Americana

1. Republicans’ one concern
2. Dems’ hand-wringing
3. The JD Vance pitch
4. Harris v Trump polling
5. Biden’s Milwaukee ally

Also: How the attempt on Trump’s life is playing out in the polls, and JD Vance sidesteps the Ukraine question.

Donald Trump walked onto the Fiserv Forum’s stage as a Caesar, barely wounded by an assassin and in full command of his party. He walked off with comparisons to Castro, even from sympathetic conservatives — a dramatic retelling of the Butler shooting eased into the longest and most meandering acceptance speech since candidates started showing up at conventions.

Republicans were overjoyed, and exhausted. More than a few thumbed their phones when Trump promised an American Iron Dome (“built entirely in the USA”) and explained how UFC CEO Dana White canceled a vacation to be there. They didn’t expect that to matter. Trump had wandered away from the “unity” image that his strategists spent a week talking about. But he had never left an RNC in such a strong electoral position.

His enemies inside the GOP were exiled or conquered; Nikki Haley used her last-minute, post-Butler speech to finally endorse him. His four years as a counter-president, making unusual steps to undercut Biden, paid off. Delegates wiped away tears as they recited the names of service members killed in the evacuation of Afghanistan, whose family members had talked for hours with Trump. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien praised Trump as a “tough SOB,” in a speech that Democrats smarted over for days; it undercut the work Biden did, and Trump didn’t, for organized labor.

They saw Trump’s speech as ineffective, but the rest of the convention as successful and unapologetic — delegates waving signs to support “mass deportation,” four days of unanswered claims that wages were falling and manufacturing was fleeing overseas. They’ll have their response in a few weeks, led by… well, someone.

Republicans fret over possible Biden swap

MILWAUKEE — Nothing could dampen the mood at the Republican convention. Saturday’s failed assassination attempt deepened the delegates’ love for their nominee. Lobbyists who’d bailed on the party after Jan. 6 returned to host parties, with branded cocktail napkins and exclusive suites. Hulk Hogan declared “Trumpamania” as he tore a shirt off; Kid Rock turned Trump’s post-shooting fistpump into a rock anthem.

The only source of doubt, angst, or worry was that Democrats might swap out their nominee.

“If you replace Biden with anybody, it’ll be harder,” said Wes Nakagiri, a Michigan delegate who arrived at the Fiserv Forum dressed up as the 81-year-old president — a Biden mask, a hospital gown, and an inflatable walker. His wife, dressed as “Dr. Jill Biden” in nurse gear, pretended to wag her finger at him.

“He’s so bad!” said Nakagiri. “Strictly from a selfish standpoint, I hope he stays in.”

Dems look past their president

Democrats entered their third week of hand-wringing about Biden: New calls for him to quit, new resistance from his campaign, and a new fight playing out on his favorite morning news show.

On Friday’s episode of “Morning Joe,” Biden campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said that there’d been “slippage” in support, but not much: The race was “hardened” and enormous events hadn’t changed it. Pass the Torch, a group launched after the debate to pressure Biden into quitting, announced a new ad buy that would run during the show in D.C. and Rehoboth Beach, Del., designed specifically to reach Biden: “Be the leader we know you are.”

There is no ideological coherence to the pressure campaign. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a popular progressive, wrote a four-page letter to the president, comparing him to a worn-out baseball player: “There is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out.” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez streamed for an hour on Thursday night, attacking the “class of donors, decision-makers, and power players” who wanted Biden gone, and warning that they had no real plan to win the presidency if they got their way.

On Friday morning, the DNC’s rules committee met to urge a virtual vote ahead of the convention, by Aug. 7. That was Ohio’s original deadline for ballot access, changed in June by Republicans who say they won’t change it back. On the call, DNC chair Jaime Harrison insisted that the early vote, before delegates could meet in person, was necessary to ensure that “our Democratic nominees are on the ballot in all 50 states.”

JD Vance makes his pitch

MILWAUKEE – Ohio Sen. JD Vance joined the Trump ticket on Wednesday night, and will rally alongside the former president on Saturday in west Michigan. It was a Hollywood twist in a story already partially adapted by Hollywood — the conversion of a rust belt Trump skeptic into the man who could inherit MAGA.

“In four short years,” said Vance, “Donald Trump reversed decades of betrayals inflicted by Joe Biden and the rest of the corrupt Washington insiders.” He credited Trump with higher wages, with opposing the Iraq War (which he did, after it started), and with policies that could “stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.”

The Trump-Vance ticket entered the general election with more mythology than political parties usually allow themselves. Like Trump, Vance was famous before he ran for anything, a “working-class boy born far from the halls of power” merging with “one of the most successful businessmen in the world.”

And like Trump, he’d embraced ideas that horrified official Washington. Think-tankers talked about the national debt and tax credits; Vance talked about natalism and presidential supremacy. At a Thursday breakfast sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Vance confessed to evangelicals that he once considered himself an atheist, because he was arrogant, and “that arrogance motivates a lot, frankly, of secular culture.”

Polls: Harris is competitive against Trump

New polling for a Democratic candidate training group found a slight improvement in Midwest swing states if Vice President Kamala Harris led the Democratic ticket. In each state — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — the race was nearly tied.

Rust Belt Rising, a Chicago-based organization that helps candidates with messaging and turnout, conducted three polls with Civiqs, all finding Harris close to Trump in key states. Harris tied in Michigan, where Biden trailed by 3 points; she trailed Trump by 2 points in Pennsylvania, and Biden trailed by 4. In Wisconsin, both candidates were tied with the GOP nominee.

But many swing voters were skeptical or unaware of the record Democrats were running on. In Wisconsin, voters were divided 49-49 when asked if the Biden administration was “bringing manufacturing jobs back home,” a priority with some high-profile wins that the president has celebrated in campaign stops. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, most voters didn’t believe that was true.

“We conducted this poll to provide our party with winning messages no matter the nominee,” said Paul Kendrick, the executive director of Rust Belt Rising. “Our data shows that the Rust Belt states are very winnable if we run on issues of protecting women’s decisions and freedom on abortion, Medicare lowering prescription drug prices, and fixing infrastructure like roads and bridges.

Milwaukee’s mayor stands by Biden

MILWAUKEE – Republicans held their national convention in a city they don’t usually have much praise for.

In 2022, the GOP used images of crime in the city to attack Democrats around Wisconsin, portraying a dystopian future of defunded police departments – though police funding was going up. In the run-up to this week, Donald Trump reportedly called the city “horrible,” then explained that he was “concerned” by the crime there.

None of this was fun for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who’s presided over a post-pandemic decrease in crime, and spent months talking up his city, while trying to ensure that Trump lost his state. Why was Black support for Biden lacking? Should the party really nominate him before the Chicago convention? Would he cooperate if a second Trump administration started deporting non-citizens living in his city?

Ads

• Biden for President, “They Don’t Care.” Last year, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign told the story of Hadley Duvall, a woman who’d been raped by her father and miscarried the subsequent pregnancy. Republicans struggled to respond. Democrats had a model for how to talk about abortion bans. Biden’s campaign has made personal testimonial ads with other women, but this one stars Duvall herself, re-telling the story, warning that it’s now Trump and Vance who’ll “take our rights away.”
• Hovde for Wisconsin, “Big Trouble.” Right now, Democrats are still running alongside Biden, and Republicans are making them hurt for it. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin called Biden’s one of the “most successful” administrations in history; Hovde’s narrator rattles off the biggest Biden weaknesses and asks how she could possibly believe that. “Inflation is sky high. Our border is wide open. Drugs flood our streets.”
• Martin Heinrich for Senate, “Familiar.” Republicans see New Mexico as a target this year if Democratic support collapses — five electoral votes they haven’t won since 2004, and a Senate seat they haven’t won since 2002. Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich’s already working to define Republican Nella Domenici, the daughter of the state’s last Republican senator, as a rich out-of-stater who moved out when “Richard Nixon was president” and returned to buy the seat.

Polls

Correction: An earlier version of this graphic was mislabeled. Sixty-five percent of Democrats said Biden should drop out of the race; 35% said he should continue.

Three weeks after the Atlanta debate, Democrats are getting more restless about their nominee. Biden characterizes that as an elite-driven sentiment for people who don’t represent his base. But the base has been moving, and most Democratic voters wanted another nominee before the RNC got underway. Black Democrats were split on the question, 50-49. White and Hispanic Democrats overwhelmingly want to dump Biden, and majorities of them say they’re dissatisfied that he’s still running.

Saturday’s shooting in Butler changed the way Republicans talked about Trump, from a lucky and fearless leader to one ordained and protected by God. It didn’t dramatically change the race. Since the last CBS poll, before the shooting and the Democrat autogolpe attempt against Biden, Trump’s lead has increased within the margin of error. Most of the voters who say they’re now leaning toward Trump were already with him — half of Republicans, a quarter of independents, and nearly no Democrats. Still, by an 8-point margin, voters say that Trump’s behavior since the shooting had encouraged unity, not division. They’re split down the middle over whether Biden, who made three sets of non-partisan remarks, did the same.

Scooped!

The best story Dave wishes he wrote this week:

One surprise in JD Vance’s convention speech: No mention of Ukraine, or the war he’s been adamant about not funding. Delegates waved signs, which promised that Trump would “end the Ukraine war,” but this never came up onstage. Politico’s Jonathan Martin talked to all the right people about why. “Republicans from the Reaganite wing openly urged Trump to counter Vance’s influence by appointing more hawkish national security officials.”

Next

• 11 days until primaries in Arizona
• 18 days until primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, and Washington
• 25 days until primaries in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin
• 31 days until the Democratic National Convention
• 109 days until the 2024 presidential election

Maybe it’s too early to laugh about this campaign. Tony Hinchcliffe disagrees. His “Kill Tony” podcast, which gives comics one minute to tell jokes as guests try to wreck them, gave the Statler-and-Waldorf job this week to Shane Gillis and Adam Ray. They play Trump and Biden, in full make-up, Gillis encouraging the comics’ worst behavior, Ray drifting in and out of coherence and challenging them to fights. You will learn nothing from watching it, but you might enjoy it, off work hours and on your own computer.

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