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

Ivanka has described her father several times in this speech as “the people’s president.” This was a moniker claimed by Andrew Jackson.

“Four years later, here I am,” says Ivanka, in talking about campaigning alongside her father. It makes me think of this Helen Anne Petersen article about the Ivanka voter in 2016. I’m less sure going into this year, though, if this voter is still in Ivanka’s camp. As we’ve noted several times on this live blog, much of this week has been devoted to reaching out to women, but as Amelia and Meredith have written elsewhere on the site, women are largely backing Biden more than Trump at this point. Do you think Ivanka and the other speeches from this week might help change that?

Micah, I follow this stuff pretty carefully, and I think the vaccine news has generally been fairly optimistic. But I don’t think anyone who knows anything about vaccines would say you can make very many promises until proper Phase 3 trials are complete. Many drugs and treatments that initially look promising fail for some reason or other once they go through larger and more rigorous trials. Also, some of the optimism about vaccines stems from the fact that there are so many methods being tested, but that could mean the first couple of attempts fail before the next one succeeds, which would be fine in the long run but could push the timeline back.