After spending a week of counter-messaging during the Democratic National Convention, President Trump heads into the GOP convention where he finally gets a chance to rally the base and own the libs.
While the 2016 DNC was an absolute disaster of discord and division between liberals and progressives, the 2016 RNC had its moments where it looked like the Republicans would never unite under the banner of Trumpism. At the time, out of the five living former Republican nominees for president, only Bob Dole, the 1996 nominee, would attend the 2016 RNC. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain all announced they would skip the convention. On top of that, a number of Republican Governors, Senators, and House members sought to distance themselves from Trump by either bailing or playing a limited role at the convention.
The shift we’ve seen over the last four years is nothing short of astonishing. Yet somehow, Trump managed to mold the Republican party in his image. Regardless of whether you believe Trump is an ideologue, national populism has firm footing within today’s GOP.
The national populist brand that Trump promoted is what set him apart from 16 other candidates in the 2016 Republican primary. While his bombastic personality helped him build a massive cult-like following, it was really his push to renegotiate America’s trade deals with other countries and reclaim its sovereignty by building a wall and reforming America’s immigration system that ensured he kept his supporters around.
Now here comes the hard part: hanging onto that margin of voters who cast a ballot for him in 2016 and also voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Between the coronavirus pandemic shutting down the economy and massive social unrest stemming from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, 2020 has been one of the worst years in recent memory. Trump has to convince a majority of voters that he, for one, is not responsible for the chaos we’ve witnessed, and two, capable of fixing America’s problems if he’s elected to another term.
In all honesty, this is what every incumbent’s message is when running for re-election. It’s almost like telling a loan shark you need a little more time to get your finances in order to get out of debt.
To some, it’s a message of desperation, but to Trump’s base, there’s legitimate sentiment that everything that happened this year is deliberate and designed to hurt Trump’s chances of re-election.
And that’s exactly how Trump and the GOP will attempt to navigate the 2020 convention. They don’t have to worry about unity. Their strategy is to convince voters that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are leftist extremists who will bring the type of chaos we’ve seen this year to America and multiply that to every city, town, and county in the nation. Will that strategy work? That depends on whether you believe the buck stops with the president or with his rivals, the Democrats.
