1. The unrestrained cheer-leading from the news media in contrast to its week-long sneer at the Republican is so shamelessly biased that American journalism risks crippling its ability to use its giant megaphone to sabotage Trump. They might at least pretend to be fair and objective. I get it: I find it horrifying that Trump is running too. The immediate and unrestrained effort to go stop him, however, is so openly unprofessional, and shows how far the news media’s ethics have deteriorated just since 2008.

2. We could see and hear, during the course of the convention, how Donald Trump’s boorishness and propensity for ad hominem attacks and personal insults have degraded both parties and political discourse generally. And to think, in 1988, Ann Richards was criticized for her George H.W. Bush attacks at the Democratic Convention, and her famous jibe that Bush was born with a “silver foot in his mouth.” The Democrats could have taken the high road, and would have benefited, as well as done the culture a favor. Nah.

3. The most unethical aspect of the convention was the party’s tacit embrace of Black Lives Matters, while the BLM protesters outside were directing white journalists  to “stand in the back” while covering its protests, around the country police officers were facing increasing abuse, and in Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby was graphically illustrating BLM’s attack on the rule of law.

Democrats deserve to pay a high price for this, and I am confident that they will.

4. I owe Senator Eugene McCarthy an apology. I was among the many young  supporters of the rebellious anti-war Democrat who felt betrayed when McCarthy refused to address his beaten troops at the 1968 Convention. He stayed in his Chicago hotel room, angry and resentful of how the party had steam-rolled him and his movement. I thought it was cowardly and selfish. Now, after thinking ill of Clean Gene  all these years, I realize he might have been right after all. Being gracious isn’t ethical when you are required to become a symbolic pawn  to the same dark, unethical forces that you have been telling your throngs to resist and battle despite long odds. If you pull a Cruz instead of a Sanders, you look like you are trying to torpedo your own party. Better, perhaps, to do what Gene did. His integrity told him that the best response was to neither to capitulate, nor be petulant, but just to retreat to fight another day.

I’m not sure he was right, but  I’m no longer sure he was wrong.

I’m sorry, Senator.

5. Before the convention was even over, Bernie Sanders announced that he wasn’t really a Democrat, and was back to being an Independent. I don’t know how to analyze that. Was this his intent all along? If so, he ran under false pretenses. If so, any input he had in the Democratic Party platform—as if it matters—was the product of a lie. He was, however, cheated and betrayed by the party, as the Wikileaks e-mails showed, and if I were Bernie, the fact that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was symbolically scapegoated as a sacrifice to the angry Sanders throng would have been outweighed by the more symbolic hiring of her immediately by Hillary Clinton. Why would anyone want to be a member of a party that shamelessly duplicitous?

6. Which reminds me: Why would anyone want to be a member of a party that shamelessly duplicitous?

7. None of the Democratic Party’s celebrity speakers were as ridiculous as Scott Baio, or the Duck Dynasty guy, but the spectacle nonetheless fed a national malady that responsible officials should want to cure. Why, for example, should Sarah Silverman have a national forum for her political views? She has no broader experience than performing; she’s a college dropout, and a smart aleck without credentials. Is choosing a President a serious matter, or isn’t it?

With this and some of the other choices of speakers, the Democrats made their desire to dumb-down the electorate undeniable.

8. Anyone who thought Silverman’s “you’re being ridiculous” ad-lib was inspired rather than corrupt doesn’t know the difference. I would also suggest that a comedienne like Silverman, who appeared on Conan O’Brien’s show to smear Donald Trump by dressing like Hitler, is estopped from calling anyone ridiculous, especially supporters of a candidate unethically undermined by the candidate Silverman says it makes sense to support.

Insisting that a candidate be honest and trustworthy is ridiculous, eh? Well, that’s why Sarah is a Democrat, I guess.

9. The Bill Clinton Motto: “Fool you once, shame on you, fool you 6,789 times, you’re an idiot, and I ‘m counting on it.” The accolades for Clinton’s lovey-dovey speech to the woman he has systematically cheated on and embarrassed for decades is a powerful rebuttal to the theory of evolution, as the  flat learning curve it reveals demonstrates that human have the intelligence of  howler monkeys. How gullible does someone have to be to believe anything Bill Clinton says or any emotion he projects?

10. As yet another exhibition of grief porn, the Democrats gave a speaking slot to the father of an American -Muslim soldier killed in action and posthumously decorated. “Let me ask you,’ he rhetorically asked Trump. “Have you even read the U.S. Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.” He pulled a copy of the Constitution from his pocket. “In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’ ”

Democrats would be advised not to use Trump’s cavalier attitude to the Constitution against Trump. He probably hasn’t read it, so his idiotic remarks about torture and banning Muslims at least have the excuse of ignorance. Hillary, a lawyer and former legislator, has surely read the Constitution, yet attacks the Second Amendment, supports legislation that would violate the Fifth Amendment and due process, advocates the first proposed amendment to the First Amendment in our history so a federal agency can ban books and movies using the law properly declared unconstitutional in Citizens United, and is running under the banner of a party that supports censorship and speech codes on campus, as well as denying due process to students accused of rape.

I detect no discernible  gap  between the two candidates’ respect for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.