2020 Presidential Election 4: How Much Longer?

[PsyD2013]

I've been hate-watching the convention with my Mango fuckopotomus bunker bitch loving boyfriend and son.  There is a lot of gaslighting going on.  Dark references to a group of people who want to make suburbs a thing of the past, haters of God, abolishers of law enforcement, a health care system that wants people to choose suicide to preserve resources,  and the evil Planned Parenthood that markets abortion to women of color.  I would not think a better dystopian novel idea than the spewings of the Trumpsters.   I might add all of this disfunction is happening on Bunker Bitch's watch.  There was some laughter on my part- My favorite line of the night was Tiffany letting us know that as a recent college grad she shares the pain of her fellow college grads in seeking employment.  

I did have fun texting my daughter (she hates he who shall not be named and the idiot governor of  Iowa as much as I do) as we fact checked the stupidity that was running rampant.  Looking forward to another night of bonding with her.

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

I tried watching the Republicans thing but after screaming fuck you for eleventy hundreds of times just gave up.  I hope the Earth opens up and swallows them all.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mike Pence had a few things to say at the convention: Trump is great. Trump is great. And Trump is great."

Spoiler

There they were. A team as always: Vice President Pence and his wife, Karen. On the third night of the Republican National Convention, the couple walked out to the assembled audience at Fort McHenry in Baltimore holding hands. She took a seat and he stood framed by a red brick arch that was filled with American flags.

The vice president was spit-shined for the occasion. His dark suit fit well enough. His white shirt was crisp. His glossy red tie matched the stripes in the flags behind him, and his close-cropped white hair had the immovable perfection of an action figure’s.

Pence is a mediocre speaker. He mostly spends his time uttering the name of President Donald J. Trump in sentence after sentence. Diagram one of them and it’s likely: Noun, verb, adjective. Or more precisely: Trump. Is. Great. He likes staccato — a lazy form of emphasis.

Pence’s gestures are contained and precise. They’re good for TV because they don’t overwhelm the frame. He glances around at his live, mostly mask-free audience. He makes eye contact with the viewers at home.

Pence looks the part of a polished bureaucrat, which may be his greatest skill of all.

For much of his time in residence at the Naval Observatory, it wasn’t unreasonable for the average citizen to wonder: What does Pence do besides lavish praise upon the golden head of his boss? He studiously steered away from making news. He hosted political donors. He delivered presidential missives around the world.

For nearly four years, the public-facing Pence just seemed to stand behind the president with his brow furrowed and his half-mast eyes — surrounded by starbursts of laugh lines — looking off into the middle distance as he basked in the white hot glow of the president’s fury.

When Trump roars, Pence speaks in dulcet tones. If Trump doesn’t speak on it — racism, the pandemic — Pence remains silent.

In this executive relationship, Trump is not just a very public alpha; he is everything.

This has not always been so. Vice President Richard B. Cheney forcefully made his presence known during the George W. Bush administration. When Joe Biden served alongside President Barack Obama, he was, among other things, a legislative wrangler and a partner who famously announced his opinion on marriage equality before the administration had announced its newly evolved position.

And Pence? Now, he is the head of the coronavirus task force. But before that, did Pence even have a portfolio, or was presidential adviser Jared Kushner’s so overstuffed with negotiating Middle East peace, solving the opioid crisis, reinventing government and instituting criminal justice reform that there was nothing left for Pence to do?

Trump is the head of this office marriage and Pence regularly presents himself to the public as an old-fashioned helpmate. He strokes and massages his ego. He has surely made a greater effort to humanize this president than any member of his family.

The night before, the first lady talked about herself. The president’s children echoed their father’s grievances with his signature bluster and hyperbole. It was Pence who served up a platter of warmhearted anecdotes that were sorta-kinda about the boss.

In a pre-speech video, Pence stood against the backdrop of Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home in Indiana. (Surely every segment of this convention was vetted by producers to ensure it had at least one reference to Lincoln, because Lincoln freed enslaved Blacks and the Republicans are the party of Lincoln. So please, Black people, vote Republican.) A soundtrack of orchestral strings soared. And Pence was practically swooning over his beloved leader. “On every single day, without fail, President Donald Trump has been fighting for you,” Pence said. And then he went on to explain that he’d be talking to a few Americans who have benefited from Trump’s generosity. There was Jack, who received the gift of school choice. A Honduran immigrant and entrepreneur who qualified for the Paycheck Protection Program. And a groundbreaking Black judge who just wants everyone to get along.

On Wednesday night, Pence’s was the rare live speech in a program of taped ones. So much had happened in the country in the past 24 hours: Civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis., had erupted into vigilante violence, and NBA players had halted play in protest over a police shooting. Hurricane Laura had developed into a storm of catastrophic proportions. It fell to Pence to connect the evening to all that had occurred.

He opened his speech with three brisk pronouncements of Trump’s greatness and then paused to encourage those who were in Laura’s path to “stay safe.” Then he hustled back to Trump’s extraordinary leadership and vision and ability to endure the media’s attacks. He summed up the president’s rhetoric, which can be full of race-baiting and callousness, with: “He’s certainly kept things interesting.”

And then Pence wanted to “be clear,” about several points, which is a political heads-up for I’m-preparing-to-be-as-oblique-as-possible. He voiced his support of law enforcement and offered condolences to the family of an officer killed in the line of duty. He warned: “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”

He said he supported minority communities. Then he suggested that systemic racism doesn’t exist. And he did not mention the many Black men and women killed by police officers. Or the recent shootings during the protests in Kenosha.

What exactly does Pence do? Not very much at all.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Ha Ha!

[fraurosena]

Every day there are more and more real republicans voting for Biden.

 

[fraurosena]

Did I just hear the name Jacob Wohl in that robocall?

[fraurosena]

 

[Marmion]

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The latest chaos at the convention reveals Trump as a miserable failure"

Spoiler

Now that we’ve endured three nights of self-pitying grievance, openly advertised corruption, uncontrollable lying and cultish deification of President Trump, it’s time to focus on another aspect of the GOP convention: The chaotic and wildly implausible nature of what Republicans are asking Americans to believe about their country right now.

The convention’s big-picture depiction of the state of the nation isn’t just utterly divorced from reality in countless ways. It also asks viewers to perform a series of spectacular mental gymnastics that are useful to examine, because they reflect the excruciating task this convention set for itself.

Put simply, the convention’s big challenge is to depict Trump as a great success, when in fact, he’s been a miserable failure. Just about all of the follies and falsehoods we’re seeing flow from that basic disconnect.

All this was driven home by Vice President Pence’s smarmy string of lies on Wednesday night, which hailed Trump’s stupendous vanquishing of the coronavirus and his spectacular economy, while lamenting our slide into anarchy at the hands of the “radical left.”

That dual messaging was echoed by speaker after speaker, including South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who portrayed Trump as both a racial healer and an economic success, while depicting the country as sliding into full-scale civil collapse.

So let’s take stock of what this convention is asking you to believe about your country.

The story the convention is telling

On the one hand, the convention is telling you that in one sense everything is right and great in America right now. Trump’s stupendous leadership has utterly mastered the pandemic, and the economic calamity that his failures have unleashed simply doesn’t exist.

On the other, the convention is telling you that America is tipping into total civil breakdown. The story offered here is not the truth, which is that large-scale protests have been mostly peaceful and grounded in legitimate grievances about the searingly real problem of deadly, racist police brutality, and have been marred by some unacceptable violence that can and should be brought under control.

Instead, the story is that the scenes of unrest reveal a deep sickness in the form of the aforementioned “radical left,” which is ravaging the country and threatening our very way of life. That’s absurd, but here it is actually true that we’re living through the most serious civil unrest in a half-century.

In one sense, this isn’t a direct contradiction. The argument is that on one front (the coronavirus and the economy) everything is stupendously terrific, and on another (the protests) we’re sliding into ruin.

But this nonetheless requires viewers to make some truly extraordinary leaps.

On the first front, Americans are being asked to pretend none of their everyday experiences and perceptions of what’s all around them exist at all — while crediting Trump’s spectacular leadership for bringing about a substituted (but nonexistent) miraculous state of affairs.

On the other front, Americans are being asked to stare squarely at the scenes of unrest they are seeing on their televisions — and then to exaggerate them into something grotesquely absurd, while also telling themselves Trump bears zero responsibility for any of it, even though it’s unfolding on his watch.

Mike Pence’s deceptions

Take Pence’s speech. He actually had the gall to tell us this about coronavirus:

President Trump marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset. He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties. We partnered with private industry to reinvent testing and produce supplies that were distributed to hospitals around the land.

This is the direct opposite of the truth. Trump squandered weeks and weeks early on, a key reason the virus rampaged out of control here. Trump utterly failed to marshal the full resources of the government. Trump relentlessly attacked governors who were pleading for help and often didn’t give it to them. Thanks in part to all these failures, nearly 180,000 are dead and we’re still averaging nearly 1,000 deaths a day.

Pence also told us this about the economy:

We are opening up America again. Because of the strong foundation that President Trump poured in our first years, we have already gained back 9.3 million jobs in the last three months alone.

Trump’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic simply disappears as a cause of the economic crisis. The economic crisis itself is largely reduced to only a massive jobs gain, never mind that we’re still 13 million jobs in the hole. Pence treats the current economy as largely a continuation of the pre-covid-19 one.

What’s also striking is the combination of this straight up gaslighting with the lack of any real plan to contain the virus going forward, given that conventions should be about where the nominee will take the country:

Meanwhile, on the protests and the violence, Pence and many others portrayed Joe Biden as a radical leftist. But that was based on numerous lies — that Biden would defund police (nope), that he supports open borders (nope) and that he won’t condemn violence (nope).

On top of that, Pence didn’t level with the country about the actual cause of some of the violence. Incredibly, Pence lamented an officer “killed during riots in Oakland, California,” without noting that the man charged with that killing is a member of the extremist race-war-seeking “boogalo boys."

Even more absurdly still, Trump is in power right now. The claim is literally that if you think America is a smoldering hellscape at this moment, reelect the guy who is presiding over it, because only he is strong enough to overcome it.

But Trump actually has a record on this front, too, and it’s also a record of failure. The convention asks us to believe Trump’s Bible-photo-op celebration of the violent clearing away of protesters and his threat to send troops into major cities (which his own military officials repudiated); his use of law enforcement in Portland, Ore. (which local officials said exacerbated matters); and his ceaseless racial incitement are playing no role at all in stoking unrest. You can’t point to a single thing he’s done to make things better.

The only consistency to all this runs as follows. In neither case (whether it’s the worst public health and economic crises in modern times, or the worst civil unrest since the 1970s) does Trump bear a shred of responsibility for any of it. In reality, as the chaotic and convoluted nature of the GOP festivities confirms, Trump is a miserable failure on both fronts.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The GOP is strapped to a ticking time bomb"

Spoiler

The Republican Party’s intellectual crisis was on full display during the GOP convention. On Monday, the party announced that it wouldn’t publish a new platform: Instead, its members promised to support “the President’s America-first agenda” and threw out some half-baked bullet points. In the days that followed, speakers heaped praise on the president, making clear that his person, rather than a program, is the guiding light of the party. The GOP used to be animated by a marriage of social conservatism, economic libertarianism and foreign policy hawkishness. Now there’s just President Trump and his instincts.

This intellectual hollowness is a ticking time bomb for the GOP. As soon as Trump leaves office, whether in 2021 or 2025, the Republican Party will have to deal with the intellectual and political consequences of elevating him. And it won’t be pretty.

The first problem: Even after Trump is out of office, he’ll still be in charge.

Jonathan V. Last at the Bulwark argues that while normal presidents ride off into the sunset and let their party move on, Trump won’t. Trump likely will want to hold onto his fan base, and he’ll do it by tweeting, going on cable TV and opining on every little thing the GOP tries to do in any forum that’s available to him. Trump already governs by tweet. There’s no reason he couldn’t continue to lead the party from Mar-a-Lago.

Politically, Trump’s continued presence would probably hurt the GOP: He’s not popular outside the base, and his constant presence would harm the party’s efforts to rebrand or expand.

Intellectually, the effect would be even worse. Trump is vindictive and vacuous — he won’t have anything useful to contribute to the GOP’s self-reform efforts, but he’ll cut in anyway to shout down anyone who openly criticizes his tenure.

And when Trump finally exits the political stage, new problems will arise.

At that point, many in the GOP base will still remember him fondly, and Republicans will need to integrate the remnants of Trumpism into their next ideology. But as an ideology, Trumpism is an inscrutable collection of instincts, insults, rants and tweets. Aspiring GOP leaders will try to bend the material into something comprehensible, but there will be no way to judge who is “right” about what Trump would have done on any issue, aside from immigration. Like a perverse Bible study, Republicans will pore over Trump’s words looking for a divine political message, and they’ll all come away with flawed, irreconcilable interpretations.

Eventually, Republicans will solve this problem. Political parties, unlike religious groups, nominate their leaders in primaries. Might will make right, and the candidate who offers up the most popular version of Trumpism-plus-their-ideas will win.

The best realistic endgame for this fight: Republicans find someone who takes stylistic cues from Trumpism, fighting the media and throwing red meat to the base while taking governing and policy seriously and pursuing them with real competence. In the Bible study metaphor, he or she would be a theological conservative who takes the text seriously but doesn’t think humans hung out with dinosaurs.

But much darker scenarios are on the table, too.

Maybe a Trump fundamentalist will win by proclaiming Trump was perfect and trying to recreate his every move in office. This could lead to a stagnant and increasingly toxic politics, where the next Republican president again tries to cut taxes for the wealthy, abuses his executive authority, spews bile about immigrants and pays too much attention to TV news and Twitter. Or maybe a cynical celebrity businessman will win by aping Trump on cultural issues, only to use the office to expand his empire. Republicans spent decades mimicking Ronald Reagan — if they do the same with Trump, the results could be disastrous.

Regardless of the result, the fight will be ugly and costly. It’ll take years for the Republican Party to figure out what it stands for, and global problems won’t wait for it to catch up. In the 2020s, Americans will have to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, push back on authoritarianism abroad, and deal with racial strife and inequality at home. And it’ll be all the more difficult with one party wandering around in the wilderness.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"No platform, no vision. The GOP convention was all about fear and resentment."

Spoiler

Nothing better symbolized the differences between the Republican and Democratic conventions than the speeches delivered by a teenager at each gathering.

Speaking last week, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington offered a moving account of his struggles with a stutter and how Joe Biden, who overcame a stutter of his own, tried to help him at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. This, we learned, is typical of Biden — a man who has endured more than his fair share of suffering and has reached out to comfort those with problems of their own.

What a different message was conveyed this week by 18-year-old Nicholas Sandmann at the Republican convention. Sandmann is sore that he was portrayed by some news organizations as the aggressor in a 2019 confrontation with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. He has become a celebrity by embracing his own victimhood — and he was eager to make the most powerful man on the planet out to be a victim, too. “I know you’ll agree with me when we say that no one in this country has been a victim of unfair media coverage more than President Donald Trump,” Sandmann said.

The Republican convention lineup was larded with Trump’s relatives — it sometimes felt more like a family reunion than a political gathering — but they were no more successful than Sandmann in offering any humanizing anecdotes about the president. Is there a single moment of Trump’s life when he has shown the kind of empathy and understanding that Biden routinely displays?

Even Trump’s offspring delivered rote praise of the Great Leader (“He is a fighter and will never stop fighting for America,” said daughter-in-law Lara Trump) without offering a single anecdote to make him remotely lovable or even likable. There was, in short, not a word said to dispel the damning impression of Trump’s own sister, who said in a secretly recorded conversation that the president is a serial liar with no interest in helping people and “no principles.”

If the convention did not humanize Trump, then surely it must have laid out an inspiring agenda for his second term, right? Wrong. The convention explicitly abjured a platform for the first time in memory. The entire GOP platform — once a lengthy and detailed document — is now limited to “enthusiastic… support [of] the President’s America-first agenda,” whatever that may be. In short, the GOP has become a personality cult for a supreme leader whom even his closest relatives cannot portray as a sympathetic human being.

In lieu of policy proposals of their own, the Republicans offered misleading and false attacks on the Democrats combined with misleading and false defenses of Trump’s egregious record. Typical was Vice President Pence’s Wednesday night speech — which, like much of the convention, represented an illegal use of federal property (in his case, Fort McHenry in Baltimore) for partisan political purposes. The utter absurdity of the Republican message was succinctly summed up by Pence’s claim: “The hard truth is … you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” You would never know that in the past six months Trump has presided over more than 176,000 coronavirus deaths — and that Pence is the leader of the administration’s coronavirus task force.

The convention continued to make America less safe by stoking the kind of racialized fear and resentment that too often breaks out in violence. A 17-year-old Trump fan was arrested for allegedly shooting three people, killing two of them, at a Black Lives Matters protest in Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday. What could have motivated Kyle Rittenhouse to grab an assault rifle and take the law into his own hands? Perhaps he’s been listening to Republican leaders who warn, as Rep. Jim Jordan (R.-Ohio) did on Monday night, that Democratic-run cities are being overwhelmed by “crime, violence and mob rule.” Indeed, one of the president’s most influential defenders, Tucker Carlson, rationalized Rittenhouse’s alleged shooting spree on his Fox “News” show: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

A Republican congressional aide aptly summed up the party on display this week: “Owning the libs and pissing off the media. That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”

One can hope that the dark, nihilistic Republican approach, based on fear and falsity, will prove to be an election loser. But it is salutary to remember that the 2016 Republican convention might have been even more crazy. (At least this time there were no chants of “Lock her up!”) And yet that horror show did not prevent Trump from eking out a narrow electoral college victory.

Here is a thought more terrifying than any specter the Republican speakers could conjure up: With polls showing the presidential race much closer in swing states than nationwide, the Trump plan to scare White America into turning out for him may work yet again. “All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Maryanne Trump Barry said of her brother the president. Mission accomplished.

 

[ADoyle90815]

I've tried to watch the hate rally, I mean RNC, but I almost threw something at the TV tonight.

[PsyD2013]

7 hours ago, ADoyle90815 said:

I've tried to watch the hate rally, I mean RNC, but I almost threw something at the TV tonight.

Last night was hard to watch.  If I had not been texting my daughter and fact checking during the duration of the thing, I would have been hurling heavy items at the flat screen and screaming fuck you.  There were so many lies, gaslighting, and much cognitive dissonance.  Bunker Bitch is not doing this job for free because he loves this country as his sycophants claim.  He and his family are benefiting (charging the secret service for the rooms and golf carts for his fucking golf trips, Ivanka's Chinese patents, etc).   The claim that Dems want believe that abortion should be available up until the moment of birth, or if a laboring mom decides she does want her baby that it can be killed while in the birth canal or after birth (infanticide) is insane.  Yet, last night my partner and 16 year old were all over this as to why Fucktard is the most pro-life president ever.  They ignored the fact that he wanted Marla Maples to abort Tiffany.  Thankfully, my son can't vote and my vote will cancel my partners.  I can't argue with ignorance, so I just smile and work behind the scene for my candidates of choice.  

[GreyhoundFan]

I love his line, "I profoundly accept the nomination." I'm assuming it was supposed to be "proudly", but being a dotard, he misread or forgot what he was supposed to say.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump desecrates a public monument in the finale to a convention of lies"

Spoiler

THE REALITY-SHOW president turned his party’s convention this week into a spectacle befitting his true expertise. The televised festival of exaggerations showed voters a warped version of this country, in which circumstances are both far worse and far better than the facts support — depending on what makes President Trump look best.

His acceptance speech Thursday night, a seemingly endless recital of by-now familiar falsehoods, was notable principally for when and how it took place: before a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly unmasked people on a White House lawn festooned with campaign insignia. Mr. Trump managed to merge contempt for public health with desecration of a public monument, the final and most jarring of the convention’s exploitations of the perks of public office for political purposes. Earlier in the week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke from Jerusalem, where he was traveling on government business, and the president granted a surprise pardon and staged an on-screen naturalization ceremony, two of whose participants-turned-props weren’t even aware they’d be starring on national TV.

The speech elevated the darkest themes of the convention. The Republican National Committee chose not even to adopt a platform this cycle. In other words, the party no longer stands for anything. So it was unsurprising that, relying on a mixture of hyperbole and lies, both Mr. Trump and the speakers preceding him highlighted what they’re against. Joe Biden, Mr. Trump said, is a “Trojan horse for socialism” in whose America “no one will be safe.” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) summed it up earlier in the week: “The woke-topians will . . . disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.” All this scaremongering was accompanied by outright slander of Mr. Biden, against whom Republicans leveled unsubstantiated corruption charges — and whose record and platform alike Mr. Trump distorted into almost a parody of radicalism.

Meanwhile, bereft of a positive record or a second-term agenda, Republicans created a mythical present in which the coronavirus is vanquished, the economy is booming, our “brave soldiers” are “on the way home” from the Middle East and, astonishingly, Mr. Trump is bosom buddies with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In this fictional realm, a man who lauded white supremacists as “very fine people” becomes a champion of racial comity, and a leader who ignored warnings about the pandemic actually sets the global standard for disease response. Mr. Trump touted selective statistics about the country’s purported success confronting covid-19; he neglected to mention the more than 177,000 Americans who have died so far, or the more than 1,000 who died on the day of his address.

If you recognize this as nonsense, you may not be in the target audience. The conjured specter of widespread “urban violence,” combined with warnings that the dictatorial Democrats against “guns, gasoline and God” would force Americans to wear masks, lock them down and keep them from church, may well resonate with people the GOP is aiming to fire up. And the falsely comforting portrait of the president may soothe those the party is hoping to persuade: giving them permission to support someone whose values jar their consciences by pretending his values are something else altogether.

“In this election, it is not so much whether America will be more conservative or more liberal, more Republican or more Democrat,” Vice President Pence said Wednesday night. “The choice in this election is whether America remains America.” We agree that the country’s core values are at stake in this election. This mendacious convention just provided more evidence of that.

 

[Alisamer]

2 hours ago, PsyD2013 said:

 Yet, last night my partner and 16 year old were all over this as to why Fucktard is the most pro-life president ever.  They ignored the fact that he wanted Marla Maples to abort Tiffany.  Thankfully, my son can't vote and my vote will cancel my partners.  I can't argue with ignorance, so I just smile and work behind the scene for my candidates of choice.  

You are a much kinder person than me. I recently got asked out (out of the blue) by a gun-toting Trump supporter I've not spoken to since high school. So far I've just ghosted him because I can't come up with a kind way to say "hell no!" I'm glad he doesn't have my phone number because the older I get the less filter I have, and I'd probably piss him off. 

That's a dealbreaker for me. I'd much rather be alone than put up with ignorance. Especially willful, harmful, Trump supporting ignorance.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, PsyD2013 said:

 I can't argue with ignorance, so I just smile and work behind the scene for my candidates of choice.  

Unless you feel trapped and would like to get out of it, I tip my hat in admiration to you for being able to make your relationship work despite such diametrically opposed opinions between the two of you. I don't think I could be in a relationship with someone who did not to some extent share my basic values and beliefs. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Trump presented the mother of all fabrications on the White House lawn"

Spoiler

Four years ago, when the United States was in the eighth year of an economic expansion and enjoying a time of relative peace and prosperity, Donald Trump saw only carnage.

“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” he told the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, describing a nation full of “death, destruction . . . and “weakness.”

Now, America actually is in crisis: a world’s worst 177,000 dead from the pandemic, nearly 6 million infected, 6 million net jobs lost during Trump’s presidency, nearly $7 trillion added to the debt, and racial violence in the streets.

And Trump, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term on Thursday night, offered a most counterintuitive assessment: Everything is awesome!

He declared himself “proud of the extraordinary progress . . . and brimming with confidence in the bright future.” He said he accepted the nomination “full of gratitude and boundless optimism.” He spoke of “new heights of national achievement,” a “new spirit of unity.”

“I say very modestly that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln,” he declared. He proclaimed that “the wall will soon be complete” along the Mexican border. Factories are booming! Workers are happy! “This towering American spirit,” he said, has “lifted us to the summit of human endeavor.” He boasted of creating 9 million jobs since the pandemic struck, leaving out the fact that he lost 22 million.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. And Trump presented the mother of all fabrications Thursday night on the South Lawn of the White House. With the Truman Balcony as his backdrop and a massive convention stage erected outside the People’s House, he made only passing references to the pandemic that has disrupted our lives. And the 1,500 Republican lawmakers, party officials and others in the crowd sat cheek by jowl, for the most part without face masks, pretending there was no such thing as covid-19. Jumbo screens projecting “TRUMP/PENCE” lit up the South Lawn. And at 11:35 p.m., after Trump’s 70-minute speech, the extravaganza ended with fireworks lighting up the capital’s night sky.

Trump’s reading of his optimistic speech was, to coin a phrase, low-energy. He gave the slow, singsong delivery he has when using a teleprompter. He was clearly reading written words not his own, and he mispronounced — twice — the name of the Iranian official he had assassinated, Qasem Soleimani. Trump, who once bragged on a recording about sexually assaulting women, even sought to present his opponent as the sexual predator: “For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses.” Trump raised his eyebrows as the crowd laughed.

As he portrayed the current era of recession and pandemic as good times, he warned voters not to return power to the people who presided when there actually were good times. He warned of a “socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny” and to “crush our industries.” He said Democrats would give “free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals” and allow a “radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy” our way of life. In Trump’s telling, the violence in the streets occurring on his watch, which he foments and which his followers have engaged in, is the fault of Democrats who “stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag-burners.”

As the speech passed the 30-minute mark, Trump loosened up and strayed from his script, circling back repeatedly to denounce Democratic “radicals,” “anarchists,” “wild-eyed Marxists” and “cancel culture.” He returned to his familiar patter of insults: “China would own our country if Joe Biden got elected. . . . Joe Biden is weak.” He reported that Biden’s polling numbers were “going down like a rock in water. It’s too late, Joe.” As the speech hit the hour mark, he was rambling and railing in a familiar manner. “They spied on my campaign, and they got caught!” Referring to the building occupied by every president since John Adams, he boasted: “We’re here, and they’re not.”

It was a split-personality speech at the end of a whiplash week for Republicans, alternating between filling Americans with optimism and frightening them. Speakers before Trump on Thursday spoke of a “nightmare” in American cities, a “callous” indifference to human life, a “public safety disaster” and “vicious, brutal riots.” Then came Trump to declare America “the torch that enlightens the entire world” and say “the best is yet to come,” “we will reach stunning new heights” and “together, we are unstoppable.”

But however unconvincing Trump’s upbeat assessment of the current environment, it may be his only option. Back in 1980, when presidential candidate RonaldReagan asked his famous question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” he said, “If all of the unemployed today were in a single line allowing two feet for each of them, that line would reach from New York City to Los Angeles,California.”

If we made a similar line today of all those on some type of unemployment relief, that line would cross the country five times.

Trump can’t ask Americans whether they are better off than when he took over because we all know the answer. The best he can do is pretend everything is hunky-dory, and hope people fall for it.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[Marmion]

Quote

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Mary Trump , 

President Donald Trump’s niece, appeared on MSNBC after the Republican National Convention Thursday to react to her uncle’s closing speech, which she said left her feeling repulsed and heartbroken.

Mary Trump, whose scorched-earth book about her uncle and his troublesome ascent to the presidency remains high on best-seller lists, said she struggled to make sense of the president’s “bizarrely convoluted messaging,” but highlighted his blaming of political opponents for his own failures, negligence on coronavirus, disregard for ethics and his divisive rhetoric.

“It’s as if he thinks Joe Biden is president now and we have to save the country from Joe Biden,” she said. “If the country is a place of division and decadence as he describes it, then I would think that’s down to him, as he’s currently in the Oval Office.”

The president’s rambling address continued for more than an hour to a crowd of over 1,000 people who did not appear to be social distancing or wearing masks. The unprecedented move to hold the political event at the White House also raised serious ethics concerns.

“Donald explicitly co-opted the people’s house for his political party, which is beyond disgraceful,” Mary Trump said.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/mary-trump-trump-rnc-105742743.html    

 

49 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Trump presented the mother of all fabrications on the White House lawn"

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Four years ago, when the United States was in the eighth year of an economic expansion and enjoying a time of relative peace and prosperity, Donald Trump saw only carnage.

“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” he told the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, describing a nation full of “death, destruction . . . and “weakness.”

Now, America actually is in crisis: a world’s worst 177,000 dead from the pandemic, nearly 6 million infected, 6 million net jobs lost during Trump’s presidency, nearly $7 trillion added to the debt, and racial violence in the streets.

And Trump, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term on Thursday night, offered a most counterintuitive assessment: Everything is awesome!

He declared himself “proud of the extraordinary progress . . . and brimming with confidence in the bright future.” He said he accepted the nomination “full of gratitude and boundless optimism.” He spoke of “new heights of national achievement,” a “new spirit of unity.”

“I say very modestly that I have done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln,” he declared. He proclaimed that “the wall will soon be complete” along the Mexican border. Factories are booming! Workers are happy! “This towering American spirit,” he said, has “lifted us to the summit of human endeavor.” He boasted of creating 9 million jobs since the pandemic struck, leaving out the fact that he lost 22 million.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. And Trump presented the mother of all fabrications Thursday night on the South Lawn of the White House. With the Truman Balcony as his backdrop and a massive convention stage erected outside the People’s House, he made only passing references to the pandemic that has disrupted our lives. And the 1,500 Republican lawmakers, party officials and others in the crowd sat cheek by jowl, for the most part without face masks, pretending there was no such thing as covid-19. Jumbo screens projecting “TRUMP/PENCE” lit up the South Lawn. And at 11:35 p.m., after Trump’s 70-minute speech, the extravaganza ended with fireworks lighting up the capital’s night sky.

Trump’s reading of his optimistic speech was, to coin a phrase, low-energy. He gave the slow, singsong delivery he has when using a teleprompter. He was clearly reading written words not his own, and he mispronounced — twice — the name of the Iranian official he had assassinated, Qasem Soleimani. Trump, who once bragged on a recording about sexually assaulting women, even sought to present his opponent as the sexual predator: “For 47 years, Joe Biden took the donations of blue-collar workers, gave them hugs and even kisses.” Trump raised his eyebrows as the crowd laughed.

As he portrayed the current era of recession and pandemic as good times, he warned voters not to return power to the people who presided when there actually were good times. He warned of a “socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny” and to “crush our industries.” He said Democrats would give “free rein to violent anarchists, agitators and criminals” and allow a “radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy” our way of life. In Trump’s telling, the violence in the streets occurring on his watch, which he foments and which his followers have engaged in, is the fault of Democrats who “stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag-burners.”

As the speech passed the 30-minute mark, Trump loosened up and strayed from his script, circling back repeatedly to denounce Democratic “radicals,” “anarchists,” “wild-eyed Marxists” and “cancel culture.” He returned to his familiar patter of insults: “China would own our country if Joe Biden got elected. . . . Joe Biden is weak.” He reported that Biden’s polling numbers were “going down like a rock in water. It’s too late, Joe.” As the speech hit the hour mark, he was rambling and railing in a familiar manner. “They spied on my campaign, and they got caught!” Referring to the building occupied by every president since John Adams, he boasted: “We’re here, and they’re not.”

It was a split-personality speech at the end of a whiplash week for Republicans, alternating between filling Americans with optimism and frightening them. Speakers before Trump on Thursday spoke of a “nightmare” in American cities, a “callous” indifference to human life, a “public safety disaster” and “vicious, brutal riots.” Then came Trump to declare America “the torch that enlightens the entire world” and say “the best is yet to come,” “we will reach stunning new heights” and “together, we are unstoppable.”

But however unconvincing Trump’s upbeat assessment of the current environment, it may be his only option. Back in 1980, when presidential candidate RonaldReagan asked his famous question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” he said, “If all of the unemployed today were in a single line allowing two feet for each of them, that line would reach from New York City to Los Angeles,California.”

If we made a similar line today of all those on some type of unemployment relief, that line would cross the country five times.

Trump can’t ask Americans whether they are better off than when he took over because we all know the answer. The best he can do is pretend everything is hunky-dory, and hope people fall for it.

 

This falls under "doctrine over person " .  https://www.openmindsfoundation.org/doctrine-over-person-denying-dead-parrots-with-undue-influence/

[GreyhoundFan]

This will upset the orange manbaby: "Television ratings for the Democratic convention edge out the GOP’s"

Spoiler

If the presidential election were a contest for television popularity, the Democratic Party would be able to claim victory in a key early battle.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech last week edged out President Trump’s lengthy Thursday night address in viewership, according to early Nielsen data. Among the six major broadcast and cable news networks, Trump’s speech brought in 19.85 million total viewers, the ratings firm announced Friday, compared with 21.8 million for Biden.

Across their respective four nights of programming, the Democratic convention averaged more than 20 million total viewers per night in the 10 p.m. spotlight viewing hour, compared with 17.4 million total viewers for the GOP convention. These numbers, however, include only those who watched on the three major broadcast networks and three major cable news channels — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC — and not the increasing number who streamed convention coverage online.

Both conventions, which were primarily virtual events relying heavily on pretaped content, were down significantly from 2016. The Democratic convention experienced a 21.6 percent drop, while the Republican convention experienced a more significant 28.9 percent drop. The disparity between the audience between the two parties was also greater this year than during the last two convention cycles.

Viewership trends for this year’s conventions also hewed closely to the ideological leanings of each of the cable news networks.

During the Republican convention, Fox News was king, averaging 7.8 million total viewers during the 10 p.m. hour compared with 1.96 million for CNN and 1.69 for the more left-leaning MSNBC. On Thursday night, Fox News attracted a massive 9.18 million total viewers during Trump’s speech, accounting for nearly half the total convention audience for the night.

During the Democratic convention, however, MSNBC, with 5.79 million viewers, and CNN, with 5.13 million, were on top, while Fox News trailing at an average 2.36 million per night.

The audience data also shows the election-season dominance of the politics-heavy cable news networks, which mostly defeated the broadcast news networks for convention coverage, even though broadcast’s nightly news shows usually draw far more viewers than even the most popular shows on cable. During the conventions, Fox News and CNN were tied for the lead among the 25-to-54 age demographic that is most attractive to advertisers.

While Biden and Trump each attracted the biggest audience for their respective convention, their numbers still paled in comparison with the more than 38 million viewers who in 2008 tuned in for speeches by then-candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

Biden’s TV edge over Trump could speak to the public’s curiosity about the former vice president, whose campaign has been less visible during the pandemic; while viewers have had no shortage of opportunities to see Trump speak on television in recent months.

“I think the DNC was surprisingly successful as a television event,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, the head of Hofstra University’s school of communication and a former NBC News executive who produced the network’s convention coverage in 2004, 2012 and 2016. “They very smartly choreographed the pace of each evening.”

The RNC, he said, “was much more like a traditional presentation. It was a very long set of speakers, less video and produced creative content and more speeches, the majority of which were in the exact same setting and the same backdrop and had a tremendous sameness to them.”

With its mix of formats, including musical performances and splashes of comedy, the Democratic convention was likened to “a 1970s variety show” by Syracuse University television scholar Robert Thompson.” It was “a tighter, better produced” television product than the Republican convention, which he said dragged on a bit. “There were many opportunities to go to the bathroom or check the microwave during this convention, because so much stuff lasted a lot longer,” he said.

Although ratings are pored over by the television networks and political campaigns, Thompson said “the real measure of success of convention coverage is ultimately judged not by the ratings, but judged by the votes of people.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republican Convention: Best and Worst Moments From Trump’s Big Night"

This is from NYT op-ed and guests. I've only posted selected commentns.

Spoiler

Best Moments:

Wajahat Ali Standing in front of the White House, Trump said, “We have pioneered fatality rates.” It was the best moment from a long (oh so long) night of fear-mongering propaganda because it was one of the few moments of pure, unvarnished honesty. Granted, it was unintentional.

Linda Chavez In a commercial for the antipsychotic medication Fanapt during Tucker Carlson’s hour of convention coverage, a young woman living with schizophrenia said, “I used to hear these terrible voices.” After four nights listening to Trump’s G.O.P., wouldn’t it be great to have a pill that could make those voices just go away?

Gail Collins Melania’s dress.

Michelle Goldberg When Ivanka walked by Melania, and Melania’s beaming smile seemed to curdle into a look of pure hatred as soon as Ivanka had passed.

Nicholas Kristof There wasn’t one.

Matt Labash After sitting through so many also-ran Trump children (Eric, Gummo, Zeppo), it was nice to finally be treated to an A-lister: Ivanka, whose chyron might as well have read, “The Real First Lady.” She was resplendent in outlaw black, poised and charming, while addressing an audience of maskless super-spreaders on the White House lawn. Trump once said of her, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” What bearing does that have on the R.N.C.? None, that I can think of. It was just so creepy, I thought I’d repeat it.

Mimi Swartz People who tuned into MSNBC could see that medical expert Vin Gupta’s head did not explode despite four solid nights of misinformation about the coronavirus.

 

Worst Moments:

Wajahat Ali With a straight face, Trump said he can modestly say he had done more for Black people than any other president since Lincoln. He said this after an entire evening of Republican speakers bashed Black Lives Matter, their supporters and millions of demonstrators who protested against police brutality. He said this as a birther. He said this as one of his supporters just killed two people in Kenosha and overnight became a right-wing hero.

Jamelle Bouie Trump’s acceptance speech was long and intolerably boring, but what was offensive was the entire display in front of the White House. It was corrupt, but more than that it was a statement of contempt for the basic republican principle that the people are sovereign, not the leader they elect. The unmistakable message sent by erecting MAGA banners in front of the White House is that the government is Trump, and Trump is the government. For all the talk of “heritage” and “history” from this president and his allies, this is what it looks like to attack our founding values.

Linda Chavez It was bad enough that Trump commandeered the White House for a what looked like a super-spreader party. His speech was not that of a successful incumbent, but a scared underdog whose only hope is to persuade voters the Democrats are socialists who want to burn down the country. Let’s pray none of the maskless guests spread Covid-19 through the crowd.

Gail Collins Rudy Giuliani — like being stuck with your cranky Uncle Fred at the end of a really long cocktail party.

Ross Douthat The inability of any speaker, civilian or politician, to resolve the tension between the usual incumbent claims that Things Have Never Been Better and the grim reality of the Covid-19 death rate and the unemployment rate. There were other tensions — blaming Biden for being too tough on crime in the 1990s and blaming him for being too lax on crime now; claiming Americans won’t be safe in Biden’s presidency by citing trends that have worsened under Trump. But the basic problem for this convention is that the Republicans were trying to sell an incumbent administration that failed to prevent a continuing crisis — evident in the very design of the convention itself — and nobody tonight, up to Trump himself, had any rhetorical solution save evasion.

Michelle Goldberg Trump’s speech was demagogic and full of filthy lies but at least it was extremely boring.

Nicole Hemmer With more than a thousand maskless people packed tightly on the South Lawn, Trump staged a campaign rally at the White House — a violation of both norms and possibly law. It’s the perfect encapsulation of his presidency: obscene and corrupt, with little regard for human life.

Nicholas Kristof Rudy Giuliani was shameless in fear-mongering, painting New York City as a dangerous nightmare of Democratic rule. In fact, New York City has seen just over one murder a day on average so far this year; in the last two years of Giuliani’s term as mayor, New York City’s murder rate was much higher than it is now.

Matt Labash Was wrestling over who should get my dry-cleaning bill after hearing so much ridiculousness that I kept spitting bourbon through my nose, thus ruining my MAGA sweater. But the prize goes to Dan Scavino, Trump’s former golf caddy and current social media director, who had the cojones to actually say, “I wish you could be at [Trump’s] side with me to see his endless kindness to everyone he meets.” This, of the guy who actually tweeted: “Happy Thanksgiving to all — even the haters and losers!” Tonight’s R.N.C. prom theme was “America, Land of Greatness.” Good thing it wasn’t “Land of Self-Awareness.”

Liz Mair Ivanka taking the stage with her father, and Melania trying to greet her with a smile, but then immediately looking freaked out and very much not pleased to see her stepdaughter. Weird family vibes that the rest of the country didn’t really need to be involved in.

Melanye Price Trump saying that electing Joe Biden will give us health problems including heart attacks when he has failed to take any responsibility for the worst public health crisis in American history. It was particularly vulgar at an event on the White House lawn with unmasked attendees who were not socially distancing.

Bret Stephens Ivanka Trump. Yes, her speech was polished and effective and maybe she’ll be the next governor of Florida. Till then, who elected her viceroy of these colonies?

Mimi Swartz Trump claiming that he’s done more for Black Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

Héctor Tobar Satirists, comedians and surrealist poets all rejoiced at the absurd tableau of Trump’s closing speech: a generalissimo with a comb-over, hovering over an audience of sycophants who were so deeply enthralled by his demagogy, they risked infection by a deadly virus to bask in his presence. I never imagined I’d see the White House this sullied by the weirdness of a cult of personality: sad.

Peter Wehner Rudy Giuliani. He started the speech coiled with anger; by the end, he was uncoiled and enraged — sputtering, yelling into an empty auditorium, his voice cracking, his glasses slipping off his nose. Once “America’s Mayor,” Giuliani long ago became a sad figure; he’s now a pathetic one.

Will Wilkinson Trump’s use of the White House as a political prop to declare “l’état, c’est moi” — to undermine the distinctions between state and party, office and occupant — is a shocking betrayal of our nation’s republican ideals. It was a crime against the meaning of America far greater than if he had ripped the flags gaudily arrayed around him from their poles, tossed them in a heap and burned them in a towering bonfire. Trump also betrayed his country by packing a crowd of partisans, maskless and undistanced, into the South Lawn. “Four more years,” they chanted. Thanks to Trump’s failure, thousands of Americans won’t be getting even one more year.

 

What Else Mattered:

Wajahat Ali Consistency should matter. Trump and Republicans spent the night painting a picture of America as a violent, dangerous hellscape where rioters and looters have taken control. Then Trump bragged and lied about all of his accomplishments in making this country great. That’s not really an effective message for an incumbent, who’s been the leader of the country for four years. Trump basically made the case to vote for Biden.

Jamelle Bouie What else mattered: Trump is the unambiguous underdog in this election. His tasks is to regain just enough lost ground to eke out an Electoral College victory. This speech was an opportunity to do just that, and he failed. If you were on the fence about Trump, nothing in this rote, laundry list of a speech will likely assuage your concerns. Trump could have reintroduced himself to the public, he could have shown his commitment to solving problems like the deadly pandemic killing a thousand Americans each day. He did neither, wasting an important chance to shift the ground of the campaign.

Linda Chavez Using the White House as a backdrop for a political convention was a travesty, but so was filling the audience (amid a pandemic) with federal workers like the I.C.E. agents the president pointed to during the speech. The White House should not be a prop for a reality show president.

Gail Collins Trump announced his candidacy in an inappropriate place (White House lawn) to an audience that was way too squished for coronavirus summer. That was actually the only exciting part.

Ross Douthat Well, the president gave a speech. It previewed some plausible lines of attack against Biden for the fall; it cited some genuine achievements; it had some predictable falsehoods and exaggerations … but mostly it just went on forever, in that singsong that Trump falls into when he’s reading a teleprompter and finds the prepared text a little dull. Biden’s speech a week ago was tighter and better; this one was by turns OK and tedious, neither a hectoring authoritarian balcony performance nor a successful populist stemwinder. Overall the Republican convention was a more impressive piece of entertainment than what the Democrats put together, but it ended with a fizzle and a yawn.

Michelle Goldberg The night Donald Trump was elected, Rachel Maddow told her shellshocked audience, “You’re not dead and you haven’t gone to hell.” Rarely have I been less sure. To watch this hateful huckster brand the White House with banners bearing his name, turning it into a stage set for American caudillismo, was a low point in the history of the presidency. It was like something out of “The Man In The High Castle.” It was a defilement.

Nicole Hemmer Tonight revealed the central contradiction of Trump’s campaign. After insisting Trump’s presidency has been the most successful in history, speakers warned the nation was cracking apart, wracked by chaos and lawlessness. Even if you don’t think that’s Trump’s fault (which: really?), he neither prevented nor fixed it. Not a great argument for a second term.

Nicholas Kristof With Covid-19 recently claiming about one American life every 80 seconds, President Trump should be modeling social distancing and the wearing of masks. Instead, masks were barely visible and chairs were close, spreading the worst kind of public health messaging to the American public.

Daniel McCarthy The night seemed too rote, too safe too often, with good messages deflated by lackluster or past-their-prime messengers like Rudy Giuliani.

Melanye Price It’s not clear yet whether they will pick up new supporters, but the Republicans did an excellent job of reminding supporters what’s at stake in this fictional America, clarifying whom they should view as the enemy and fomenting hostility toward people who are different or just simply disagree with them.

Héctor Tobar In 2016, Trump’s insurgent candidacy resonated with voters in “heartland” communities who felt unseen by the political establishment. This year, I spent the four days of the Republican convention driving across “flyover” America. I sensed a Trump fatigue setting in. The president’s meanspirited reality show hasn’t delivered the promised greatness — no matter how many convention speakers said it did.

Peter Wehner The Trump campaign has settled on its theme, which is as subtle as a jackhammer. Trump is all that stands between “the forgotten man” and carnage: death, darkness, violence, riots, anarchy, mayhem, cultural revolution, the death of God. Democrats may be infuriated by this line of attack, but they’d be fools to ignore the danger it poses to them. The through line of this week was lies, the bolder the better. The purpose is to disorient Americans. Trump can win only if Americans enter his hall of mirrors. An awful lot hinges on them declining the offer.

Will Wilkinson The Republican Party is all-in on the message that rioting, looting and violence have broken out in Democratic cities across the country on Donald Trump’s watch, and he has been unable to do anything to rein it in … which is why Americans won’t be safe if the other guy is elected. This is an incoherent position. But once you dial into Trump’s authoritarian frequency, you grasp that the supposed root of the violent urban disorder of Republican fever dreams is that Democrats are allowed to have political authority at all. If Trump is re-elected, he might put an end to the perils of two-party rule for good.

 

[fraurosena]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This will upset the orange manbaby: "Television ratings for the Democratic convention edge out the GOP’s"

  Hide contents

If the presidential election were a contest for television popularity, the Democratic Party would be able to claim victory in a key early battle.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech last week edged out President Trump’s lengthy Thursday night address in viewership, according to early Nielsen data. Among the six major broadcast and cable news networks, Trump’s speech brought in 19.85 million total viewers, the ratings firm announced Friday, compared with 21.8 million for Biden.

Across their respective four nights of programming, the Democratic convention averaged more than 20 million total viewers per night in the 10 p.m. spotlight viewing hour, compared with 17.4 million total viewers for the GOP convention. These numbers, however, include only those who watched on the three major broadcast networks and three major cable news channels — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC — and not the increasing number who streamed convention coverage online.

Both conventions, which were primarily virtual events relying heavily on pretaped content, were down significantly from 2016. The Democratic convention experienced a 21.6 percent drop, while the Republican convention experienced a more significant 28.9 percent drop. The disparity between the audience between the two parties was also greater this year than during the last two convention cycles.

Viewership trends for this year’s conventions also hewed closely to the ideological leanings of each of the cable news networks.

During the Republican convention, Fox News was king, averaging 7.8 million total viewers during the 10 p.m. hour compared with 1.96 million for CNN and 1.69 for the more left-leaning MSNBC. On Thursday night, Fox News attracted a massive 9.18 million total viewers during Trump’s speech, accounting for nearly half the total convention audience for the night.

During the Democratic convention, however, MSNBC, with 5.79 million viewers, and CNN, with 5.13 million, were on top, while Fox News trailing at an average 2.36 million per night.

The audience data also shows the election-season dominance of the politics-heavy cable news networks, which mostly defeated the broadcast news networks for convention coverage, even though broadcast’s nightly news shows usually draw far more viewers than even the most popular shows on cable. During the conventions, Fox News and CNN were tied for the lead among the 25-to-54 age demographic that is most attractive to advertisers.

While Biden and Trump each attracted the biggest audience for their respective convention, their numbers still paled in comparison with the more than 38 million viewers who in 2008 tuned in for speeches by then-candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

Biden’s TV edge over Trump could speak to the public’s curiosity about the former vice president, whose campaign has been less visible during the pandemic; while viewers have had no shortage of opportunities to see Trump speak on television in recent months.

“I think the DNC was surprisingly successful as a television event,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, the head of Hofstra University’s school of communication and a former NBC News executive who produced the network’s convention coverage in 2004, 2012 and 2016. “They very smartly choreographed the pace of each evening.”

The RNC, he said, “was much more like a traditional presentation. It was a very long set of speakers, less video and produced creative content and more speeches, the majority of which were in the exact same setting and the same backdrop and had a tremendous sameness to them.”

With its mix of formats, including musical performances and splashes of comedy, the Democratic convention was likened to “a 1970s variety show” by Syracuse University television scholar Robert Thompson.” It was “a tighter, better produced” television product than the Republican convention, which he said dragged on a bit. “There were many opportunities to go to the bathroom or check the microwave during this convention, because so much stuff lasted a lot longer,” he said.

Although ratings are pored over by the television networks and political campaigns, Thompson said “the real measure of success of convention coverage is ultimately judged not by the ratings, but judged by the votes of people.”

 

It’s a pity they don’t look at the number of online viewers. As so many people watch online, the numbers in the article have become rather meaningless if you don’t account for them. It’s my guess that the disparity between the two would be even greater if they did look at the online numbers.