The Democratic floor fight had a lot of interesting elements. It had Middle Eastern foreign policy relating to an ally (Israel.) It had culture war politics (whether to include a reference to God in the platform.) It had passion on both sides as the Democratic delegates fought to out scream each other on the repeated voice votes. You had comedy as the Democratic presiding officer was stuck between what he heard (that there was no two thirds majority to amend the platform to support Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and mention God), and what he had evidently been told to hear by the Obama camp. It had more comedy as the stunned presiding officer asked for repeated voice votes in the hopes of hearing something more to his liking. There was transparent fraud as the presiding officer chose to pretend to hear a two thirds vote for the amendment that clearly did not exist. This was a perfect media event. To be fair, the Republicans pulled a similar stunt last week, but they carried it off with less televised chaos and the issues were related to delegate selection.
The 6:00 PM Fox News show led off with the Democratic floor fight. I saw the first five minutes of the NBC Evening News before other responsibilities intervened. Those five minutes were taken up with coverage of the Democratic convention, but they didn’t mention the floor fight. Maybe they got to it later.
