What Went Down During President Trump’s Closing Speech At The RNC

Despite both conventions’ focus on trying to win over members of the other party, it’s worth remembering that the Pew Research Center found earlier this month that a relatively small share of people move between the parties. Only 9 percent of people who initially identified as Democrats in September 2018 had switched to the Republicans or leaned toward the GOP as of July 2020. And it was exactly the same share moving in the other direction — 9 percent of Republicans became Democrats or started to lean that way. And 3 percent of each party no longer leaned one way or the other.

This section featuring former Democrats touches on the question of party change, with one of the featured speakers even using the world “realignment.” The idea of realignments is controversial among political scientists, some of whom are suspicious that elections can be neatly divided into ordinary and extraordinary. But the evidence suggests that 2016 was pretty ordinary. Some of this talk about the Democrats undergoing a change sounds like language from the early 1980s, when the parties were much earlier in their process of sorting on ideology and social issues.

On the topic of social distancing, part of the issue for Trump is going to be the extent to which the press focuses the risks of this evening’s 1,500-person event rather than the actual speech. I’m listening to ABC News radio at the moment, and they are speaking with a doctor who is stressing that “we have to follow the science” and saying that he would recommend against going to an event like this, while encouraging mask-wearing and physical distancing. They’ve also pointed out that D.C. currently doesn’t allow gatherings of more than 50 people. (This is federal land, so those rules don’t apply). Particularly given his ratings on handling the coronavirus, does the president really want to eclipse his “law and order” message with concerns about the pandemic?