A CARTOONIST WANDERING a vast event like the RNC Convention has perhaps little standing to offer a political takeaway from the experience, but I won’t let that deter me from offering this wrap up.
As bad as Biden’s debate performance — and it was really bad — the weeks of dithering by the Democratic party have played right into Trump’s hands. Immediately after the debate the perception was that Biden was frail and weak, but the party’s handwringing and the slow drip have transferred those attributes to the Democratic leadership. As the saying goes, when there is a hard choice to be made, there are three choices: a good decision, a bad decision, and no decision, and the last is by far the worst. If the election turns on the perception of strength — and with it the arguably related characteristics of decisiveness and leadership — the Democrats will be punished for having chosen the third option.
The Republican messaging is smart. Something that came up again and again in Milwaukee was not just the idea Biden was old and frail — that was a given — but that he was being propped up by “his people” — told what to say and what to do. As a message it is particularly powerful because it allows people who feel some goodwill for Biden to blame the faceless people doing the propping up. And because the propper-uppers are faceless, each person can identify them as whoever they distrust most, while reserving for Biden the worst of all feelings a voter can have for a candidate — pity.
Mike Allen of Axios asked Donald Trump Jr. whether he was worried that the Trump campaign was peaking too early. Trump gave the predictable answer (we aren’t peaking and we aren’t relaxing cause there’s “no amount of nonsense” that the other side won’t try), but the political attention span of the American public is short. It is a volatile time, and in a time of high volatility, timing matters. It is hard to imagine that the trajectory of the Trump campaign will continue at its current pace and the natural desire to sustain that momentum will lead to mistakes and opportunities for the Democrats. That is, if the party is in a position to take advantage of them.
That time might already have passed, but if it hasn’t, the Democrats have to end the dithering, take a position and then figure out how to the counter the narrative that strength is the ultimate metric. That isn’t impossible. Strength without patience, without intelligence, without judgment, is no friend. And strength wielded without a moral compass will not take the country anywhere good.
What Democrats have to realize is that many people out there don’t have much use for either party. Whatever high horse the Democrats thought they were riding is now just another nag at the feedbag.
Maybe, in the end, the good news for Democrats is the bad news that this old cartoon of mine tells. It was true several elections ago when I drew it and it remains true today:
Bay City News staff writer Joe Dworetzky is in Milwaukee to report on the daily drama and curiosities he will encounter at the Republican National Convention.
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