{"id":2524,"date":"2012-09-06T11:20:27","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T15:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/?p=2524"},"modified":"2012-09-06T11:27:29","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T15:27:29","slug":"a-tale-of-two-conventions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/2012\/09\/a-tale-of-two-conventions\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Conventions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not too far from the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, a local art gallery is featuring an exhibit called “Divided State of America<\/a>,” but it’s not necessary to trek to this space to contemplate the deep divisions within the nation.\u00a0You need only spend a few nanoseconds at the Democratic presidential convention, after experiencing a week at the Republican gathering in Tampa, to realize you have left one reality for a much different one. And this goes far beyond policy positions and political stances.<\/p>\n

Here’s a brief guide:<\/p>\n

The people<\/strong>. It’s rather obvious: Planet Democrat is inhabited by people of different colors; Planet Republican is monochromatic. This stark contrast has long existed and is not a surprise. (One\u00a0recent poll<\/a>\u00a0showed Mitt Romney with zero\u2014yes, zero\u2014support among African Americans.) Yet shifting from Tampa to Charlotte is not unlike the moment in\u00a0The Wizard of Oz<\/em>\u00a0when black-and-white gives way to the full spectrum. In Tampa, it seemed there were more black and Hispanic Americans on the stage than among the audience of thousands of white people. The streets of downtown Charlotte\u2014which, for some reason, is called “uptown”\u2014are overflowing with diversity.<\/p>\n

And this extends beyond race. The thousands of delegates in Charlotte represent more income (or class) diversity.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0<\/strong> A Tale of Two Conventions | Mother Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Not too far from the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, a local art gallery is featuring an exhibit called “Divided State of America,” but it’s not necessary to trek to this space to contemplate the deep divisions within the nation.\u00a0You need only spend a few nanoseconds at the Democratic presidential convention, after experiencing a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,22],"tags":[1440,1437,1438,1420,1410,1439],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2526,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524\/revisions\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/therationalprogressive.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}