Republican Convention: Live Coverage Of The Final Night

To hear stories of how people are grappling with some of the issues Trump is bringing up — college education costs; health care; jobs — you can check out our five-part podcast series Kitchen Table Politics. Within each post you’ll find audio from people telling us stories, in addition to audio of the whole episode. Within the health care episode, we do an analysis of the two candidates’ health care plans, including Trump’s desire to end the Affordable Care Act. Even his running mate, Mike Pence, did not seek to abolish the ACA, but added many conservative restrictions to its implementation in Indiana.

That Supreme Court line from Trump may have gotten the biggest response of the night so far.

Per my earlier comments about convention speeches and talking about change, Trump has developed a “gutting existing policy” thread as he talks about trade deals and foreign policy. The thing is, the policies he talks about are as much the result of Republican leaders as Democratic ones. This highlights Trump’s highly unique situation as a party outsider, but it’s also not uncommon for candidates who come at the end of a political era — the Reagan era in this case — to find themselves in this position.