However, the change between 2016 and the Milwaukee Convention has been remarkably significant, thanks to the leadership, work and firmness of former President Donald J. Trump.
Republican officials, strategists and activists who packed Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention expressed a overall confidence at a level not seen in decadesBoos and infighting marred Donald Trump’s first convention in 2016, but this one was defined by overwhelming displays of unity, as Republican leaders — including Trump skeptics — reveled in what most see as an almost certain victory in November.
Trump’s survival after nearly being assassinated at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania was the final piece to unite everyone around Trump’s platform and his growing conservative MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement.
“It feels like 1980,” said a smiling Ed Cox, chairman of the New York Republican Party, on the red carpet for this week’s convention, referring to Ronald Reagan’s landslide presidential victory. Cox noted that a sense of inevitability is brewing around Trump and the GOP. “We’re finally fully united.”
For Democrats, it is one of their worst moments.
In Washington, the party has stepped up a public and private lobbying effort to force President Joe Biden to drop out of the re-election race.
Donors, elected officials and Biden’s own campaign leaders don’t believe he can win. And an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll indicated that the vast majority of Democratic voters have lost confidence in Biden’s ability to govern and want him out of the way before it’s too late. In fact, It’s too late.
Less than a third of Democrats believe Biden is capable of winning in November, according to the poll, which also found that more than two-thirds say Biden should drop out of the presidential race and let his party nominate another candidate.
By contrast, 7 in 10 Republicans think Trump will win the Nov. 5 election. Almost no Republicans think Biden is more capable of winning. Among the doubters are Black Democratic voters, who form the backbone of Biden’s political coalition. Less than half of Black Democrats think Biden is fit to hold on to the White House, the poll found.
Many Democrats now expect someone other than Biden to take the stage to accept the party’s nomination when the Democratic National Convention begins in Chicago in a month.
Biden, the big problem
Hours before Trump’s victory speech at the convention on Thursday, a senior Biden campaign official repeatedly pushed back against a barrage of new questions about whether the current White House occupant will drop his re-election bid.
“I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know how many more times I can answer that,” Quentin Fulks, a senior deputy campaign manager for Biden’s reelection campaign, said at a news conference in Milwaukee when asked if the president’s commitment to his reelection might be weakening. “There are no plans to replace Biden on the ticket.”
There are 109 days until Election Day. The first early votes will be cast in just eight weeks.
National polls all show Trump leading. State polls have also shown warning signs for Biden, including a recent New York Times/Siena poll suggesting a close race in Virginia, a state Republicans last won 20 years ago.
But history is littered with examples of stunning political defeats, including Trump’s own election in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Every time you start to feel confident, read an article about Tom Dewey,” Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said at a convention luncheon this week, of a Republican who was favored over a struggling Democratic president in 1948.
“Tom Dewey was picking his cabinet… in mid-September because the election was over,” Gingrich said. “The Republicans were completely confident. And Harry Truman won.”
At the moment, the economic and sociopolitical conditions are very different and benefit Trump and the Republicans, after the poor work of Biden and the far left in the White House.
Trump campaign focuses on left-wing states
Dozens of Republicans interviewed at the Milwaukee convention pointed to a confluence of events — from Florida’s dismissal of the controversial secret documents case, the chaos and divisions among Democrats over Biden, and the failed July 13 assassination attempt. All of these elements give them supreme confidence.
Republican National Committee member Henry Barbour, who did not endorse Trump in the recent primary, predicted that Trump is on track to become the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote.
“I didn’t vote for Trump in the primaries. I voted for Nikki Haley. But I’m moved by his talk of his desire to unite the country,” Barbour said. “Going through a near-death experience — and I’ve been through one — really tends to focus the mind.”
Matt Mowers, a strategist who worked on Trump’s first political campaign, said Trump’s worst day of the 2024 campaign, politically speaking, is better than his best day during his 2016 campaign.
And Tony Fabrizio, a pollster and senior adviser to Trump, said the former president now has more than two dozen realistic paths to securing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
The most likely scenario, he said, would be to add Georgia and Pennsylvania to the states Trump won in 2020. But Fabrizio also pointed to legitimate opportunities to compete in Democratic-leaning Minnesota and Virginia, and even Democratic strongholds like New Mexico, New Jersey and Maine.
Source: With information from AFP and AP.