Day Three Of The Republican Convention Got A Little Wild

I thought Mike Pence was a relatively good choice for Trump, given his alternatives. And I suppose this is a conventionally effective political speech. But it’s so aww-shucks earnest and hokey, a speech that could have been delivered 10 or 20 or 50 years ago, that it squares very oddly with Trump’s post-modern approach to politics. Maybe Trump and Pence can be effective individually, but their joint appearances have gone pretty awkwardly, and it’s easy to understand why.

We’ve heard many times over the campaign that Trump won a lot of votes during the primary. We just heard it from Pence. Indeed, he did win 14 million votes. Clinton, however, won nearly 17 million. In the last general election, President Obama won nearly 66 million votes. In other words, both Clinton and Trump will need a lot more voters than they got in the primary to win the general election.