MY HOPES FOR THE RNC

 

The Democratic convention was last week, and, considering the enormous changes that the coronavirus pandemic caused, it actually went quite well.  There were a few technical glitches, but no serious problems.  Barack and Michelle Obama gave powerful speeches, capturing the fear that so many Americans have at the prospect of four more years of Donald Trump.  Bernie Sanders gave a more full throated endorsement of Joe Biden than he did of Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen, which probably angered her, but also showed the seriousness of this election.  As for Biden's speech, well,  Trump's recent,  childish taunts about Joe Biden's mental acuity set the bar so low for him that it was almost impossible for him not to exceed expectations.  And he did, with even conservative outlets admitting that he did a fine job.

Generally speaking, there is some debate as to just how much effect conventions really have on elections.  Usually, the candidate of the party that just held their convention gets a small bump in the polls right afterwards that eventually fades away by election day. 

If conventions do make a difference, the more lasting ones seem to be more about provoking a backlash than anything else.  Way back in nineteen ninety one, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan ran against then president George Bush in  the primary by deriding the president as betraying Republican principles; Buchanan also added  heavy doses of outright xenophobia and homophobia.  Buchanan didn't win the primary, but he did well enough to earn a prime time speaking spot at the convention.  He then proceeded to whip up the crowd by delivering a speech in which he declared  that "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself".  He sprinkled references to what he called "homosexual rights" and the nineteen ninety one riots in Los Angeles, saying "And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country."  While in the moment this fiery speech succeeding in energizing the convention crowd, it's extremist tone probably backfired against Bush, scaring away moderates and helping him lose the election.

And then in two thousand and eight, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave a speech at the Republican convention, and, as with Buchanan's speech, it delighted the crowd.  But it also caused a huge influx in donations to the Obama campaign.  In fact, the Obama campaign raised over ten million dollars the day after speech, without doing any official fundraising!  Once again, crazy rhetoric played well to the base of the party while scaring off moderates.

Somehow, this pattern did not follow again in twenty sixteen, perhaps because  the vile hatred and boasts that Trump spewed then were no different than the speeches he had been giving for months.  People already knew what they were getting.

But what of this year's convention?  Well, deprived of his adoring crowds, Trump may seem a little diminished, and I'm sure his words have all been analyzed carefully before he reads them off a teleprompter.  But, in a predictable move, he is bucking tradition by speaking at more than one night of the convention, which means that there is a fair chance that he may go off script (as he often does during his teleprompter written speeches) and start improvising his thoughts, which, as his many speeches have shown, are often full of hate and lies, not to mention his odd obsessions on topics like low flowing shower heads!

And there's an even greater chance than some of the other speakers will hurt him in some way; to me the most potentially offensive words may be spoken by Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the married couple that stood outside their house holding weapons because they felt "threatened" by peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.  What possible message can they hold for America other than racial fear and love of guns? Inviting such incendiary figures to a major party convention could prove disastrous for the Republican party, but then, I could be wrong. 

It pains me to say it, but it's true.  Part of Trump's winning coalition in twenty sixteen were voters who shifted after supporting Obama in twenty twelve.  Will the RNC produce extremist speeches that result in them fleeing the Republican party in November?  It seems possible, and I certainly hope it will.  Biden is going to need to bury Trump so that Trump can't cry foul and try to steal the election.  And that burial may begin this week.  Stay tuned.

WHAT IF HE WINS?

 

The usually reliable website FiveThirtyEight, which uses averages of multiple polls to get a broad snapshot of the country, currently ranks Joe Biden as the favorite in November, putting his victory at a seventy three percent probability.  To those of us longing for a return to sanity in the White House, this is good news, and his pick of the popular senator Kamala Harris as his running mate should give him a boost.  The fact that Trump has already despicably latched onto yet another birther conspiracy concerning Harris's ability to run (she can) shows how scared he is.

But just because Biden is the favorite doesn't mean he will win.  Remember, Hillary Clinton was also favored in twenty sixteen.  While there's little chance of Trump winning the popular vote, he may very well win the electoral college again.  Consider that he is currently (and admittedly!) defunding the post office as a way to tamp down the number of people voting by mail, which he thinks will benefit him (although there's some debate about that).  And that the conservative governors and legislators around the country will do all they can to try and suppress the votes in non white communities to try to help him.   They're even pushing to have rapper Kanye West's name put on the ballot in swing states, in an absurd attempt to push the black vote away from Biden!

Speaking of race, a recent Newsweek poll says that fifty percent of white people in this country are planning to vote for Trump.  On the one hand this number makes me gasp and wonder just what Trump has to do to lose the white vote, given his utterly disastrous handling of the coronavirus.  On the other hand, Biden getting half of the white vote would be an improvement over the usual numbers that Democratic presidential candidates get.  Barack Obama won twice without winning the white vote, so even only half of white voters voting for Biden is good thing, even though I struggle to understand how anyone could vote for Trump.

So what if he does win?  It will be utterly demoralizing to progressives like me, as Trump will continue to pack the judiciary with conservative judges who will be able to make decisions for decades.  Roe vs Wade could be overturned and gay rights gains could be rolled back across the nation.  And his dismantling of any kind of response to the onset of climate change will continue, as will his xenophobic assault on immigration.  America's standing in the world will sink even lower as he inevitably will insult our allies and embrace dictators as he has already for the past four years.   And with no real restraints, his corruption will go on unabated, as his own party will, as always, confuse to condemn him as uses his position of power to line his own family's pockets and go after his perceived enemies.  And the nightmare gets worse as his children start to consider running themselves in later elections!

But there is one thing that even Trump's victory can't stop: the changing demographics of the American public.  Recently, former Republican consultant Stuart Stevens has been giving interviews in which he bluntly admits that the Republican party has been all about exploiting racism for decades, with Trump's full throated bigotry being the inevitable result.  He also points that accepting Trump's bigotry is no plan for the future, stating that right now in the US, a majority of children under the age of fifteen are not white, and that even among white people, younger voters are becoming more progressive.  And those young people will be growing up knowing that the Republican party is one that has embraced a man who entered into politics through birtherism and went on to rule as an openly racist and misogynistic president.  These young people will eventually form the same kind of coalition that put Obama in the White House for eight years.  Putting it bluntly, even if getting behind Trump wins the White House for the Republicans for four more years, their party will be tarred just by associating with him, as they should be.  No amount of voter suppression and gerrymandering can prevent what is coming for the Republican party, which will have to change soon or risk becoming irrelevant.  Harnessing white rage has worked for the party since Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, but it won't last forever. American will become a more fair and just society someday in the future, even if Trump wins four more years.  You can count on it. 

CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM

     On July twenty ninth, President Donald Trump  tweeted  out this message: "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???".  His constant unproven charges of voter fraud and desire to move the election prove one thing:  he knows that he's losing.

    Yes, if the presidential election were held today, there's almost no chance that Trump would win.  While we all don't want to make the same  mistake we did in twenty sixteen and say that Biden has it in the bag, the polls do look good for him.  As the website 538 recently posted, with less than a hundred days to the election, Biden's lead is now better than Clinton's was at her best.  There are a number of reasons for this, but to me it really shows that  the Democratic primary voters cynical decision to run an old white guy against an old white guy was correct.

    Are there ways that Biden could blow it before the election?  Sure, he could make one of his trademark verbal gaffes that winds up getting stuck in the media's spotlight, he could totally tank the debates, or some kind of "October Surprise"  could  arise, like the James Comey's memo about Clinton's emails.  And, of course, Russia is still on Trump's side and is actively working for him, no matter how much he denies it.  

    And then there are the ways that Trump could steal the election if it's close: his constant attacks on mail in voting means that he could legally contest results that don't go his way.  He might even try to slow down the post office as a way to throw out mail in votes that don't arrive on election day.  Really, with a human being as horrible as Trump, almost anything is possible. 

    Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that Biden will win, seeing as how the coronavirus is such a big,  tragic story that Trump's attempts at  media distraction will mostly be ignored as his usual bloviating by everyone outside of the right wing media bubble.  And only the most insanely loyal Trump supporter can say that he has handled the virus well with cases currently surging at over five million in this country, as other countries have already started to recover.  

    Hopefully, Biden will win big, so big that even Trump himself will struggle to argue with the result.  It's insane to think that a president who lost the popular vote by millions and has never had an approval rating over fifty percent will only lose if he is soundly defeated, but here we are.  With any luck, a few months from now Biden will begin the painful process of trying to undo the enormous damage the Trump administration has done to both this country and the world.