Overconfidence at the RNC
The Republican Party is ascendant but may be more frail than it looks.
Donald Trump has sat all week in his box at the Republican National Convention with a detached, almost beatific smile on his face. This might be because many of the speakers said he was blessed by God, that it was divine intervention which made the would-be assassin’s bullet miss. He may look this way because one of his handpicked federal judges, Aileen Cannon, has dealt a possible deathblow to the classified documents indictment, the one that would, if it ever saw a trial, probably stick. He may be exulting in his ludicrously good fortune. Bankruptcies, sex scandals, a felony conviction, massive civil judgments, and an ear-flaying bullet have not stopped him. Here he is, 78 years old, the Republican nominee for president for the third consecutive time. It is hard to imagine any politician has been loved as fervently as Trump has by those who support him. Come to Milwaukee, to this convention, and you will see the real, live sanctification of a human being.
A delegate led the convention in applause while wearing an enormous cardboard Trump mask on his face. Others, from Alabama, donned baseball jerseys with “Trump 24” on the back. A man, in full Uncle Sam regalia, sang about stolen elections to the tune of “All About That Bass” as Peter Navarro, freshly sprung from prison, waved to his adoring fans at the Hyatt Regency, where the military stands guard. Merch is for sale everywhere. Biden’s face, superimposed on the Chef Boyardee logo, could end up a favorite. It reads Chef Boy Are We Fucked.
One thought kept trilling through my brain all week: They are incredibly confident Trump is going to win in November. Everyone here is giddy for the future, like fans of a team that just ran away with the division and is now ready for the first playoff game.
Of course they have reason to be. Polls show Trump with a durable and burgeoning lead, as Biden’s disastrous debate performance further erodes his support in battleground states. Life, certainly, is miserable for Democrats right now. Democratic elites, who spent two years pretending Biden’s advanced age wasn’t a problem, now want to dump him but don’t quite know how.
I have one note of caution, though: All of this is starting to feel a lot like 2016, only in reverse. When I covered the 2016 Democratic convention in Philadelphia, virtually every Democrat who attended was certain that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president. Trump had won a fractured primary in unprecedented fashion, and there were plenty of prominent Republicans who wanted nothing to do with him. Ted Cruz spoke at the convention in Cleveland but didn’t offer an endorsement. Other Republicans openly fretted about a landslide or the very destruction of the GOP itself. Clinton was going to win and it was only a matter of by how much.
Some of that same certainty, even smugness, is on the Republican side now. Democrats, meanwhile, are behaving like the 2016 GOP, actively shirking their nominee. This doesn’t mean Biden, or anyone else, will come from behind and defeat Trump. He faces enormous headwinds, beginning with his age. The Democrats’ inability to win rural states means they are at a disadvantage in the Electoral College, making the Trump 2016 trick—losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College—effectively impossible. The assassination attempt on Trump has convinced many pundits that he has locked up the election; he is a survivor, he is indomitable, and that photograph is already iconic.
What is the counter-argument? Well, it’s that the election is still going to be very close and, beyond the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, Trump remains alienating and unpopular. Kamala Harris—or anyone else who, in theory, replaces Biden—will be in a similar position.
The Trump GOP is simultaneously savvier than it appears, and plenty toxic still. They have eaten away at the Democrats’ working class support in the same manner as other right-populist parties around the world. They’ve denounced, repeatedly, mass migration, intuiting that black and Spanish-speaking Americans do not feel much solidarity with immigrants illegally crossing the border. They have downplayed, as much as possible, their furious opposition to abortion, following the lead of Trump himself, who is against a federal abortion ban. They’ve ditched, in rhetoric, their supply-side dogma, embracing a vice presidential candidate in J.D. Vance who is skeptical of corporate power and willing to partner with Democrats to cap the price of insulin, regulate railroads, and halt corporate consolidation. Milton Friedman was nowhere near this Republican convention.
Still, the Republicans are not as dominant as they could be. In Milwaukee, as I imbibed the speeches and the harangues, I considered all that would seem deranged to the median voter. Peter Navarro, fresh out of prison, ranted about the “lawfare jackals.” Matt Gaetz and others rehashed the tired shtick about there having been only two genders when Trump was president. Ron DeSantis fumed, again, about the “woke mind virus.” Just as so many Democrats throughout the 2010s and early 2020s behaved like all politics was waged on Twitter, Republicans remain relentlessly online, convinced their obsessions over stolen elections, the alleged martyrs of Jan. 6, and eliminating trans rights are shared by the broader electorate.
The loudest boos came at the mention of the name Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan Democratic district attorney who had successfully tried Trump. The greatest cheers, naturally, were for Trump himself, for his subdued appearances in the box, his light fist pumps, his waves to the crowd. Many of the speakers, ludicrously, claimed America was in far better shape four years ago, when the pandemic was raging. (2020 is the new 2019, perhaps.) On the convention floor, delegates waved convention signs that read “Mass Deportation Now!” in Trump font. If there were no Electoral College, and Republicans had to become a majority party to win, they would be incentivized to behave differently. It is possible, come November, the Republicans will manage to win at least half the vote for the first time in 20 years. But if they do, it will be thanks to Democratic frailty, not any grand yearning for the Trump project.
I wondered, too, why Trump wanted all of this so badly. He will only get another four years as president. He is not, literally, the American Hitler, and he lacks the competency to cow the military, the FBI, the CIA, and the many Democrat-run states to establish whatever version of fascism MSNBC and The New Republic believe he is after. He longs for power and attention, and perhaps that’s enough for him. Just as Democrats believe Trump will smash up the republic for good if he wins in the fall, Republicans perceive this election in existential terms—Trump’s base earnestly thinks another four years of Biden or another Democrat will reduce the nation to some lawless, burnt-out wasteland, Alvin Bragg and Dr. Fauci and the East Coast/West Coast Marxists teaming up to force through a Great Leap Forward, American-style. It won’t happen, of course, just as elections will be held in 2028 if Trump slogs through it all and gets sworn in as the 47th president. He’ll be in his eighties, like Biden, a diminished patriarch hoping to forestall the inevitable. He’s frail, too.
Ross Barkan is a novelist and journalist. His next novel, Glass Century, will be published next year and he’s working on a book for Verso about the contemporary political situation. His Substack is Political Currents.
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Ross Barkan is too focused on Trump. He ignores how angry people are at the left wings policies, that strike a visceral response. Initiating policies and actions to open the border to a flood of illegal aliens from around the world. Propagating an extreme concept of poly genderism and advocating its teaching to America's children. Allowing our streets and parks to be overrun by deviant lunatics . Ignoring the huge numbers of overdose deaths. Providing at a minimum moral equivalency to the Muslim existentialist enemies of Israel, and their mob actions at US universities. Forcing enormous shifts in energy systems that would not pass a truly democratic vote. Expanding support for a failed educational system. Implementing racist DEI policies in every corner of society. Defying equality by outcome, not opportunity and effort. Demeaning those who support the moral structure underlying the history of Western Civilization. Yes, Trumps has some devoted followers, just as the elite and media has those with Trump Derangement Syndrome. The election will be decided voters who find some of these left-wing policies as beyond the pale and find in Trumps message, not his persona, the hope of ending the lefts vulgar insults to their very being.
It is your views on some of these issues that "seem deranged to the median voter."
You seem to endorse the framing that objecting to the castration of minors and other irreversible, activist-driven pseudoscience medical interventions without parental consent is "eliminating trans rights." I suggest you look at the most upvoted comments on these matters even in the liberal NY Times to get a sense of where the median voter is on this issue. Look at what is happening in the rest of the developed world where the medical establishments are not captured by activists.
Same thing regarding whether the public is in favor of mass, essentially uncontrolled illegal migration through asylum abuse. Which the Biden administration had no interest in doing anything about until very recently, when they panicked and finally took modest steps to reign it in. Just look at the comments in the Times, look at the polls.
Last, I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate in my life and I'm appalled by the lawfare against Trump.