The Democrats put on perhaps the best convention since 2004, when George W. Bush took a big step toward winning a second term. But we’ll have to see how the race looks in two weeks. If Hillary is back ahead, she will presumably be in a strong position to grind Trump down in the Fall with her superior organization, assuming no debacles for her in the debates or damaging external events. If she’s tied or still narrowly behind, well, then, as Jim noted last night, it will be time for them to panic and this campaign will get even uglier.
The Democrats did an exceptionally good job at wrapping a Sanders-lite agenda in patriotic fanfare. If Jeane Kirkpatrick has been watching, she might have wondered what happened to the San Francisco Democrats she used to know. The effort to make Trump seem un-American reached its emotional high point in the powerful speech by Khizr Khan, the Muslim father of a fallen serviceman, brandishing a pocket Constitution at Trump and rebuking him: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
But the two big failings of the week were: 1) There is simply no way to make Hillary into a representative of change, or a compelling figure; 2) There wasn’t much of an effort to drive an economic wedge between Trump and his working-class supporters. This leaves the Rust Belt path for Trump open, although Democrats may figure it doesn’t matter if they can win college-educated whites and eat into suburban Republicans.
One last point: It is, of course, notable that Democrats felt they had the rhetorical opening to wrap themselves in Constitutionalism and American exceptionalism, but it’s a complete fraud. Hillary wants, among other things, to expand on Obama’s executive orders on immigration and to amend the First Amendment. This is the same old progressivism, pushing ever leftward, although for now adorned with “U.S.A.” chants at the direction of floor managers trying to drown out disruptive Sanders supporters and supported by a few generals who can’t abide Donald Trump.
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The Othering of Donald Trump
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