This is the fifth of the #transitzone, USA 2024, presidential election campaign updates, recorded Saturday 24 August.

It has been 34 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. A truly extraordinary month in USA political history.

The Democratic Party held its national nominating convention in Chicago for four days this week. But there were only the most minor echoes of the turmoil and police brutality of their roiling 1968 convention, held there in the midst of the Vietnam War and in the aftermath of the withdrawal of Lyndon Baines Johnson from the presidential contest and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

The expected Pro Palestine protests were muted and overall, non disruptive.

This convention was a smooth, slick, crafted affair with highly co-ordinated rhetoric emphasising the Kamala Harris, Tim Walz themes of freedom, moving forward, renewing democracy and relentlessly describing, attacking, ridiculing their Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

"Fraudster, Philanderer, Felon" was one piece of alliteration a Democratic speaker used. But there was much, much more, including even a suggestive hand action from, of all people, the ever serious Barack Obama about size: crowd size that is.

At the end of the week, the so-called scion of the Kennedy dynasty, Robert F Kennedy Jr, suspended his presidential campaign, as an independent, to endorse Trump.

In his typically fickle way, Trump, who had earlier blasted Kennedy as a “dangerous radical”, now heaps praise upon him.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke, who followed the Democratic Convention closely, listened to the speeches, observed that very American, often cheesy, saccharine sentimentality, hoopla and razzle dazzle, discuss this pivotal week in the upturned 2024 presidential campaign.

RESOURCES

Margo Kingston, in her commentary, drew upon a range of USA podcasts and other sources. She's including this selection for your information and reference.

"Kamala Harris Wants to Win". The Ezra Klein Show

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/kamala-harris-wants-to-win/id1548604447?i=1000666403310

"A.B. Stoddard: Only in America". The Bulwark Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-b-stoddard-only-in-america/id1447684472?i=1000666394258

"Kamala Harris is not going back to the failed politics of 2016". Nate Silver - "Silver Bullet" Blog

https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-is-not-going-back-to