By Dave Andrusko
An interesting and a very telling juxtaposition. Regardless of political persuasion, the Republican National Convention is universally being described as a huge success for its pro-life nominee Donald Trump while pro-abortion President Joe Biden is desperately attempting to fend off panicky calls from his own party to step aside—and quickly. We’ll discuss the latter in just a moment.
My wife and I were glued to the tube starting around 5. We saw pro-life former President Donald Trump as he walked into the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to thunderous applause. Everyone was aware that the convention started two days after a bullet from a would-be assassin missed Mr. Trump’s head by inches.
Under a very telling subhead “Trump speech strengthens Bond With Supporters,” Byron York wrote
If you listen to some cable news analysts or read the political conversation on social media, the most notable thing about former President Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night was its length. And yes, at 93 minutes, it was too long. But for the Republicans listening to the speech in the hall and for millions watching on TV, here was the most notable thing about Trump’s speech: the fact that it happened at all. …
When they saw Trump take the stage in the Fiserv Forum, Republicans saw a leader who was almost assassinated by a gunman five days earlier. They shuddered to think what would have happened had Trump been killed by the sniper’s bullet at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday night. The party and the nation would have been in a perilous place. As it was, they were deeply disturbed by what had happened and enormously relieved to see Trump at the convention, delivering a speech of any length.
The former President, York wrote, “used some form of the word ‘unite’ or ‘unify’ five times, as in this expression of the new theme:
We are Americans. Ambition is our heritage. Greatness is our birthright. But as long as our energies are spent fighting each other, our destiny will remain out of reach. And that’s not acceptable. We must instead take that energy and use it to realize our country’s true potential — and write our own thrilling chapter to the American story. We can do it together. We will unite. We are going to come together, and success will bring us together
The Democrats, in the middle of what can only be described as a civil war, could only wish they were not spending all their time “fighting each other.”
President Biden’s campaign is fiercely fighting the media consensus that he has given up the ship—and will announce that he is not running for a second term this weekend, Monday at the latest. It’s the classic drip, drip, drip with stories of how Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Chuck Shumer, and former President Barack Obama are telling Biden if he doesn’t drop out, it will cost the party the House and the Senate.
But, for now, all for naught. Under the headline “11 Days in July: Inside the All-Out Push to Save the Biden Campaign,” Michael D. Shear of the New York Times writes that
Nothing President Biden did seemed to work.
He delivered an angry, defensive rant on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” He showed foreign policy chops at a news conference. He wrote a long letter to “fellow Democrats” demanding an end to the calls for him to step aside. He confronted lawmakers on a Zoom call that devolved into a tense, heated exchange about his age and mental competency.
Eleven days ago, the president and his closest family members and advisers went on the offensive, determined to end what already had been nearly two weeks of hand-wringing over his listless performance at a debate on June 27. The result was a flurry of interviews, rallies, defiant meetings with his closest allies and impromptu campaign stops — all intended to rebut the premise that he was too old and frail to win a second term.
But almost every step was undercut by his own fumbles and the steady drumbeat of calls from his friends and allies for him to step aside, even from loyalists like the actor George Clooney. Together, it was evidence that nothing he was doing was having much impact. Mr. Biden was racing from place to place, but nothing was changing.
As of 2:00 this afternoon, Biden has not given up, although there are plenty of stories suggesting that he is not as resolutely opposed as he once was. Which, of course, is part of the strategy by the media and Democrat congressional leaders to paint a picture of the inevitability of his not running again.
Or, as Ed Morrissey writes,
This feels a lot like wishcasting at best, and part of the same media-platformed pressure campaign by the Democrat establishment that hasn’t borne any fruit. …
Nor is that the only reason to take this with extreme skepticism. If Biden is considering a withdrawal, he wouldn’t have sent [campaign manager Jen O’Malley] Dillon to Morning Joe to tell everyone that it’s still game on. If Biden had begun planning his exit, other Democrats in Congress would not still be making demands for him to leave the race. And if Biden wanted to leave for the good of his party, Team Biden wouldn’t have nuked Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi as the people responsible for electing Trump in 2016 by pressuring Biden to stay out of the race.
Final thought for now, courtesy of Byron York, describing the emotional hold Mr. Trump has on his millions of followers:
Of course, there was snark from the usual suspects in the commentariat. But there was something going on in plain sight at the Fiserv Forum. You could see it and you could feel it. Watching events, CNN commentator Van Jones, a longtime liberal activist, urged his fellow panelists to watch closely. “The last time I was in a convention that felt like this was Obama in 2008,” Jones said. “There’s something happening.”
Post Script: Headline of a New York Times article this afternoon: “Biden Plans to Resume Campaigning as More Democrats Urge Him to Quit”