The odds were stacked against Donald Trump and Republicans and their seemingly star-crossed convention. In the last two months the venue was changed twice as coronavirus cases spiked in the Sun Belt after an earlier flattening. Midsummer brought no relief from either police violence against African Americans or the violent response from protesters. As if to cue up the chaos, police officers in Kenosha, Wis., shot a black man in the back Sunday night. It was a depressingly familiar scene, caught on videotape, as was the demoralizing response: rioting and arson.
At the Democrats’ first-ever virtual presidential nominating convention, the focus was on social justice and the underlying causes of unrest. Republicans, it could be inferred from President Trump’s statements, would draw more attention at their convention to the looting and violent crime that is plaguing American cities. Actually, the Republicans’ online convention -- at least on the first night -- sought to strum more uplifting chords.
Democrats earned favorable reviews for presenting compelling stories from average Americans of every race and creed. Republican image-makers know how to do that, too, but there were whispers that Trump wasn’t relinquishing control of the four-day virtual convention to the event’s producers -- that he would rely too much on himself and his reality-television persona to carry the day. His freewheeling populist/unapologetically vainglorious approach worked great for a game show designed to harshly whittle down GOP candidates, and then swept him into the White House. But considering all 2020 has had to offer, the strategy hardly seemed the antidote for a nation still reeling amid a national pandemic and racial unrest.
Trump’s coronavirus task force briefings featuring the same Trump-centric approach were abruptly aborted months ago, only to be replaced weeks later by a more tightly scripted, shorter version still largely defined by the mainstream media’s attacks on him. With mayhem in the streets and pandemic fears on the uptick again, Joe Biden’s lead in the polls expanded to nearly double digits.
At the end of Monday night, however, the consternation and private hand-wringing seemed misplaced. The first night of the Republican convention was a dynamic rebuttal of Democrats’ attempts to cast Trump as an incompetent racist directly responsible for the 170,000 coronavirus deaths America has suffered this year.
