Well, the RNC convention is over, so maybe it’s safe to watch MSNBC again. This morning I’ve been plowing through the reviews. One of the best bits of writing about the convention was published yesterday, by Andrew O’Hehir at Salon, Anti-party in a ghost town: Trump’s undead GOP holds an un-convention. Do read it all the way through. O’Hehir describes a party convention that was almost entirely severed from the history of the GOP. And the people who were there seemed weirdly directionless, as if they weren’t quite sure why they’d come. And here’s the meat of it:
The Republican Party under Trump — and someday soon under Vance or some other heir or usurper — isn’t really a party and has no guiding ideology or sense of its own history. My colleague Amanda Marcotte observed this week that the conventional wisdom describing the new GOP as a cult of personality slightly misses the point. She meant that Donald Trump is the funnel through which MAGA energy flows and the wizard who conjured it forth, but he has never truly controlled it.
If Trump wins this election, he’ll be a lame-duck president in his 80s. More specifically, he’ll be the beloved but decrepit figurehead of the semi-normal popular front of a fascist movement whose darkest and most compelling energies lie elsewhere. Because that’s all the official, above-ground Republican Party is now. Their convention is a deliberately boring dumbshow, listless late-Soviet political theater meant to lull you and me — and most of its actual participants, for that matter — into believing that Trump 2.0 is nothing more than what it says on the box.
By the time of the Reagan Administration the Republicans had learned to turn their televised RNC convention into a slickly produced four-day pep rally, with every campaign button polished brightly and every balloon falling according to script. By contrast, the Dem conventions always seemed a bit disheveled. But I take it this RNC convention was nothing like the old ones.
And then there was Trump’s acceptance speech. I have read there really was supposed to be a plan for Trump to make a “unity” speech and not even mention Joe Biden. He started off well enough, but he couldn’t keep it up. He is what he is. Paul Waldman:
The speech in its written form was what any sane person would have expected: some vague, nakedly insincere words about unity up top, followed by the red-meat speech Trump had always intended to give. But rather than anything resembling a traditional convention speech in form and structure, this was a Trump rally speech, familiar to anyone who has watched one on TV — and an unusually dull one at that.
Here’s how it works: His aides load a prepared text in the teleprompter, and Trump uses it as a scaffold on which he hangs rambling digressions, familiar jokes, bizarre preoccupations, and commentary on the written words themselves (“So true, so true”). He speaks a few of the written lines, then wanders off like Mr. Magoo, then returns to speak a few more of the lines, and wanders off again.
It’s hard to overstate how strange it was that Trump used this extraordinary opportunity, with tens of millions of Americans watching, to offer little more than the umpteenth version of the rally speech he has delivered hundreds of times. Did he say to himself, “Oh, I’ve gotta use the Hannibal Lecter joke, that one kills”? Well he did. We didn’t get the riff about sharks and electric boats, but he did describe a fictional event in which he supposedly visited a shipyard in Wisconsin and on the spot redesigned naval destroyers to make the bow more pointy.
This one is also worth reading all the way through. Waldman gets to the marrow of Trump’s appeal through the use of the German word herrenvolk, “master race,” a term the Nazis liked a lot. And he said what Trump is promising is a a herrenvolk democracy, or one in which only one specific ethnic group (guess who?) is allowed to vote and hold office.
Screw your ideals and principles; the true America is in the blood of the people — or at least some people.
This is why Donald Trump won 62 percent of the votes of rural whites in 2016 and 71 percent in 2020, despite having done precisely nothing in those four years to improve the quality of their lives. This is why he won nearly two-thirds of the votes of whites without college degrees in both elections. You may feel that the economy or the culture has left you behind, Trump and Vance tell them, but you are the realest and truest Americans. It’s in the blood.
And the rest of you? We’ll allow you to be here, but only on “our terms.” For now.
David Brooks, of all people, said this of Trump’s acceptance speech: “The part after the assassination-attempt story was one of the truly awful and self-indulgent political performances of our time. My brain has been bludgeoned into soporific exhaustion.”
At the climax of the Republican National Convention last night, former President Donald Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech was a disheveled mess, endless and boring. He spoke for 93 minutes, the longest such speech on record. The runner-up was another Trump speech, in 2016, but that earlier effort had a certain sinister energy to it. This one limped from dull to duller.
Somebody seems to have instructed Trump that he was supposed to have been spiritually transformed by the attempt on his life, so he delivered the opening segment of his address in a dreary monotone, the Trump version of pious solemnity. After that prologue, the speech meandered along bizarre byways to pointless destinations. A few minutes before midnight eastern time, Trump pronounced a heavy “to conclude”—and then kept going for another nine minutes. Perhaps it was the disorienting aftereffect of shock, perhaps the numbing side effect of painkillers.
I thought this was interesting:
The republican national convention cast a bright light on the party of Trump’s weaknesses: its extremism, its cultishness, its lack of welcome to the majority of Americans. The central idea implicit in the vice-presidential nominee’s speech was the superior Americanness of those with seven generations of ancestors buried in U.S. ground over those whose ancestors are buried in other places. The central idea in the presidential nominee’s speech was “me, me, me, me, me” for more than an hour and a half.
Here Frum is just a tad off. Speaking as someone who has more than seven generations of ancesters buried in U.S. ground, I am very aware that Trump himself and a lot of his minions — Stephen Miller, for example — are only second generation or so. I also note that most Black Americans also have many generations of ancestors buried in U.S. soil, never mind native Americans. And Trump has always seemed weirdly unconnected to American history and culture. Norms, like why it’s important to visit veteran cemeteries, have to be explained to him. And I bet he couldn’t recognize the tunes of “My Darling Clementine” or “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” It’s like he’s from Mars. No, the real criteria are not about how long your family has been here, but whether you are White and male.
Trump really ought to be beatable. His record as president (which Frum accurately reviews) was actually dismal. Biden’s is much better. But you can’t tell that to many Americans, because they have so bought into the Trump mystique and so hammered with propaganda about the failures of Biden that if you tell them the truth, they think you are crazy, or just lying.
Regarding the Biden drama, trying to follow it too closely will give you whiplash. The Conventional Wisdom changes by the hour. He’s getting out! No, he’s staying in! And right now Biden’s staunchest defender is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She and Bernie Sanders are standing by their man. The so-called centrists in the Dem party are in meltdown mode and pretty much resigned that Trump will get another term.
"It’s hard to overstate how strange it was that Trump used this extraordinary opportunity, with tens of millions of Americans watching, to offer little more than the umpteenth version of the rally speech he has delivered hundreds of times."
Paul Waldman seems to have forgotten what Trump's former aides say about him: "He's a moron." So not really strange at all.
The split on the Democratic side seems to be driven by wealthy donors who, maybe, really believe that Biden is senile, but perhaps would prefer someone who supports labor and enforcing tax law less.
It looks very much like both major US political parties are now toast. Between Trump taking over the Republican party and its fundraising apparatus, and the split between the conservative and liberal wings of the Democrats, there's nothing left.
What now?
Vegan Bar-BQ. Two words that are used in isolation with respect and passion. Together they create a disharmony of instantaneous cognitive dissonance with serious levels of discordance. What a brilliant lead to use by Andrew O'Hehir in his Salon article about the republican convention. Yes, it was sold in the compound around the convention. What were they thinking? Did they know they were dealing with a crowd that were proven suckers for a bad deal and would buy in? Or did they know that the cognitive dissonance was lost on this crowd, or they would not even be there as a delegate for Trump. It had to be a very strange crowd indeed.
O’Hehir is a brilliant writer, IMO. Wonderful skill of expression.
As you observed yesterday, the polls aren't moving. The RNC Convention (IMO) didn't do much to communicate to the swing voters in the swing states. Trump's offer to "Unite the Country" was as hollow and cracked as the Liberty Bell. My conclusion: Trump is a one-trick pony who only knows how to pitch to MAGA. Vance is further to the right than Trump, so I don't expect balance or moderation from Vance. The smart political move for Trump would have been to put a woman on the ticket. The second-best move would be for Trump to moderate the hate-speech, let Vance be the rabid dog to keep the base energized while Trump pitches to the center. I don't think Trump can allow anyone to be more hateful about libruls with MAGA at a Trump rally than Trump is. So there won't be a pivot.
There's a "Reality TV Show" way Team Biden could steal the spotlight from Trump at the most crucial time of this election. The outcome depends on swing voters in a handful of swing states. If Democrats turn out women and people of color in large numbers, Democrats win. IMO, the numbers for Trump are baked in. (Not going up or down.) Numbers for Team Biden can go up or down, depending on showmanship. But that's wrong!
This is the most serious election of my lifetime, and I'm reducing the outcome to appealing to the crowd that does or doesn't go to the circus when it comes through town.
Exactly! The election depends on the least informed, most unreliable, and basically stupid voters. The fate of democracy rests with morons, so we better be entertaining. This is the moment for Joe’s case of Covid to be more serious. Not life-threatening but lingering. With few details trickling out. For two or three weeks. Few appearances and leave the question of running or resigning out there so the media goes nuts. Then in mid-Sept, spring the October Surprise. Joe resigns for medical reasons. Harris steps up a POTUS with everything prepared – she hits the airwaves with a message that's honed to a razor edge – with a media who will dump Trump to cover Kamila. ALL the way through October. Suck the oxygen out of the Trump tent. (The reason for Trump to resign is to blow the bottom out of GOP preparations to challenge a change in candidates in the swing states. They plan to "make" Biden run and/or invalidate select swing states if Democrats win.)
My direct paternal ancestor Arendt Jansen Praal was first mentioned in the records of Neiuw Amsterdam in 1660, altho the family anglicised the name to Prall after it became New York. [Proven by DNA links to four distant relatives all over the country]
You know what? My great-grandfather who was older at the time, served in a home-force guard in southern Indiana in the Civil War; my grandfather was born in September 1865. My dad was a Colonel in the Regular US Army before and after WW II, and I spent 6.5 years in the Regular Army including a year in Vietnam, and I'll always add un-repentant draft-dodger to other adjectives describing that piece of garbage, Drumpf.
My parents raised me as a republican, old-school type, but after Vietnam I had my eyes opened and I abhor what that party/mob has become at my age of 83.
And shame forever on anyone who betrays this democracy by voting for him.
"If Trump wins this election, he’ll be a lame-duck president in his 80s"
If Stump wins he'll demand two consecutive terms, who's going to stop him, the Roberts Supreme Court?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udHeBbv0RcI
In all the wildly unsourced speculation about what Biden will do and what the DNC will do and how they might put up someone other than Harris, I'm wondering if there's the perception among the Democratic kingmakers that Harris will not be as progressive as Biden.
That may be true – AOC and Bernie are better positioned than I am to judge that. Joe has been FAR more progressive than I expected. But getting a progressive agenda isn't my top priority. Stopping Trump is. My guess is that the GOP will fall apart when Trump goes to jail. If that happens, empowering the more liberal wing (Bernie and AOC) becomes a priority. But defeat Trump first.
It is over, and true to form a ceremony directed by a very few people. There was no indication of any sort of democracy at work at all. Not a soul stood up and contested that a multiple felon is not to be nominated for president. How odd. Also odd is a man just released from prison given a speaking slot. That is a first for sure. It reminded me of things we were told as children about how Communists do things. They make it look democratic but it is not. It has only the facade of a democracy. Much of it is for show like their trials. They are not real trials or applications of the law in an objective fashion but a show with a preordained political outcome. Not like it is in America (until recently at least). Just show trials not real ones. All treated equally under the law (until recently). All is quite odd. We had a software problem that had world-wide ramifications on Friday. It was called an error, but what a huge error. Blue screens from hell appeared worldwide and everything including hospitals, airlines, and stock markets were effected. Also odd. How frail is that system? Is it Biden frail or worse than that? Is it Trump frail and Trump pathological? How odd not to have a backup to such a frail system. Odd not to have a plan B on something so critical and so essential. Does that not raise national if not world security concerns?
The only bit of the RNC I saw was Mike Johnson proclaiming that "the Republicans are the party of Law and Order". I couldn't stop laughing. The party whose nominee is a convicted felon. He says stuff like that clutching his bible, totally oblivious to his hypocrisy.
I see JD Vance as the best actor they could find who could emulate Trump's MAGA energy. If he had more substance he might be able to pull off Trump 2.0, after DJT shuffles off to the Big McDonalds in the Sky. His Indian wife is an interesting problem.
But mostly I feel that it really is over for this crowd. IMO, so much of Biden's problem is the media, which presents the contest as just a horserace between two conventional politicians. They're way too much in the tank for Trump, who represents clicks and revenue, at least until up until his last, and fatal Big Mac.
George Conway is trying to do something about it. Do visit his Anti-PsychoPath PAC site, scroll down and watch the 5-minute video. He's saying stuff that has needed to be said for a long time. Donate if you can.
Conway is on it but in the weeds too much. A sociopath is a moral moron plain and simple. No matter what they have a criminal mind. They hang out with others of their kind and know what to say to get out of any jam they get into. Don the con. Quite a charmer, and yet a textbook sociopath much like the character Hannibal Lecter he obsesses about. Trump too, like Hannibal, always has another agenda. He has no conscience, no sense of what is wrong and disturbs or hurts others. He actually likes getting away with those actions. He likes law and order because he likes OTHERS getting punished.
Was it not at the trial he invited Stormy Daniels to dinner, yet a dinner she never got. It was not on his hidden agenda. Can you imagine giving a sociopath immunity. Who is crazier? Trump, the Trump voter, or the SCOTUS majority? All seem to be OK with that. Quite the charmer that Trump.