Four more years? Trump’s campaign begins at the Republican convention
Most casual observers will have noticed little from the Republican National Convention beyond the odd social media clip of a screeching Kimberly Guilfoyle or teary-eyed Donald Trump Jr. While many will laugh off the bizarre and sometimes frightening rhetoric – Guilfoyle’s speech in particular would not be out of place at a Pyongyang military parade – of the first three days, the narrative being crafted by the Republicans may have some Democrats quietly worried.
Much like their opposite numbers at the Democratic convention last week, the speakers at the four-day Trump rally were consistently on message. The first three days saw the Trump team exploit the culture war exploding around the United States to paint Biden as an appeaser of woke leftists. Vice President Mike Pence best summarised that message in a 35-minute speech, where he said electing Joe Biden would lead to “radical leftists” entering the White House through the backdoor.
Time and again Pence painted the moderate Biden as a “trojan horse for the radical left” and a pawn of the left-wing of the Democratic Party. The often repeated mantra “Defund the Police”, which became popular among some sections of the left of the Democratic Party through the George Floyd protests, will continue to be used by Trump and his cronies to illustrate this assertion.
The suggestion that Biden, if elected, would capitulate to fringe Black Lives Matter organisers is patently absurd, but it sets the tone for a broader message that the metropolitan Democrats despise middle America and its culture. Republican speakers have hammered home the message that Biden and his party are embarrassed of America, its place in the world and its citizens who are not from trendy coastal areas.
These blue collar Americans, who catapulted Trump to the Presidency in 2016, will likely have also been shocked and appalled by some of the violent scenes seen on their television screens this summer. Even though violent rioters only made up a tiny minority of Black Lives Matters protesters, polling shows the effect they have had on white voters is material. Thirty-three per cent of white respondents to a YouGov/Economist survey last week said racism is a big problem in America – down from 45 per cent in June. Trump and co have been all too happy to exploit this by claiming that only the President can restore law and order to the country, and that Biden on the other hand would stuff his cabinet with militant Marxists ready to start a countrywide intifada against the middle class.
Some commentators have said the conspicuous lack of establishment party figures at the convention is a sign Trump has lost the party and that mainstream Republicans have deserted him. While the Democrats’ convention featured a host of former Presidents and big-name political figures, speakers at the Republican convention have been Trump family members, fringe congressmen and a couple that went viral for brandishing automatic weapons when faced with Black Lives Matter protesters.
But to say this clown car of participants was chosen out of necessity is wide of the mark. Trump’s message since 2015 has been that he is an anti-establishment wrecker who will “drain the swamp” of the faceless Washington elite. Having party grandees at his convention would be the complete antithesis of this persona he has crafted, and would tarnish his brand.
It is a persona that Democrats still do not understand or appreciate. Much of the Democratic convention focussed on personal attacks on the President as they rolled out the self-evident facts that Trump is un-Presidential, volatile, a misogynist etc. It’s truly bizarre that the Democrats have not twigged that people who voted for Trump in 2016 do not care about his character being offensive and crass. They knew exactly who they were voting for in 2016 and they are unlikely to be swayed by the argument that Trump does not deserve a second term based on his alleged misogyny, racism or philistinism.
The President’s message that he will maintain law and order, preserve America’s working class and bring the economy back to pre-Covid levels – GDP soared over Trump’s first three years in office – should not be underestimated. While he will doubtlessly find it hard to defend his record on Covid-19, deaths have now reached 175,000 in the US, it is quite possible this will slip from voters minds if the disease is under control by the time polling day comes around. In any case, he will also be able to continually shift the blame for the virus onto his favourite scapegoat – China.