The Political Conventions That Will Be Mostly Politics and Little On-site Partying

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Travel Feature

Published on Friday, 14 August 2020 14:41

Written by Brad Balfour

Yes, it’s less than three months until the election day, and the conventions are about to happen — sort of. In this age of the pandemic, what would have been two whiz bang weeks of thousands of people gathering on the streets as either supporters or protestors isn’t happening. Whether inside huge arenas or outside the halls, people aren’t going to be there.

Like some virtual reality future come to play these events will mostly be online. The Democratic National Convention was scheduled to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, starting on August 17th, 2020, and ending on the 20th.

The event was originally supposed to take place July 13-16, but the DNC announced in April that due to the coronavirus, it would be moved to a month later. All the keynotes will be broadcast from various locations, and at this point, no one seems to have an idea what everyone or anyone will do in Milwaukee.

As for the Republican National Convention, it had been scheduled to take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, which originally had planned to host the convention there, but after Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said he wasn’t going to guarantee the RNC a full-fledged convention in an arena packed with people due to health concerns, Trump and Republican officials were pissed. So in June, they decided to hold most of the convention in Jacksonville, Florida, from August 24th  and run through August 27th, 2020.

Then the pandemic hit there and now Jacksonville will host the celebratory aspects of the election-year affair but how much of that will be virtual nobody knows yet. Trump has suggested he might give his acceptance speech from The White House — or not.

Having these virtual conventions — without mass gatherings, visual dramatic activities on the floor — has to be the weirdest political scenario yet. How much of this will become standard operating procedure is yet to be seen, but it will re-shape the political process and ways of campaigning forever. 

Maybe it’s a good thing that sloppy old guys no longer will be able to kiss babies or glad-hand constituents. And nobody will be embarrassed when they just expect the check without any cheek, or direct ass-kissing. It all going to be digital — the ass kissing that is.

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