The Mood in Milwaukee

This year’s Republican National Convention was an odd mix of two basic themes. One was a call for greater national unity and calm in the wake of the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The second, in tension with the first theme, was an all-out attack on the Biden administration as a downright failure. What caused this strange mix was, of course, the shooting itself, which took place only a few days before the convention opened in Milwaukee. All of sudden, angry tirades seemed positively dangerous, and so speeches like that, written far in advance, had to be redrafted to tone things down.

At times, that tack literally didn’t work, as was the case on the convention’s first night when Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson spoke. Instead of the more conciliatory second speech, hastily drafted over the weekend, that Johnson said he intended to deliver, he actually gave the much more aggressive one written earlier. When asked by journalists afterward why he made a speech so at odds with the promise of toned-down rhetoric, he sheepishly explained that the convention staff had loaded the wrong speech into the teleprompter and, rather than disrupt the flow of events on the podium, he decided to deliver the one on the screens in front of him. This curious turn of events actually set the somewhat incoherent tone of the convention as a whole: calls for turning down the nation’s political temperature mixed with the kind of high-octane (and sometimes factually inaccurate) partisan attacks that many in the hall clearly preferred.

The single most newsworthy event generated by the convention was the naming of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, and Vance’s speech to the delegates blended both themes. It was partly a genial autobiographical talk aimed at introducing himself to the many people there and watching on TV who knew little about him. Mixed in with that were attacks: on the Biden administration and the country’s leaders more generally for having failed the kinds of working-class people that Vance grew up around, and on “the Chinese Communist party,” for having stolen, he said, the prosperity of the American middle class.

Contributing to the sense of moods in conflict were the delegates’ enthusiastic response to those kinds of vitriolic charges mixed with an almost serene confidence that the Republicans would prevail this fall. Joe Biden’s poor performance in the first presidential debate combined with Donald Trump’s recent, narrow escape from an untimely death were, seemingly, the reasons for all of that optimism about the election’s eventual result. And so most delegates appeared to listen and agree with the kind of angry and at times apocalyptic attacks coming from the speakers on the podium while still remaining in a jolly state of mind. The party-like atmosphere (in the usual sense, not the political one) was reinforced by the casual clothes worn by so many of the delegates, which were unusual by the standards of Republican conventions in decades past. Rather than wearing their Sunday best, many were dressed as though they were attending a state fair or pop music concert.

The delegates’ attire and exuberance reflected, too, the greater diversity in terms of social class that Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) Movement has introduced to the ranks of GOP activists. In the 1980’s, ’90’s, and early ’00’s, GOP convention delegates often looked like they came from the country club set. Those kinds of Republicans were still present in Milwaukee, but they appeared to be significantly outnumbered by people from households with more ordinary incomes. The enthusiastic greeting that many delegates gave to famed professional wrestler Hulk Hogan when he spoke on the convention’s final night was only one of many signs of that shift. The greater class diversity of those in the hall seemed, however, to operate within strict limits. The delegates appeared, as has so often been true of GOP conventions during the recent past, very heavily white, which speaks volumes about which part of the American working class the MAGA movement mostly appeals to.

All of that reflects the fact that the now Trump-dominated Republican party is guided by an essentially backward-looking vision. In some ways, the most revealing word in the MAGA slogan has always been the final one: it’s not “Make America Great,” but “Make America Great Again.” Many working- and lower-middle-class white Americans, older ones especially, respond positively to that slogan because the American system in the quarter century after World War II worked better for them in many ways then than it has since.

There are a lot of other Americans, however, who don’t respond well to the selectively nostalgic MAGA vision, and it’s not clear that MAGA-type voters are enough to constitute an electoral majority. The party’s leaders, Trump and Vance included, appear to understand that obstacle to winning this fall, which led to a conspicuous lack of specific policy goals in many of the speeches and in the party’s platform (which was essentially dictated by Trump’s inner circle). Anything seen as highly controversial, such as a national abortion ban or an end to U.S. military aid to Ukraine, more or less vanished from official convention remarks. The issues that seem to have the most traction with swing voters—illegal immigration and inflation— were emphasized instead, but even in those areas specific policies to address those problems were downplayed in favor of more general promises (mixed with attacks on Biden’s record). All of this vagueness conveyed a sense of a party and candidates who believe they are ahead and don’t want to say anything that might mess up their chances on Election Day.

More than anything else, the GOP convention this year reflected the mood of a specific moment, coming as it did shortly after the first debate and the shocking assassination attempt. Whether the confident sense of impending victory will last through the fall remains to be seen. The political situation, both domestically and internationally, has become so dynamic that it’s unclear just how the next four months will unfold. Even less certain is whether Trump and Vance are disciplined enough to energize their base but still avoid the kinds of statements they are accustomed to making at MAGA-type rallies that would likely to turn off swing voters. That verbal balancing act is especially challenging for Donald Trump, who prefers improvisational remarks to scripted ones when campaigning. In a very real sense, Trump himself remains the biggest electoral wild card of them all.