For a while now, the modern Democratic Party, captured by big business and cowed by the Right, has tended to emphasize the symbolic and rhetorical, the great speeches and history-making milestones that the West Wing mistaught a generation was the essence of politics. And the Democratic National Convention is its four-yearly apotheosis, a purely symbolic and rhetorical affair briefly ensconcing American liberals in an imagined version of what their country could one day look like, but — as their party continually insists the other 361 days of the year — never will.

So given that much of what Democrats now offer their most die-hard supporters is pure symbolism, what does this year’s DNC tell us about the party? Namely, that the party is no longer even delivering on that paltry front either.

The DNC is taking place in the midst of what may be the largest protest movement in US history, driven by rage at police brutality and mass incarceration, and demands for racial justice. Naturally, the DNC’s speaking roster this year is stacked with the very people who created that system and turned it on poor, predominantly non-white Americans.