One model informed of a president who’s callous and merciless. “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” mentioned Kristin Urquiza, whose father voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and died from Covid-19 in June. “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump – and for that he paid with his life.”
The opposite spoke of a president blessed with compassion. Kayleigh McEnany recalled taking a cellphone name as she recovered from a preventative mastectomy. “It was President Trump, calling to check on me,” she mentioned. “I was blown away. Here was the leader of the free world caring about me.”
The distinction was sufficient to induce a way of whiplash.
But it surely occurred time and again in the course of the previous two weeks in the course of the Democratic and Republican nationwide conventions, held nearly for the primary time because of the pandemic. The primetime tv break up display displayed two radically totally different Americas – and two radically totally different diagnoses of its ills.
Democrats tore into Trump’s character and lack of health for workplace; Republicans paid tribute to his competence, widespread contact and generosity of spirit. Democrats hammered away on the pandemic, its loss of life toll and the financial fallout; Republicans spoke of the virus hardly ever and most popular to promote optimism, promising a renaissance simply across the nook. Democrats embraced the Black Lives Matter motion and quest for racial justice; Republicans stoked worry of “cancel culture” and suburbs overrun by violent mobs.
John Zogby, an writer and pollster, noticed: “We didn’t get a portrayal of disagreements; we got a portrayal of two completely different realities and that’s kind of astounding. If a Martian came down and watched both conventions, they would be puzzled and get back on the ship. It was amazing, a completely different reality about Covid, about the economy, about Black Lives Matter.”
When the smoke cleared from fireworks on the Washington monument that spelled out “Trump 2020” on the ultimate evening, the nation had a clearer thought of the place the 2 armies have drawn battle strains earlier than the November election.
Democrats set out to attract a distinction between their nominee Joe Biden’s empathy and expertise versus Trump’s continual lack of ability to do a job he treats as a actuality present. Michelle Obama, the previous first girl, channeled the anguish of moms throughout the nation appalled by the 45th president’s crass conduct. “He is clearly in over his head,” she mentioned. “He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”
Democrats prosecuted a case that Trump didn’t rise to the historic problem of Covid-19, leading to what at the moment are 180,000 deaths and tens of tens of millions unemployed. Above all, they warned, Trump threatens America’s 244-year-old democratic experiment. An unusually uncooked Barack Obama mentioned: “This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up.”
It was wonderful, a totally totally different actuality about Covid, in regards to the financial system, about Black Lives Matter
John Zogby
When their flip got here, Republicans spun an elaborate internet of fantasy that truth checkers discovered included dozens of lies per evening. They labored laborious to easy the jagged edges of Trump’s persona and make him palatable to suburban voters. A procession of girls informed how he promoted them to senior positions; a procession of individuals of color sought to disclaim his racism.
As well as, Trump was seen pardoning an African American man convicted of bank theft and benevolently welcoming immigrants as they grew to become US residents. The pitch gave the impression to be: don’t consider the media caricature of Trump as demonic determine; you might have licence to vote for him once more with a transparent conscience.
Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown College in Windfall, Rhode Island, mentioned: “What was striking was that this convention was designed to appeal to suburban moderate Republicans and independents.”
“It was really designed to assuage or mollify suburban voters and say, ‘Listen, I’m not that bad, really. .’”
Republicans’ political cosmetic surgery included hailing Trump’s response to the virus as an epic success, once they talked about it in any respect. The president hyped the promise of a vaccine earlier than the top of the 12 months throughout an acceptance speech delivered on the White Home the place face masks have been few and much between within the packed crowd, as if keen a return to regular.
There was one widespread thread of the conventions: a way that defeat by the opposite facet would spell one thing extra profound and existential than the mere swing of a political pendulum. As an alternative it was a stark alternative between American democracy or the American dream – each lengthy seen as inviolable tenets of the American soul. Zogby commented: “This is a genuine Armageddon election: if the other side wins, this is the end of the United States, the end of our values, the end of democracy.”
Democrats are hoping Joe Biden can draw on his lengthy expertise in politics to enchantment to voters. {Photograph}: Ronda Churchill/AFP/Getty Pictures
The sense that the stakes are larger than ever earlier than was fuelled by one other dominant narrative of the 12 months: police killings of unarmed African People, the rebellion in opposition to racial injustice and a minority of protests that led to vandalism and violence.
Once more the events see the difficulty via opposing prisms. Democrats gave a platform to the household of George Floyd, whose killing by police in Minneapolis triggered nationwide marches, celebrated the lifetime of civil rights activist John Lewis and nominated Senator Kamala Harris to be the nation’s first vice chairman of color.
Republicans, against this, conjured photos of “violent anarchists, agitators and criminals”, falsely accused Biden of supporting efforts to defund police departments and implied that America’s lengthy march in opposition to racism ends with Trump. “I say very modestly that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president,” Trump mentioned.
Audio system included Mark and Patricia McCloskey, embodiments of white privilege from St Louis, Missouri, who waved weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters exterior their mansion. Patricia delivered a message of racial worry harking back to apartheid South Africa: “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighbourhoods around our country. Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”
The messages performed out in opposition to the backdrop of contemporary unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the place police shot Jacob Blake, an African American man, seven instances within the again, leaving him paralysed. Some demonstrators destroyed buildings and began fires. A white 17-year-old was charged with intentional murder after two protesters have been shot useless.
Some Democrats fear that such scenes might feed Trump’s narrative and enhance him on the polls. But whereas a regulation and order enchantment labored for Richard Nixon in 1968 as an rebel challenger, the present social dysfunction is occurring in an America the place Trump is the incumbent.
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican Nationwide Committee, mentioned: “The ironic twist in that everything Donald Trump was complaining about occurring under a Biden administration was actually happening under his own. The dissonance that you see in all of this is that he’s basically telling you don’t believe what you’re seeing, it’s not happening, but it will happen if you elect this guy. You’re like, wait a minute, we have riots in the streets now.”
He added: “The challenge for Biden is going to be to get Americans to see that what they fear is already happening, what they fear is already in their suburban communities, what they fear is already on their streets, and that there is as much happening in areas of the country that are run by Republicans as is happening in areas run by Democrats, and his goal as president is to address those concerns, to heal those wounds, not cause more pain or to open up those wounds further.”
Donna Brazile, former interim chairwoman of the Democratic Nationwide Committee, mentioned: “The race is now being outlined by two epic visions of the nation. One is the imaginative and prescient that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris supplied, which is a nation that should proceed to develop and to achieve out to others, particularly those that really feel like they’re left behind.
“The vision of Donald Trump and Mike Pence was much more of an ‘us versus them’. It didn’t feel as though they were reaching out to anyone. It felt more like they’re still willing to say the other side is incapable of leading the America that they represent.”
Brazile added: “I think what we saw this past two weeks is one political party that is still engaged in trying to help the American people through this pandemic, which has caused an economic crisis, versus the other party, which quite honestly don’t believe that this crisis exists at all.”
