We rethink the week with Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; Rick Newman, lobbyist and former NH state representative; and Robert Hennelly, investigative reporter for Slack.com, the NJInsider, @stucknation, and for The Chief/Leader, a public employee union journal in NYC.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
We look at the Democratic convention in the rear-view mirror, and we anticipate next week’s Republican convention. The Democrats offered a feel-good kind of week, showing us what a good person Joe Biden is, kind and compassionate, enjoying relating to ordinary people and helping them. At the same time, the convention was short on detail, short on depth, short on specifics — short on policy altogether.
Perhaps this was the Democratic Party’s intentional strategy: Instead of risking alienating some voters with specific policies, the candidates spoke in generalities (We’ll make sure health care is available; We’ll keep people safe; etc). By omitting any discussion of just how they might accomplish these things — what particular programs they’d implement — the Party hoped that every voter will hear what they want to hear in whatever the candidates are saying. Each voter will project his/her own beliefs onto whatever generalities Biden-Harris talk about.
We wonder what the Republicans — now controlled by Trump — will try to do at their convention. They simply can’t plausibly say the kinds of things that Biden said: that they will bring people together, that they sincerely care about everyone and not just the rich white males.
Instead, we expect that the Republican message will be: Joe Biden is part of the progressive wing of his party and Kamala Harris will be captive to AOC and the squad, the dangerous left wing/socialists. (Read: foreigners, not true Americans.)
The Republican convention surely won’t look as beautifully diverse as the Democratic convention. The Republicans are almost all white (although they’ll try to showcase a couple of conservative people of color).
But because the convention will be dominated by Trump (apparently, he’ll be appearing every day!), we expect the rhetoric will repeat the divisive, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic — and inconsistent, provocative, ad hominem attacks that the president is known for. Oh, did we mention lies, lies, lies?
The Republican strategy seems to be to paint a scary picture of *how frightening our world will be if Biden is elected.* Interestingly enough, however, that parade of horribles looks almost exactly like the world that now confronts us — on Trump’s watch: chaos, violent confrontations in the streets, an economic crisis, good people suffering.
Four years ago, candidate Trump asked voters to take a chance and vote for him. He asked the question: “What have you got to lose?” Unfortunately, we now know the answer. If Trump asks that same question at his 2020 convention, it will remind everyone of Ronald Reagan asking voters in 1980: “Are you better off now than you were four years earlier.” Not many Americans today could answer that question in the affirmative.
