1) Donald Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday night at the GOP convention was about what you’d expect, if a little more subdued (low energy?) then usual, apart from the somber recounting of the assassination attempt against him. It included a fusillade of fabrications, including his completely unsubstantiated claims about waves of convicts, terrorists, etc “invading” our country; his false assertions about crime-infested cities (which, the available data suggests, is now at or near fifty year lows for violent crime after having spiked during the first two years of Covid); Biden’s alleged plan to increase taxes by four times (no one can figure out where that one comes from) and, of course, his serial lying about the 2020 election. Fact checking remains necessary, but what was said about Trump in 2016 remains true - his supporters take him seriously, not literally.
It’s the emotional content of the messaging that matters, not the facts. Immigrants are a menace, so making preposterous claims about who they actually are affirms and reinforces the fears of the intended audience (Fact check: the people crossing the border are overwhelmingly economic migrants leaving dire circumstances for the prospect of a better life, not menacing criminals. Studies repeatedly show they are less likely to commit crimes than native born Americans); claiming he enacted the biggest tax cut ever (not true by a long shot. Obama, for example, enacted two larger ones relative to GDP), or that world peace would reign on his watch, or that Iran would not be close to producing nuclear weapons, all absurd statements, are simply meant to affirm that he is the greatest negotiator and businessman ever (Fact check: Trump pulled the nuclear deal Obama had signed with Iran. *Every* arms control expert says that decision accelerated Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as of course it was going to do). Since he cannot repeat those literal words over and over again, he says them by way of what amounts to parable, speaking in absurd exaggeration or falsehood about what he has done or will do and what kind of man he purports to be.
What is consequential about Trump’s entire political persona is the surreality of it all. After nearly a decade of being subjected to it, to those for whom Trump’s litany of grievances isn’t emotionally resonant, his persona has induced a sense of disorientation and demoralization. In part, that demoralization results from the degree to which his persona dominates discourse, leading people to exaggerate the extent of its resonance. The fact is, however, that Trump’s persona is and has always been unpopular with a clear majority of Americans, even for a significant proportion of the electorate that might nevertheless vote for him. That’s important to keep in mind as a bulwark against utter defeatism.
2) It has been universally noted that the 2024 GOP convention represents the final triumph of Trumpism over the Republican Party. One striking illustration of that fact: every member of a GOP presidential ticket in the 21st century, other than Trump, was absent from the convention, including: a two-term President (George W. Bush); his Vice President (Dick Cheney); the other 21st century GOP presidential nominee (Mitt Romney, as well as his running mate Paul Ryan); and Trump’s first term VP (Mike Pence). Trump has vanquished all those in the party who have challenged, in any way, his hold over it. Only those who have bent the knee may remain in its good graces.
At the same time, in policy terms, Trump represents a continuation of the longstanding foundational commitments of the GOP, particularly with respect to domestic policy. If he is President again, he will, of course, continue to appoint rightwing judges, very much like Alito (appointed by George W. Bush) and Clarence Thomas (appointed by George H. W. Bush). He will sit atop an administration that will pursue an extreme social agenda, including prosecuting further the war on abortion access (and much else in the wishlist of the extremist Project 2025).
Despite some rhetorical gestures to the contrary, a second Trump presidency will continue to appoint judges and other key officials hostile to organized labor. His supposedly working-class champion running mate, JD Vance, has a 0% voting record in the Senate, according to the AFL-CIO, his voting record overall skews heavily in the pro-business, anti-labor direction you’d expect and his call for a President that won’t be in the pocket of big business is absurd (the biggest contributor by far to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign is the pro-Trump Tech billionaire Peter Thiel). As he did in his first term, Trump will push for tax cuts and deregulation that will further enrich corporations and the already wealthy, while gunning for Obamacare, Medicaid and other social programs that do benefit the less well off. In short, Trump will pursue the same oligarch friendly policies he and every other Republican President has since Ronald Reagan.
3) Finally, for all the sturm and drang of the past three weeks, the race remains close. Two days post-convention, the Economist poll aggregator has Trump ahead by three points. Trump himself is a flawed and unpopular candidate, albeit with a very devoted and enthusiastic base. In the next couple of weeks, Democrats will resolve, once and for all, the question of who their nominee will be, at which point we will have a clearer sense of the shape of the race. As yet unforeseen factors may influence its outcome, but Democrats are not running against an unbeatable colossus, not by a long shot.
Nothing that happened this week in Milwaukee changes that.
So, chin up!