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Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
Jo Freeman: How to Debate a Bully
Jo Freeman writes: How to debate a bully? That was the question Tuesday night at the first Presidential debate of 2020. This was not Trump’s first appearance as a schoolyard bully. What was surprising was that he didn’t leave that persona in the closet in favor of wearing one more appealing to a large and diverse audience. Did he choose to act like a bully, or could he just not help himself? more »
Journalist’s Resource* Election Beat 2020: The Mysterious Voter Registration Deadline
In the 1950s, 90% of Americans lived in states that closed their registration rolls two or more weeks in advance of Election Day, a few as much as a year in advance. The situation today is better, but not commendably so. Most Americans live in states where, if you wait until less than two weeks remains in the election to try to register, you’re out of luck. Officials in states with early closing dates say that it’s necessary in order to prepare the paperwork in time for Election Day. In an earlier time, that claim made some sense. In the electronic age when the records are digitally kept and updated, it makes less sense. A dozen states smoothly manage to let their residents wait until the last minute. They allow residents to register when they go to the polls on Election Day. more »
US Presidential Debates: Three Studies Journalists Should Know About (And The Public!)
Kenneth Winneg and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, American Behavioral Scientist, 2017: In this study, University of Pennsylvania researchers look at whether people gained knowledge about policy issues and changed their minds about the candidates after watching televised presidential debates in 2016. What the two scholars learned: While debate watchers gained knowledge about policies, their assessment of candidates’ qualifications did not change. Neither did their opinions of whether individual candidates, if elected, would threaten the well-being of the nation.
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Without Ginsburg, Judicial Threats to the ACA, Reproductive Rights Heighten: “Among other things, the Affordable Care Act now dangles from a thread”
Adding a justice opposed to abortion to the bench — which is what Trump has promised his supporters — would almost certainly tilt the court in favor of far more dramatic restrictions on the procedure and possibly an overturn of the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. For Ginsburg, those issues came down to a clear question of a woman’s guarantee of equal status under the law. “Women, it is now acknowledged, have the talent, capacity, and right ‘to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation,’” she wrote in her dissent in that 2007 abortion case. “Their ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to ‘their ability to control their reproductive lives.'” more »
