To paraphrase Charles Dickens, this is indeed the best of times for the Republican Party and the worst of times for the Democratic Party. It is also a sad time for Americans who hope and believe in the viability and future of liberal democracy.
As the Republican Party held its convention this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Democratic Party struggled with the issue of whether President Joe Biden even would remain the Party’s presumptive nominee when the Dems meet in Chicago in August. As if this was not sufficient excitement to consider as the Republican delegates entered “convention” week, by the time former President Donald Trump arrived in Wisconsin he had barely survived an attempted assassination two days earlier. Meanwhile as Biden continued to consider his options, he was engaged in facing down the critics within his own party who wanted him to drop out of what they believed was an “unwinnable” contest against Trump in November. Then it turned out, to make things even more unhinged, the President was discovered to be fighting his third battle with COVID-19.
The GOP Convention went according to Donald Trump’s script, beginning with the party’s platform which not only reflected his views but even much of his own writing. It was much shorter and contained a large portion of the rhetoric that the former President had used and the attack tropes which the MAGA Republicans spout. The convention speakers all kept to their schedule and subjects, conforming to their roles as designed by the Trump organizers. Everyone was setting the stage for the former President.
The Republican Party is now the Party of Trump, with no dissenting voices tolerated or controversies. Except for the fact that the former President spoke for longer than any nominee had ever spoken in his acceptance address, the convention was all that the Party could have sought. Were it not for the fact that the Democratic Party is engulfed in turmoil, the final hour of Trump’s acceptance speech would have given any opposing candidate much fodder to use in challenging the Republican nominee. To the delight of those assembled in Milwaukee, watching President Biden and his fellow Democrats unable to get their act together gave them more and more confidence that the GOP was headed to a potential landslide in the fall.
The Democrats have barely four weeks before their convention. They have demonstrated an inability to create an acceptable exit strategy for President Biden so they can coalesce around an alternative candidate and focus on winning in November. The intra-party jockeying is frustrating at every level. All the down-ballot candidates are waiting for the top to get organized. Democratic donors refuse to continue to support an undetermined or a losing Democratic option. Independent voters see no real option to Trump, otherwise they would be Democrats, not undecided.
Unfortunately, many Democrat candidates may have already dug an additional, unnecessary hole for themselves as well. If Biden remains the Democratic Party’s nominee, those elected officials who have been urging him to step down, now will carry the additional burden to their own down ballot campaigns. Their opponents will now be able to challenge a Democrat’s actual loyalty to his/her own party election having made public their own preference as to who should head the ticket. Presumably, the challenge for Democrats will be difficult enough without needing this extra burden to carry.
What is clear now is that this tale of these two parties in this unpredictable summer will have many more chapters before the voters give their verdict on November 5th.
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Sadly, last Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump was only the latest act of violence to enter American electoral politics. The history of violent behavior and the use of guns has a long and ugly history in America. Violence used against candidates and those running for office—from Bobby Kennedy to George Wallace to Huey Long—to say nothing of those holding office are deeply embedded in American society. It is, nevertheless, difficult to comprehend that there continues to be a large number of Americans who actually accept gun violence as part of American culture.
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