Besides running so behind schedule that most people on the East Coast are in bed before the last speakers take the stage, one thing that has stood out about the 2024 Democratic National Convention more than anything has been the overt effort to cast the gathering as patriotic.

For years, the Democratic Party has struggled with a perception that the party is unpatriotic and condemns the nation’s founding and ideals as racist and oppressive while blurring the distinctions between the United States and other nations. In 2020, members of the party famously bent their knee at the altar of “institutional racism” and pushed for the removal of statues of prominent figures in history, including Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, this year, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tried to remove a statue of George Washington from city hall before later backtracking.

But at the DNC in 2024, chants of “USA” alongside signs bearing the same three letters, country music bands, and declarations that this “joyful” event is about how much the party loves its country are clearly trying to paint an image of a patriotic event.

Still, the party can’t seem to let go of some of its radical anti-American elements. To begin, the first page of the party’s 2024 platform is effectively an apology for the existence of the city of Chicago and the U.S.

“The Democratic National Committee wishes to acknowledge that we gather together to state our values on lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial,” the very first page of the platform says. “We honor the communities native to this continent, and recognize that our country was built on Indigenous homelands. We pay our respects to the millions of Indigenous people throughout history who have protected our lands, waters, and animals.”

From there, the DNC tacitly admits that Native American tribes fought with each other over land, much like they did with American settlers. In the second paragraph of the land acknowledgment, the DNC lists a number of tribes that claim the Chicago area as their ancestral home, before adding a whole bunch more as secondary claimants.

“While we meet in Chicago,” the platform says, “we also recognize and honor the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe, also known as the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. We acknowledge the many other tribes who consider this area their traditional homeland, including the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, Kickapoo, and Mascouten.”

By their own measure, chanting “USA” is an act of disrespect to the tribes whose land they currently occupy.

But even on the floor of the convention, the Democratic Party’s brand of patriotism feels contrived only as a response to former President Donald Trump. Trump’s primary campaign message is effectively this: The economy sucks, the border is a mess, and wars are breaking out all over the world, and he is the only one who can fix them.

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Trump is speaking to the pains and difficulties of everyday people with his promise to “Make America Great Again.” The response of the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris is to accuse Trump of hating America by denigrating it and, in fact, that the problems in the country are easily addressed and the deep-rooted cynicism and distrust toward those in power by the masses is of little concern.

The DNC can chant “USA” and wave all of the American flags it wants, but until the party breaks its ties to elite academics and left-wing activists who have pushed the party to coastal and urban elites at the expense of the industrial middle class, its show of patriotism will ring hollow with millions of voters.