled to learn the Presidency was being sold like laundry soap in '68, too.  We got over that, and now a carefully scripted convention is a bad omen for the campaign season.  So it goes.*) it hardly constitutes news.

And yet here we are, with the journalists complaining to each other that they weren't invited to the party with the kewl kids.  Please.  There will be plenty of catty reports about what happened behind those closed doors, and plenty of other reports denying the reports of what happened behind those closed doors, and a splendid time of round-robining will be had by all.  The real news is that the GOP doesn't want the nomination, the whole purpose of this conflab, to be a public spectacle.  But then, what is the purpose?

It's lagniappe that this new wrinkle in the inevitable decline of conventions is the reporters who will get to whine like children that they were left out and ain't that a terrible thing.

I think the Republic will survive.  I know I will. Best thing to do is to end the conventions altogether. Waste of time; waste of money.  Biden's gonna announce his VP pick before the Dems virtual convo; that's the only question left except:  how badly is Trump going to lose?

Trump would like to keep that behind closed doors, but he won't be able to.


*and you wonder at my cynicism.