Divided We Fall

Watching the Republican Convention last week, I kept thinking about 1968. Gabriel Sherman, in his biography of Roger Ailes, describes it this way:

[The TV producers] broadcast clips of Nixon, standing in an open-air limousine, arms thrust victoriously in the air, making his trademark V. For the audience at home, the jubilant scene would contrast starkly with that of a week earlier, when Democrats had brought insurrection to the streets. When Richard Nixon came to town, there was a parade.

This is the contrast Trump wants. His primary message is racism. While Biden wants to make this election about Trump’s incompetent handling of the pandemic, Trump is using the protests and the violence to double down and force Biden away from the pandemic. Racism in America is flexing its muscle in the current political dynamic. We’re 62 days from the election, and yes: it is indeed getting so much crazier. Too crazy, and it’s not even Labor Day.

You may have thought the GOP convention was disturbing, but that’s because you weren’t the target audience. We are not choosing leaders, we’re choosing world views — world views that are so different as to be almost entirely unrelatable. Voters have pretty much made up their minds (96% of them in fact). Trump cannot seem to alienate his core constituency; he’s got a hard floor. To win, he needs to ensure high turnout with his base, and do what he can to suppress Democratic turnout. The GOP convention was well-produced and designed in a large part to make portions of the GOP base feel better about voting…