The 2015 animated kids’ film Home might have been the leitmotif for the recent Democratic National Convention.  The Democrats’ theme is that everything is awesome, despite nearly eight years of sluggish economic growth, markedly increased societal strife, a failing health care system, weakness and humiliation abroad, along burgeoning crime and terror at home.  Four to eight more years of the same is just what the doctor ordered, Republicans are a bunch of killjoys for arguing otherwise, and Hillary Clinton is the person to bring it. 

For those not familiar with that occasionally clever film, it is about the Boov, a race of domineering, supercilious, totalitarian aliens who live by taking and repurposing other species planets and property. The Boov invade earth, but not being violent, only elitist, they move the human population, whom they regard as simple and backward, to giant villages in Australia. The Boov are also hilariously and proudly cowardly, hiding from and denying threats for as long as possible and then running away.   Obviously the Boov are mostly Democrats. 

The Boov, like the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, operate a system that is fundamentally corrupt, authoritarian and bankrupt, facts which are belied by the omnipresent slogan of the ruling class (and the title of the only tune on the radio playlist) “Everything is awesome.”

Parts of Home are particularly funny, mostly when the clueless leadership is bloviating about how great things are.  I was reminded of this particularly during the speeches of Obama, Biden and both Clintons at the Democrats’ convention.   Biden especially made a shamelessly demagogic paean to American optimism, can-do attitude and bravery.  It was also ironic, since until last week Democrats have relentlessly insisted that Americans cannot do stuff (you didn’t build this) or as Hillary said the other night “Don’t believe anyone who says ‘I alone can fix it.’”   In the Democrat view, we are largely racist, sexist, anti-gay and xenophobic, unenlightened, socially retarded, bullies abroad, too irresponsible to defend themselves, and in desperate need of additional guidance from an already bloated suffocating government.  But hey we’re doin’ great. 

By the fourth day of the event the Democrat conventioneers were insincerely waving hundreds of American flags, when just days before there was hardly a flag to be seen in the hall (other than some “Palestinian” ones) while American and Israeli flags were trampled and burned just outside the building.  Yet the Democrats and their handmaidens in the media obstinately pointed to their patriotic and “positive” message as opposed to the Republican negative one. This of course requires the same kind of obliviousness of the Boov in Home.  The Democrats are determined to confuse Donald Trump the man, with the issues that created Donald Trump the Republican nominee. 

On the one hand they now insist everything is wonderful, when the orientation of the modern Democratic Party, is how great things are not.  Change has given way to stasis.   We know that at least one Democrat (last name Obama) sincerely believes that things are great thanks to his nearly eight years of governance.  Hillary doesn’t believe that, but is constrained by her own lack of a compelling agenda, or a vision, beyond her own naked ambition and sense of entitlement. 

According to the Democrats claims that things are not going well are illegitimate, because they come from Trump, a controversial and divisive person.  By demonizing Trump, they demonize the issues that are important to his supporters, without having to address their legitimacy. 

But this also means that the Democrats, like the Boov, pigheadedly refuse to recognize political reality in the country.  In their own party the emergence of Bernie Sanders proved this.  Sanders was deliberately marginalized and sabotaged by party officials in order to perpetuate this condition of stasis and denial.

All this is necessitated by the nature of their own candidate, who resembles the dimwitted leader of the Boov, who is also dishonest and corrupt, rules by entitlement, without purpose and so needs to eliminate all opposition, even the idea that things are not “awesome.” 

In her stump speeches since the convention, Hillary has tried to triangulate her way around the glowing picture of the nation painted at the convention.  If she doesn’t do that, outside of the stage-managed political arena that was the convention, what would she have to talk about except Trump?  And while talking about Trump necessarily will be a large part of her campaign, she’s got to say something more than how awful her opponent is, which is to say, less awful than herself.

Hillary may well win the election, indeed is the odds-on favorite by most accounts.  Yet in order to win two remarkable things must happen.  First the American people must be willing to vote for a known compulsive liar and cheat -- something that the majority of Americans correctly believe about this woman.  Secondly, the Democrats must run a campaign of pure denial, pretending that the complaints of the opposition party, because the emanate from Donald Trump, are not merely issues about which reasonable people can disagree, but rather inventions, fabrications, a con game by a con man.  While elections are always about emphasizing differences, with negative campaigning an ever increasing (and often successful) tactic, the outright renunciation of the concerns of half the nation as reflected in the Democrat convention is pretty unprecedented.

Which brings us back to Home.  The movie is filled with typical liberal lessons for children it is also a rejection of the “everything is awesome” idea.  Millions of people, Republicans, Democrats and Independents have seen that movie, and it is unlikely that any believed that the phony and blockheaded Boov’s rosy slogan anything but a damaging and idiotic lie.  If those folks really think about it, the Democrat convention produced something very similar.