Rasmussen used the occasion of the four day Democratic Party hate and hypocrisy-fest to poll Americans about political conventions. The results are here. The whole exercise was misleading, since what were once conventions that actually decided something stopped being so long ago, and whatever these 2020 pandemic-mutated things are—the GOP version will be next week—the fact that there really isn’t a live gathering of people makes calling them a convention the equivalent of Abe Lincoln’s quip about calling a dog’s tail a leg.

The only vaguely interesting result of the Rasmussen poll was in response to this question: “Have you ever changed the way you were going to vote after watching a national political convention?” According to Resmussen 19% said “yes.”

Absent more details, such as…

• Did it make you want to vote for that party’s candidates, or against them?
• Which convention or convention affected you that way?
• What was the factor that changed your mind?

…the 19% tells us nothing, except maybe that almost 20% of those polled have cognitive problems. Why would anyone decide how they were going to vote based on a convention, before the campaign, before debates, before more than two months of unknown developments? I guess these are the slugs who want mail-in ballots. Their minds, such as they are, are made up based on little substance, complexities don’t matter, and they’re just voting by reflex and out of ignorance. Might as well vote in August!

Back when important decisions, like, say, who the candidates would be, were made at party conventions, of course observers’ votes were changed. When was the last time that happened? The 19%, if it isn’t made up of idiots, must consist of people 70 years old or older. I’ve seen a single convention that would have changed my vote, and it occurred before I was eligible to vote: the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It’s a testament to how much people disliked the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, that anyone voted for the Democrats after that, with mobs of hippies demonstrating in the streets and Chicago police beating them with clubs, while inside the convention hall. Senator Abe Ribicoff was describing the police as “the Gestapo” from the podium while blaming eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey, and Chicago Mayor Daley, his face contorted with rage, shouted from the  the audience, “Get that Jew off the stage!”

Nice.

Now, it might be interesting to know how many people changed their minds watching the just-completed Democratic National Convention, which descended into sophomoric insults and taunting, as when MC Julia-Louis Dreyfus—what was this,  a roast?—bantered back and forth with Stephen Yang while deliberately mispronouncing Vice President’s Pence’s name. I cannot imagine anyone who wasn’t already among the Trump Deranged watching this fiasco and saying, “What? The President called white supremacists “‘fine people'”? [Yes, they repeated that  lie] President Trump caused the pandemic, while Andrew Cuomo was handling the virus perfectly? I did not know that! Well, I’m voting for Biden, then!”

I can imagine a rational Democrat watching Bill Clinton having the gall to speak about Presidential conduct in the White House, Hillary Clinton complaining  again about the Electoral College, the obnoxious spectacle of bitter NeverTrumpers like John Kasich and Cindy McCain allowing themselves to be exploited and the whole event going on while Democratic Party-celebrated rioting was still afflicting major cities, and such a Democrat thinking, “I don’t recognize this party! I can’t vote to put people like this in power!”

So I don’t know what that 19% means. Especially since it’s probably as accurate as the rest of the polls we’ve been seeing.