I don't normally do this kind of thing, but I can't resist just sharing Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention last night. Why? Because this wasn't just some political speech or even or an effective keynote. This was a speech FOR THE AGES; one you will likely be hearing excerpts from for decades to come in historical retrospectives on this period. That's because she not only spoke the truth, but she spoke it the way many if not most Americans are feeling it. THIS is how you make the case, people:

I thought it was boring.

Well, first of all, I pushed up the speed by 50%, because she decided to speak slowly (so that everyone understands her?), which made it incredibly tedious to listen before I ramped up the speed. Man, people believe I have endless time to only listen to them.

On content: she talked about everyones struggles and hardship, to claim that the presidency has immense influence over it (I think the legislative chambers have actually more influence, but alas) and that it is complex job, that demands more than a simpleton.

She talks about the presidencies ability to make war or peace, which is kinda funny, as so far under Trump there was actually less military involvement than it was under Obama. Yes, there is context to all of this, but it makes it interesting that Michelle Obama invoked that point.

She correctly summons the results of the presidencies of her husband and Trump as quite different in outcome.

Then general values, talking about family (very typical for politicians). She talks about people having good hearts in basic, but their work is foiled by the bad president.

"We have got to vote for Joe Biden, like our lives depend on it!"

Joe Biden is a good person that had personal struggles and can relate to peoples problems. He is down to earth.

The american people are good people at heart. They have to do something.

My take: It is the same standard politician speech I heard a million times before. Maybe I am old and cynical, but these emotional appeals have lost their influence over me. I agree with her that voting is important and Trump is shit. But such a speech doesn't motivate me, and I highly doubt that anyone considering blowign off to vote for whatever reason is moved by this. For too long it has been shown, that both parties take corporate money and work for the interest of their corporate donors. For too long the voting system is severely broken and no party is really working to fix it, only to apply some remedies specific to their voterbase. For too long the life of normal people hasn't improved or even gotten worse, regardless which party is in the white house. So is Trump worse than Biden? Sure! But such a speech as Obamas doesn't instill the hope for change into people, that moves them to the voting places. Michelle Obama only explains why people have to vote and vote for Biden. She says nothing about a path to improvement or a better future.

Side note: she has a necklace spelling V-O-T-E.

EDIT: By the way, she aknowledges how broken voting is, but as something inevitable. She talks about packing lunch and preparing to stand in line for hours to cast the vote. But she doesn't say: "We have to fight for more polling stations, so no one has to wait in line to cast their vote. We have to fight to make elections on Sunday or make election day a holiday, so that not only rich people can comfortably vote. But this fight will be more difficult with Donald Trump in the White House!" ← But she doesn't say that. Instead the broken voting system is seemingly something nobody can change and that has to be endured like bad weather.

Jill Biden's speech was pretty great too, and the backdrop of a classroom was effective. I do wish they'd have given Beto time to speak, and cut Chuck Schumer's time.

A lot of good speakers today as well.

I must be getting old and square because I thought it was powerful. I mean of course the bottom line of it was that you should vote for Joe Biden. This is the Democratic National Convention we're talking about here. Most of the American electorate, furthermore, probably will do just that. The reason this speech felt historic to me lies in its particularly accurate concentration of why, down the general feeling behind that why. One could compare it against countless other speeches advocating the same proposition that have been given at this convention so far, an even against Joe Biden's own case for his own candidacy for that matter. None of the others I've heard struck me as anywhere near equally compelling. It's an emotional speech that was clearly meant and not just what she had to say and that's the difference. Authenticity is the difference.

I'm also very much a pragmatist. Life has taught me to be one. Accordingly, the argument that someone other than a Republican or a Democrat could feasibly be elected President of the United States in 2020...I'm sorry, but I just don't take that argument seriously. This ain't Europe. The fact is that this election is, in fact, functionally a binary choice between President Trump and his Democratic challenger. The third party and "independent" candidates in this election aren't independent, aren't serious, aren't even trying to win, aren't qualified anyway, and don't deserve to win and practically every sane person knows it. Every single election cycle we see these "BUST THE DUOPOLY!" arguments trodden out, but every time end result is the same. No, this is not the year when that's suddenly going to change.

America has had a two-party system for literally its entire history of voting dating all the way back to the founding of the Federalist Party by Alexander Hamilton and of the Democratic Republican Party by Thomas Jefferson back in the 1790s, and furthermore, while many of the details have changed, in crucial ways the two parties have had the same defining qualities and bases of support that entire time. Even before the Republican and Democratic Parties existed, there was always a party of the Northeast favoring government intervention into the economy supported by urban Americans, women (who couldn't vote), slaves (which more or less meant black people, who generally couldn't vote), intellectuals, and so on, and a party of the South favoring a more laissez-faire approach to economic policy supported mainly by rural white men (who composed most of the voting population back then), with what existed of what we today call the Midwest serving as the most competitive territory. Many details have changed since the 1790s, but these core elements have always been there and I suspect that they always will be for as long as we're in any sense a lower-case D democracy. These giant coalitions that compose our two-party system are a tradition that this country has always had. That is why the notion that we're about to bust it up in favor of a halfway serious three or four-party system this time around is one I'm inclined to scoff at. If you don't understand the intractable nature of this national tradition, you don't understand American politics very well.

https://youtu.be/7KHtCb6SdCw
Warren has a very effective speech on childcare, for those who think this is only a "lesser of two evils" without really understanding what Democrats stand for.

https://youtu.be/GlCWL3Hw6hA
Gabby Giffords is a champion of gun control, and I'm looking forward to having her husband in the Senate.

https://twitter.com/DemConvention/status/1296265694070308870?s=09
The last thing I want is hearing complaints about Hillary, but she reminds us about the importance of voting.

https://youtu.be/YIfwrKHkYRA
And Obama. His speech speaks for itself.

Eeh, I thought these were more forgettable than Michelle Obama's. Out of the above, somebody might remember Barack Obama's speech in two more weeks, particularly being as he was our last president and remains extremely popular among Democrats, but the rest will likely be forgotten by nearly everyone. Each had its standout moments (especially Barack Obama's), but none sustained my sincere attention from beginning to end like Michelle Obama's speech.

The closest thing to a runner-up to Michelle Obama's speech in my opinion was this clip from the first night where a woman relays having to bury her father because he, a strong supporter of the president, had taken Dr. Trump's advice on the coronavirus to heart. She says, among other things, that her father felt betrayed by the president in his final hours and that she plans to vote for Joe Biden in his place. How does one refute that argument? What can anyone say? I've seen people on the internet try and the efforts are pretty pathetic. Most attempts I've seen include the term "communism", for example, which smacks of real desperation.

I definitely hope for significant electoral reforms to be implemented under a Democratic Congress and presidency. I would point out though that it's not among the top ten issue priorities people list in national surveys, so I don't know if that's the kind of issue that could guarantee Democratic victories by itself.

Large scale protests usually happen over issues of violence. Like the sustained protest wave after the murder of George Floyd or the largest demonstration in U.S. history, the 2017 Women's March, which was, to read the placards, primarily against sexual violence and the perception that the nation had just elected a proud rapist. Or the second-largest demonstration in U.S. history, aptly titled the March for Our Lives, the following year, which was a protest against gun violence. Last year likewise saw a visible wave of strikes over climate change sweep the globe, addressing a serious, perceived threat to human life on Earth. Issues of less pressing material significance to people's lives can certainly generate protest, but not usually of a comparable, history-making energy and magnitude. Calls for a new electoral system of doing things can generate real passion and be sustained, but you'll find that that happens when we're talking about a situation like that of Belarus right now (which is a police state) where people fear for their lives to vote for anyone other than the current head of state. I don't think most Americans consider our current electoral situation to be comparably disenfranchising. I wouldn't hold my breath for the kind of movement you call for here to imminently sweep the nation, in other words.

I do believe the Democrats are serious about enacting meaningful electoral reforms right now, if only because doing so would tend to benefit them, realistically. Like restoring the full Voting Rights Act, introducing automatic voter registration, these sorts of things that will give more people the chance to vote in future elections. These are things I support and part of the reason why I intend to vote for Biden. But I think that sort of thing is the limit of what's realistic for now.

Isn't it so that the states can choose themselves which voting system they want to use?

If so, then I fear any changes would just be done in some democratic states, but I doubt any republican state would do any changes which could massively hurt themselves in future elections.

You might be thinking of like Canada's provincial system or something. The United States uses a federal system of government. In other words, the state and local systems are largely separate and apart from the national election system. It's possible for individual states to introduce electoral reforms for themselves that don't get applied to national elections. Consider the case of Vermont, for instance. Vermont has introduced electoral reforms that have rendered third parties a bit more viable there, with the result that the Vermont Progressive Party -- a local institution inspired by (though not endorsed by) Bernie Sanders -- has won more parliamentary representation than any other third party in the country. And yet Vermont's state-level parliamentary elections are just that: local elections. Their system has no bearing on the national system. It affects only Vermont, and only in their state and local-level elections at that. Hence why there is no national analogy to Vermont's Progressive Party that has representation in the U.S. House of Representatives or Senate.

(The Vermont Progressives, it may be worth adding, are also not exactly a serious threat to the Vermont Democrats, as shown by the fact that the latter regularly win some two-thirds of the seats in the state's parliament.)

There's also the state of Nebraska where candidates aren't allowed to run on a party affiliation. In other words, at the state level, Nebraska has no Republican or Democratic officials. Formally anyway. But in national elections, Nebraska regularly chooses Republicans to represent them in the U.S. Senate and likewise votes to elect Republicans president. Here again, two separate systems: state and national. The one does not directly affect the other.

Conversely, we've had to have a national Voting Rights Act in order to prevent many states from systematically disenfranchising voters of color for being voters of color, and said policy has been significantly weakened by a 2013 verdict of the U.S. Supreme Court. That is an issue in this election.