Don’t expect a surprise O’Henry ending to the Democratic National Convention. The script has been rehearsed like a marriage ceremony. Vice President Kamala Harris will be formally crowned as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be officially anointed as Harris’s vice-presidential running mate.

The convention will witness no reprise of 1968 in Chicago, where Democrats self-immolated over the Vietnam War and Mayor Richard Daley’s orchestrated police brutality against protesters. The 2024 convention will be a tea party in comparison. The prospect of losing the White House to former President Donald Trump will concentrate the mind of the Democratic Party wonderfully.

To be sure, fissures in the Democratic Party remain. There is division over the Israeli devastation of Gaza, fortified by the unconditional delivery of billions of dollars of U.S. weapons and Israeli brushfires with Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis, which could suck in the United States. Naval forces have already been dispatched to the Middle East in anticipation of a wider war.

Harris must tack to avoid distancing herself from President Joe Biden’s uncertain trumpet supporting Israel. She must display sympathy for Arab Americans infuriated by Israel’s starvation, killing and serial displacements of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. But she must also reassure Jews and AIPAC that the Palestinian chant “from the river to the sea” will be dead on arrival in a Harris presidency. Speaking to all three audiences sincerely will require a political deftness that may be beyond Harris’ considerable talents. Being all things to all people requires the magic of Houdini.

Expect to see a focus on women at the DNC. Contrary to self-coronated political genius James Carville, it’s not the economy, stupid, at least not for women. It’s about respect. Women vote at a higher rate than men. President Ronald Regan fretted over the “gender gap” in his 1980 victory. It caused him to appoint the first woman to the United States Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor, over then-Justice Department favorites Robert H. Bork and Antonin Scalia.

Women register and vote at higher rates than their male counterparts. Yet Trump disrespects, demeans, belittles and humiliates a majority of the American electorate at every turn. He boasts of grabbing their private parts. He mocks their looks. He cheated on his wife, Melania Trump, shortly after childbirth. He has lost two sexual assault cases brought by E. Jean Carroll and refused to take the stand in his own defense. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, asserts that women should remain in dysfunctional marriages even if it risks violence. Vance disparaged women to Tucker Carlson as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” He compounded the insult with the snarky quip, “I’ve got nothing against cats.” Trump added to his problems with women by casting aspersion on Harris’ claim to be both Black and Indian.

But focusing on the gender gap can be overplayed, as the waspish, peevish, haughty Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could be to the 2024 DNC what Clinton was to the 2016 convention. Nominee Harris would be well advised to keep Pelosi marginalized, like an extra in a Cecil B. DeMille cinematic extravaganza. Democrats regularly lost seats in the House during Pelosi’s speakership. She lost nine House seats in the 2022 elections, handing control to the Republicans. Pelosi can raise money, but she’s completely empty of electrifying, unifying ideas to inspire a political audience. She epitomizes tribalism at its worst. She drummed rival Jane Harman out of Congress to send a message not to disturb her leadership.

Harris, like all politicians, is a sociopath who craves power for the sake of power and readily cuts Faustian bargains to gain it. She and the DNC will saunter toward the center no matter how contrary to past policy positions in hopes of defeating Trump. French Protestant King Henry IV famously confessed, “Paris is worth a Mass.” Politics has not changed since then.

Harris and the Democratic Party platform will switch or soften their stances on immigration, crime, national security, the soaring national debt, the green economy, LGBTQ+ and extravagant entitlement programs. But it will be all for show. They will switch back to the same old bankrupt policies if they win the 2024 presidential election.

What is regrettable is that the media will be a megaphone for Harris eager to coronate the first woman president. The media will make personality over policy the centerpiece of the 2024 campaign. Being female will excuse a motorcade of hypocrisies.

But the United States will survive because the people are better than their leaders.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.