The 43rd Republican National Convention kicks off Monday. Since the first, in 1856 at a concert hall in Philadelphia, the Grand Old Party has picked the winner 24 times. Delegates are bullish this year will mark the 25th.
Their confidence and unity entering the big week contrasted sharply with the party of the sitting president even before Saturday’s deadly assassination attempt. By Monday morning, even those Republicans on the fence over the Democrats’ lawfare against Donald Trump will be prepared to crawl over broken glass for their man. A mountain-cry away sit the Democrats, who begin the week afraid, angry, suspicious and unsure about what the summer will bring.
President Joe Biden was supposed to be the man. While his age and stamina were issues on the 2020 primary trail, Democrat leaders had seen in the former vice president a safe alternative to the radicalism gripping his fellow candidates. These party officers, led by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), rallied black and southern voters to the man primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire had rejected, winning a string of victories from South Carolina on, and sealing the job for the oldest nominee in major party history.
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All that mattered was beating then-President Donald Trump. No one was thinking four years down the road. Well, four years down the road, they’re paying for it.
When Biden took the stage two hours late Friday night to talk about NATO, dozens of House and Senate Republicans had statements calling for his withdrawal ready to fly. While he mixed up names, sank into his strange stage whisper a couple of times, and yelled like an angry old man a few others, his command of the details and ability to hold court with reporters for a full hour held the onslaught at bay. Elected Democrats watching from their airplane rides back to their home states weren’t elated, however. Many would have preferred a decisive disaster — and the certainty that "Joe must go" it would bring.
Instead, barring a rumored surprise announcement during the president’s Monday trip to Austin, the party rebellion continues in guerrilla form, planned on Signal threads and fought through polls, leaks, and anonymous quotes. While the chatter suggests the resistance has finally begun to come to grips with the reality that Vice President Kamala Harris is the only workable replacement, there’s little chance Democrats return from their week’s vacation with an actual plan of action.
It's difficult to imagine this chaotic scene contrasting more vividly than it does with the Republicans in Milwaukee.
That’s not to say there haven’t been hiccups. No nominee since then-President Richard Nixon in 1972 has exercised such imperial control of the platform process as Trump has. Party delegates were vetted for loyalty before they met last week, and once on site, were forced to surrender their phones while the campaign brushed away subcommittees and amendments to create a dramatically shortened platform, personally edited by Trump to reflect his political preferences.
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While there’s much for conservatives to cheer in the new, shortened platform, the process and the loyalists were abused — and decades-old planks defending traditional marriage and the sanctity of life were erased or watered down. Any looming threat of a convention conflict was snubbed on a field in Pennsylvania on Saturday, however. The image of the former president raising his fist, his face splattered with blood and his lips curled in defiance, calling for his supporters to "Fight!" will dominate everything. Nothing brings a family together like the proximity of death and the realization that we’re all in this together. A party is no different.
Even before the rally in Pennsylvania, there was no comparison to the last time tens of thousands of Republican faithful met in person — in Cleveland, Ohio eight years prior. Then, the D.C. rumor mills swirled with ridiculous plots to somehow replace the insurgent nominee before it was too late. This nerdy convention-coup fantasy crested with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s call for delegates to "vote your conscience." He was loudly booed, and the rest is history. There will be no such plotting this year.
It’s been more than half a century since the parties entered the summer with more different optics than 2024. You have to go back to 1968, when Democrats last held their convention in Chicago. While Republicans confidently nominated former Vice President Richard Nixon in Miami Beach, the story was different for the incumbents. The year had begun with a deeply unpopular president, Lyndon B. Johnson, declining to run for re-election after an unexpected near loss in the New Hampshire primary. In the ensuing months, young Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down after winning the major California primary. His brother had been assassinated just a few years prior. Both men had died on TV.
In the closing days of August, the bloody smell from the nearby stockyards hung over the International Amphitheater where Democrat delegates rejected the preferences of their anti-war primary voters, and nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, despite his never having even entered a state primary. Outside, hippy rioters raged against the police and the Vietnam War and the Democrat Party in general. Democrat Mayor Bill Daley didn’t flinch to order the mounted police into the fray, cracking heads amid the tear gas and television cameras. In the TV studios, playwright Gore Vidal and and National Review’s Bill Buckley nearly came to blows, as an incensed Buckley sneered invectives at a drunken, smirking Vidal. The ratings were killer, and TV political debate was born. All in all: Peak experience.
Will the Democrats relive the past this August in the Windy City? They’re asking for it in their actions, and tempting the fates with their chosen city. We’ve now seen images reminiscent of the violent ‘60s no our television screens. You can make your wagers we’re in for another chaotic summer on the campaign trail.
