With both national party conventions over, voters should be ready for a long, hard slog of a campaign. Despite conventional wisdom, I think President Trump has the upper hand over Joe Biden, but a flat convention speech gave Trump less of an advantage than he could have had.

The Democratic convention was a series of false starts saved by superb efforts on each night’s featured speech. The problem, though, was that the overall impression was of a concatenation of grievances, lacking both hope and a discernible agenda.