That’s A Wrap
We went into tonight’s events with one central question: How would the RNC handle the biggest news stories of today — Hurricane Laura and the ongoing protests around the police shooting Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin?
And as we mentioned several times on the live blog, one of the most glaring aspects of tonight’s programming was the obvious lack of discussion on these topics — one of the limitations of a convention where many of the speeches were pre-recorded.
However, Vice President Mike Pence did give a live speech, and as such, he made clear the GOP’s stance on what is happening in Kenosha, saying, “The violence must STOP – whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha.” He would add later, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” while at the same time arguing, “We don’t have to choose between supporting law enforcement and standing with African American neighbors.“
We saw a summer of protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and there was a seismic movement in public opinion on the question of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The question embedded in this: Is that sentiment wavering — especially among white Americans. And if it is, is that an opportunity for Republicans to sell a convincing message of “law and order” as part of their reelection bid?
Here’s the live blog team’s top headlines and takeaways for this evening:
- Meena: A Virtual Political Convention With Little Awareness Of The Unrests Of 2020
- Emily: Third Night Of The RNC Held In A Different Kind Of Bubble
- Nathaniel: Protests Turn Deadly In Kenosha As NBA Stops Play In Protest And Hurricane Barrels Toward Gulf Coast // Oh, and there was some convention?
- Seth: A Variety Of Republican Messages But Few Mentions Of Hurricanes, Shootings, Riots
- Kaleigh: RNC Suspends Its Disbelief To Focus On Traditional GOP Issues
- Dan: Republican’s Standard Convention Night Sounds Dissonant Notes At Troubled Time
- Meredith: Pence Pitches to “Make America Great Again, Again.”
- Galen: The Pence 2024 Presidential Campaign (Unofficially) Kicks Off
- Geoffrey: Republicans Make The Case To Women That They Should Vote For Trump
- Amelia: Republicans Make a Pro-Woman Pitch On An Otherwise Snoozy Third Night Of The RNC
There was a range of pretty standard messages on parade tonight, mostly vowing that Biden would make America unsafe, abortion is wrong, school choice is good, environmental regulation is bad, etc. Most of this seemed pre-recorded and made very few references to the coronavirus — or issues in the national spotlight this week including Hurricane Laura and the shootings and protests in Kenosha. It was certainly professionally done, but at the cost of looking out of touch.
So, I think it was pretty clear who some of the primary audiences were tonight. We heard a lot about Trump’s support of women (probably pitched to on-the-fence white women voters); we heard a lot about abortion and school choice (clearly pitched to social and religious conservatives). That being said, my biggest takeaways tonight were the way Pence leaned into a law-and-order message and the fact that the protests and shootings in Kenosha barely got mentioned. It says a lot about how the Trump campaign seems approaching the current unrest in the country in the lead-up to the election.
I don’t think that the audience for conventions has a ton of undecided voters, so I watch more to see what issues a party highlights and what future leaders advertise themselves to a national audience. Pence showed that one can translate Trump’s policies into a much more standard political vernacular — and made me wonder if that’s what Pence’s 2024 bid will look like. The focus on law and order isn’t surprising; that’s where Trump’s advertising has focused in recent weeks.
Tonight closed out with the national anthem and a bit of a focus on the crowd standing during the performance. Throughout tonight’s speeches, I found myself returning to the actions of the various athletes who chose not to play today in protest of racial justice and the unrest in Kenosha. Many of tonight’s speeches seemed to hit at the actions athletes had been using prior to today such as kneeling during the anthems and having “Black Lives Matter” displayed on courts, shirts, and jerseys. In fact, the original plan for several WNBA teams that were to play today was to lock arms and kneel during the anthem as they have done throughout the season. But they didn’t do that. They organized a strike and did not play. As a result, the topical beats in some speeches tonight (including three by speakers with football ties) didn’t land quite as sharply as intended.
There was pretty consistent messaging tonight, even if it was a bit of a lackluster lineup. But the evening closed with a solid speech from the vice president and a surprise appearance from Trump, who is currently greeting military veterans. Still, there was some cognitive dissonance with a lack of recognition of the social, economic, and health strife in the country. This isn’t 2016, but in some ways tonight felt like it could have been part of that year’s convention (if, you know, it was digital for some reason).
The GOP spent a lot of time trying to reach out to women voters, perhaps the “security moms” that Kellyanne Conway often talks about. Conway herself was one of the many notable Republican women to speak tonight, and while their messages varied, they all attacked Democrats for what they deemed lawlessness in American cities. They also made strong anti-abortion pitches in many cases, providing the Evangelical base of the party with something to get energized about. These themes fit into the broad attacks that the GOP has made throughout this convention, ones that Vice President Pence reiterated in the closing tonight, where he stressed “law and order” and preserving America.
Perhaps it’s convention fatigue, but I found today’s speeches pretty uninteresting — they just continued to hit on the same themes, and feature the same kind of speakers, as the first two nights. Like others, I was surprised that there wasn’t more mention of the Kenosha protests or Hurricane Laura, although that may have been because so many of tonight’s speeches were pre-taped; Pence mentioned them in his live remarks.
I think this was not the most successful convention night, with a lot of fairly dull, flat speeches that felt largely disconnected from a rather newsworthy day in the country! Pence’s speech was better than most of the others, and I think the setting and the live crowd helped, though it was a long speech. Again, though, journalists are not the target audience for conventions, so the correlation between my assessment and how much this might help Trump electorally should be presumed to be approximately zero.
Trace Adkins closes us out with the national anthem. He was a two-time Celebrity Apprentice contestant, crowned the winner of Trump’s All Star season.
In style and delivery, Pence’s speech reminds me a bit of Biden’s speech. It’s well-delivered, solid, even good — but not soaring or anything like that.
Most of the night, Twitter sentiment toward Biden was more negative than positive. But during Pence’s remarks, sentiment toward Biden has rebounded back into neutral territory. Meanwhile, as Pence has generated volume, sentiment around him has worsened.
Pence is now hitting on several issues. He mentions illegal immigration. It’s worth pointing out that younger Republicans and older Republicans are miles apart on whether this issue is a major problem facing the country. According to a Pew poll from December 2019, just 35 percent of Republicans age 29 and under think illegal immigration is a major problem, compared to 85 percent of Republicans over 65 and 76 percent of Republicans age 50 to 64.
This is basically the “the only poll that matters is Election Day” of Woj tweets. Although it does remain highly unclear what the NBA’s near-term future holds.
Pence says “Joe Biden would be nothing more than a Trojan horse for the radical left.” Trump used almost this exact same phrase last week.
Micah, I think the real test here is that a law-and-order message has worked for non-incumbent campaigns. Richard Nixon in 1968 is the often-cited case, but it helped that an unpopular war in Vietnam and civil strife made Lyndon Johnson more unpopular and served as an anchor for Hubert Humphrey. In 1988, George H.W. Bush was the incumbent vice president, but Ronald Reagan was relatively popular, so the Willie Horton attack probably had a better chance of working.
A tweet from Biden’s account a few minutes ago seems to be embracing the boycott/strike by the NBA players:
I do think Trump’s selection of Pence was one of the more underrated and successful moments in his 2016 campaign. If he had chosen someone else who was more of a wild card, it may have been harder to line up party support behind him during a very roller-coaster stretch run of the campaign.
That was a strongly delivered line by Pence there — “We will have law and order on the streets of America” — and as we’ve been saying on this live blog, it’s a message the Trump campaign is leaning hard into. “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Pence said.
It’ll be quite noteworthy if Biden wins and a “law and order” campaign (and its racial overtones) fails — given the many, many times that message has succeeded.
Pence says, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
Pence’s law-and-order message as he wraps up his speech will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Trump campaign ad this summer. In the month of July, the vast majority of them focused on public safety. There is literally a Trump ad titled “You Won’t Be Safe in Joe Biden’s America” — a line Pence just repeated in his speech. That ad repeats the inaccurate claim (which we’ve heard many times this week) that Biden supports defunding the police.
Pence argues that it’s possible to “support our African American neighbors” while still supporting police officers.
Interesting move by Pence there. He says that Republicans support the police and African Americans.
According to pollster Civiqs, opposition to Black Lives Matter has been rising in recent weeks, but the movement still enjoys positive net favorability.
Pence says he supports the rights of peaceful protesters, but emphasizes his opposition to violence and desire for law and order far more. He mentions Kenosha, along with Minneapolis and Portland, as cities he thinks have problems with violence.
Pence claims that Biden didn’t say “one word” about the “violence and chaos” in cities like Minneapolis and Kenosha. Pence then really drills down by saying the administration will “have law and order” for all Americans, no matter who they are or what they look like.
Probably worth mentioning that the challenge for the Trump-Pence ticket remains the coronavirus, and Trump gets very poor ratings for his handling of the crisis.
Pence says proudly that the Trump administration is “reopening America’s schools.” But according to a YouGov/The Economist poll out today, 58 percent of Americans think schooling this fall should be mostly or completely online. Only 33 percent want it mostly or completely in person.
A pretty striking front page of the New York Times sports section tomorrow:
The general campaign approach here is not unlike that of George H.W. Bush, who was the last incumbent president to lose a reelection bid. He was reluctant to admit that the U.S. was in a recession, until that became seen as a liability. Then, he spent much of the 1992 campaign talking about how the nation was recovering from the recession. That wasn’t totally incorrect, but it didn’t seen to convince voters.
Nathaniel, I was thinking the same thing. The way he’s talking about the pandemic and the tolls it’s had on victims’ families is reminiscent more of Melania’s speech last night than any other passing mentions of COVID-19 throughout the RNC.
He’s also talking much more like traditional politician about mourning and grieving in a moment of intense suffering. It’s definitely a contrast with the way Trump talks about the pandemic and its victims. I’ll be curious to hear what he says about it tomorrow night.
It’s only two data points, so maybe I’m being too hasty, but maybe that’s a pattern, Micah? The headline speakers both last night and tonight have acknowledged the pandemic after the rest of the speakers barely did. But since the headline speakers are the ones who will get the most coverage, maybe that’s all they need to do to show Americans that they haven’t forgotten about it?
Pence is explicitly acknowledging the toll of COVID-19 much more than other speakers.
Pence and other speakers have implied, if not directly stated, that Biden and Harris don’t love America — or at least not as much as Pence and Trump. Pence said that America is “a nation that deserves more gratitude than grievance.” Rhetoric from politicians is often intended to obscure differences and the core ideas at play — and in this case neither party is really being honest about what it is talking about. The entire discussion about racism and racial inequality happening outside of politics has an element of, “Has America always been pretty racist, and it is pretty racist now?”
A lot of non-politicians on the left are saying “yes” to both of those questions, a lot of people on the right think the answer to the second one in particular is “not really.” Pence is implying there is too much focus on what is wrong with America — namely too much focus on racism in America. Biden and Harris are trying to suggest that there is racism in policing in particular, but it can be addressed by somewhat minor reforms — and I am guessing that argument is going to get harder to sustain with NBA players and others suggesting the policing problems in America are really deep.
Micah, it does seem that Republicans are largely giving Trump a pass, and he and his administration are not being held responsible for the economic downturn and excessive loss of life. But I think Bouie is right. People are suffering, and by ignoring that, you’re ignoring their interests. I don’t think they can ignore the effects of the virus until November. Although, as I type, Pence is talking about Trump’s response to the virus.
A question I had going into tonight is how the GOP would address everything happening in Kenosha, and the answer seems to be “we need law and order.” They haven’t deviated from that tonight, so I think it’s less a question of faking it, Micah, and one of accepting that this is what the GOP thinks is the right response and line on the situation.
The words of this Pence speech are actually very close to what Trump often talks about — the low unemployment rate, etc. But the delivery is just more traditional for a politician.
Pence’s approach is very much to say that the administration made America great again, and then a virus happened.
There’s been a lot of passive voice in describing COVID-19 at this convention. “And then the coronavirus struck from China,” Pence just said.
Big applause line for Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the recent normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Pence becomes the latest of many speakers at this RNC to mention the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Trump got a lot of flak for that decision, as it escalated tensions with Iran (a crisis that seems like forever ago but was just in January), but Republicans clearly view it as a sign of strength.
Jamelle makes a good point — the coverage tomorrow could mention a general lack of attention on COVID-19, the Kenosha situation and the hurricane.
In short, yes, Emily!
Fake it ’til you make it?
What do people think of this note from New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie?
How far can you get just faking it in politics nowadays? Isn’t the answer, “pretty far?”
Yeah, Nathaniel, I think appointing right-wing judges is one of the biggest promises kept. Trump has basically done exactly what conservatives want on that front, and of course with McConnell’s help he’s been very successful. Wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more about that tomorrow night.
So wait, the two leading teams in the Western Conference support ending the season?
Meanwhile, in other news tonight…