Everyone is talking about the Democratic National Convention, which got underway Monday in Chicago, but our minds turned Monday to what we saw, or rather what we did not see, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month.
No former president. No former vice presidents. Very few party grandees of any kind, whether governors or former top Republican officials. No sense of tradition, beyond a two-bit video homage to Ronald Reagan, making ample use of the public domain.
Little to remind folks that, yes, politics are about the future, and, yes, the Republicans have morphed into a predominantly working-class party unrecognizable from 30 years ago, but great leaders are invariably students of the past.
This is what Donald Trump has wrought on the Grand Old Party; he has obliterated its history in favor of his own cult of personality.
On the surface, the Republicans’ Milwaukee shindig felt like a successful convention. The mood was buoyant on the floor as most delegates clearly believed victory was in the air following President Joe Biden’s disastrous and Democrat-disillusioning debate debacle. Their nominee, Trump, had survived an assassination attempt and had both the courage and the presence of mind to pump his fists defiantly in the air; his reward was a pervasive feeling at the Fiserv Forum that Trump was a protector of the disenfranchised, that he would stand, in the words of Linda McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment fame, at the very “gates of hell” to hold back what many Republicans see as a collection of malevolent forces changing the nature of the nation they love.
But then, on the convention’s final note, Trump failed to exploit his moment, rambled on for more than 90 minutes and pricked the air out of every balloon in Milwaukee. His supporters are a loyal crowd, aware of Trump’s imperfections, and they tolerate most anything. But when a convention has no connection to anything beyond one man, the final moment of that Thursday night in Milwaukee was not so much a confirmation of prior success as a precursor of the collapse that has occurred since Biden made way for Kamala Harris and Trump began to flail.
Trump’s show in Wisconsin was reliant entirely on its star with no understudy present backstage. Always, but always, an ill-considered move. And not a mistake the Democrats are about to make. Their entire convention is dedicated to insisting otherwise, and they already showed us they could change their top billing on a dime.
Here is just part of what the Democrats planned for Chicago: a tribute to Jesse Jackson, once a growling lion of the party, now aged; an homage to the ailing Jimmy Carter from his loving grandson; two former presidents; a figure who was both first lady and secretary of state, flaws notwithstanding.
There will be many others before Thursday night is done, all demonstrating the strength of the bullpen and sure to say much the same thing we heard Monday, which is that Vice President Harris is the heir to a tradition, a gestalt, a history. She represents the party’s future, they’ll say. But their very presence says she does so in the context of the party’s past.
Such foregrounding of the party has its dangers, of course, in a nation supposed to be dedicated to free thinking. But humans also like to feel part of something bigger than themselves. Swing voters do, too. This is the potentially fatal weakness of Trump’s scorched-earth campaign.
Democrats, anxious to move past the intraparty coup that axed Biden, for whom Democrats had voted in the primaries, and installed the mostly unknown and hitherto unpopular Harris, know very well that the best way to do that this week is to summon their inner E.L. Doctorow and emphasize the inevitable march of history. And that means showing people the past as well as lauding the future.
Hence Biden’s role in Monday night’s planned ceremonial passing of the baton. Everyone knows that his apparent willingness to do so was foisted upon him. Yet most entering the United Center Monday afternoon were willing to engage in a bit of Orwellian doublethink and not just pretend but actually believe that this was all a righteous generational transition and any blood in the water merely was a red speck in the eye of the beholder.
Why? Because the Democrats understood they had to put that brutal event in a comforting historical context before Biden exited, stage west.
It’s true, of course, that Trump’s personal level of support is strong enough to command 45% or maybe a little more of the popular vote, a good portion of which is more about disdain for what Democrats represent than affection for the alternative.
But as they sat in front of their TV screens Monday, or mounted the counterprogramming at Trump Tower, smart Republicans surely were looking enviously at the Democrats’ Chicago schedule and wondering where they would be now if Trump were not a narcissist incapable of acknowledging the ground on which he stands.
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