Donald Trump is suddenly distancing himself from last week’s Republican National Convention, after television ratings show that the Democratic National Convention consistently pulled in more viewers across the country for three consecutive nights.
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For a sense of where the United States finds itself in the summer of 2016, let us turn to the words of a speech by former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Thank you all for the great convention that we’ve had”.
The campaign dynamic has been established.
Trump took to Facebook Friday morning where he described Clinton’s speech as “an insulting collection of cliches and recycled rhetoric” and one “delivered from a fantasy universe, not the reality we live in today”. It was a powerful speech in which she combined the personal with policy, a vigorous defense of the Obama record with an insistence that she would tackle the problems left unsolved and the injustices that still needed righting. This from a man who until recently thought Belgium was a city.
The intraparty tensions that erupted at the convention’s opening, inflamed by the WikiLeaked Democratic National Committee emails, were salved by the swift, even if not swift enough, dispatch of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Some called this treason.
But Democrats still refuse to support the president on TPP, while GOP nominee Donald Trump has been bashing it from the start of his campaign. But Clinton is a guarded, cautious politician and rarely shows big crowds a peek of the person who can be warm and engaging one-on-one and in small groups.
There were other moments to savour.
It’s one of a few times the word “plagiarism” has been used at this year’s political conventions. If Donald Trump is laying a wrecking ball to the Republican Party, the Democrats are assuming there will be plenty of refugees – defense hawks, suburban women, moderate Republicans and independents – looking for a new home.
Mr Trump said he was depicting the reporter groveling to him. “I had no idea”, he said. Everything is out of date. Put her in stripes!” still linger in the air of Cleveland? – and how fitting it was for an actress, America Ferrera, to have one of the more memorable lines in Philadelphia: “Donald’s not making America great again.
It didn’t help that when asked by PBS, halfway through the convention, about Hillary Clinton’s trouble attracting white working-class males, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said: “I think so many times white, non-college-educated white males have voted Republican”. How can a voter be torn between the tiresome but competent policy wonk and the cheddar-faced crypto fascist with the man crush on Vladimir Putin? “I believe American corporations that have gotten so much from our country should be just as patriotic in return”.
Critics from both parties on Saturday questioned whether Trump had the empathy and understanding to be president, particularly after he questioned why mourning mother Ghazala Khan stayed silent during her husband’s Thursday night address. Wolf, try to press up against her-does she smell presidential? Her radical amnesty plan will take jobs, resources and benefits from the most vulnerable citizens of the United States and give them to the citizens of other countries.
Clinton doesn’t explicitly say, “the reason the middle-class is struggling is because the billionaires have rigged the system”. You have sacrificed nothing.
She appealed to voters beyond the party, praising US Senator John McCain, a former Republican candidate for president, as a war hero and the military service of the son of Trump’s running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence. The debates could swing the outcome.
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“Hillary Clinton talks about unity, about E Pluribus Unum, but her globalist agenda denies American citizens the protections to which they are all entitled – tearing us apart”. Trump won’t want anything to do with his tax returns.
