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Last week, we learned why political parties don’t have conventions during the midterm elections. Because most people don’t care enough to watch.
There was once a time when our national conventions were weeklong pageants of rallies, parties, and backroom selection of their presidential nominee. When primary elections replaced party insiders as the party’s decisionmakers, the gatherings then devolved into weeklong television productions with little actual news for the media or any voters except the most devoted of partisans to follow. And in recent years, the broadcast and cable networks pulled back from gavel-to-gavel coverage to intermittent updates throughout the week leading up to the nominee’s acceptance speech. These events have become primarily an opportunity to reach the party’s true believers through ideologically supportive digital platforms, and strategists in both parties have begun exploring possible alternatives to replace a convention structure that has seemed to outlive its usefulness.
Midterm elections tend to attract even less public interest and less media attention. So, when Donald Trump decided that he wanted to hold a national convention during this midterm election year, it was widely assumed that it was primarily a way to draw attention to himself. As we discussed last week, most presidents tend to concentrate on fundraising during midterm campaigns, keeping a lower public profile given the public’s tendency to balance what they see as the chief executive’s excesses or inadequacies. Given Trump’s extremely low poll numbers, that traditional approach seemed to make sense. Given Trump’s natural instincts for attention, that traditional approach was quickly rejected.
As predicted, the two-day convention was dominated by Trump’s speeches on both nights. A short video featuring Democratic Senator John Fetterman drew some interest on the first night, and Vice President J.D. Vance's address the following night drew a favorable response from those in the convention hall. But otherwise, it was all about the president, who seemed either uninterested or unaware that the many Republican candidates facing the most challenging campaigns stayed away.
The centerpiece of Trump’s talks was his proposal for a $5000 payment to be made to every American if the GOP maintained its majorities in the House and the Senate in November. But many Republican members of Congress immediately criticized Trump’s idea, wanting to know where the money would come from and demanding corresponding spending reductions (an implausible prospect, given the plan’s roughly $1 trillion price tag.)
Even more telling was the response from the party’s leaders. Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t even raise the rebate in his convention speech. Neither did Vice President Vance. Neither did Donald Trump, Jr. We’ll see if the president himself is still talking about this a week from now. Meanwhile, endangered GOP members across the country continue to hope he finds a more plausible way to talk about the economy in the closing weeks before the election.
The convention quickly disappeared from the political dialogue without having made much impact to either help or harm either party. (The following day, Trump spoke at a 9/11 memorial service before flying to Ireland for the weekend.) The much more important and more impactful action that Republicans took last week was far less visible. After months of waiting, the national GOP and affiliated conservative groups began to roll out their first large-scale cash expenditures into their targeted congressional races. If Republicans maintain even a slight chance of keeping their House majority, it will be a result of the massive fundraising advantage that they have compiled over the last two years. And their best defense against the growing threat that Democrats are mounting to win back the Senate are similarly gigantic cash stockpiles.
In addition to the amount of money that Republicans are spending, it’s also worth watching where they spend it. A great deal of the GOP’s early expenditures are being directed into campaigns that ought to be safe territory for them. But Republican nominee Ken Paxton has been struggling in the Texas Senate race, and Trump’s allies have already deployed tens of millions of dollars into that campaign. And there are House districts throughout the country that Trump carried in 2024 by double-digit margins where piles of cash have been directed.
Donald Trump’s $5000 bribe attempt isn’t going anywhere, but the hundreds of millions of dollars that he has collected from conservative donors are starting to flow. That’s the most important development of the first week after the Labor Day election kickoff. And that’s what we’ll be looking back at in November as we sift through the election results.
As always, you can read more of Dan’s writing at www.danschnurpolitics.com.
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