That Was Quick

Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.

AP:

An Associated Press survey finds that Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Donald Trump.

The delegate survey is different from AP’s count of delegates won during the primary. The survey is an unofficial tally, as Democratic delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice when the party picks its new nominee.

Endorsed by Joe Biden after his decision to leave the race, Harris quickly locked up the support of her party’s donors, elected officials and other leaders. No other candidate was named by a delegate in the survey and Harris now appears to have the backing of more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to claim the nomination.

Lazaro Gamio et al. at NYT:

A majority of Democrats in Congress and all of the country’s Democratic governors have announced their support for Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic ticket after President Biden stepped out of the presidential race on Sunday.

 Steve Peoples at AP:

Kamala Harris is smashing fundraising records as the Democratic Party’s donors — big and small — open their wallets for the vice president in the immediate aftermath of President Joe Biden’s stunning decision to step aside.

In total, Harris’ team raised more than $81 million in the 24-hour period since Biden’s announcement, campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said Monday.

The massive haul, which includes money raised across the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees, represents the largest 24-hour sum reported by either side in the 2024 campaign. Harris’ campaign said it was the largest single-day total in U.S. history.

“The historic outpouring of support for Vice President Harris represents exactly the kind of grassroots energy and enthusiasm that wins elections,” Munoz said.

Hours earlier, Future Forward, the largest super PAC in Democratic politics, announced it had secured $150 million in commitments over the same period from donors who were “previously stalled, uncertain or uncommitted,” a senior adviser said.

 

An Unchanged Man

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

Meridith McGraw et al. at Politico:

When Donald Trump emerged on stage with a bandaged ear he somberly — and emotionally — recounted how he survived an assassination attempt.

And then, he veered straight back into MAGA mode.

Over the course of a 90-plus-minute speech in Milwaukee — the longest acceptance speech by a presidential nominee in history — Trump boasted about meeting with the head of the Taliban and how he “got along very well” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He went off on MS-13, immigration, crime declining in Venezuela by 42 percent and the media calling him a braggart. He called the streets of Washington a “killing field.” And he cracked a joke about Hannibal Lecter: “He would love to have you for dinner.”

Trump’s crowning moment — set up to be a triumphant return to center stage just five days after a bullet pierced his ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — turned into a meandering speech that resembled his usual rallies with macabre descriptions of a nation in decline.

If he stopped at the 25 minute mark, it would have gone down as a brilliant convention speech and proof that he was a changed man after the assassination attempt. But he’s now just proving he hasn’t changed.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) July 19, 2024

Important caveat: 

The rambling doesn’t matter. The sound bites were made. Tomorrow the clips will be Hulk Hogan intro and fist pumping 🇺🇸 glory. Shared on social to many impressionable people who don’t spend hours watching a political speech. The warrior image is cast.

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) July 19, 2024

GOP Delegate Selection Rules

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The early stages of the 2024 race have begun.

Michelle L. Price at AP:

While the delegate count won’t begin taking shape until voting begins next January, Trump’s edge in the race to win their votes is years in the making. Many state Republican parties made changes to their rules ahead of the 2020 election by adding more winner-take-all contests and requiring candidates to earn higher percentages of the vote to claim any delegates. Those changes all benefit a frontrunner, a position Trump has held despite his mounting legal peril, blame for his party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 elections and the turbulent years of his presidency.

...

The moves are a sign of how Trump’s team is focused on the crucial, if less glamorous, aspects of winning the GOP nomination. That’s a notable change from his first bid for the White House in 2016, when his team of relatively novice operatives weren’t familiar with the minutia of the delegate contest and sometimes found themselves outflanked by better-prepared rivals, particularly Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

That doesn’t appear to be happening this time as election experts say it appears few other campaigns have been able to match Trump’s yearslong work.

“They’ve been asleep at the switch,” election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg said.

AWOL at the Convention: Congressional Elections

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

Carl Hulse and Nicholas Fandos at NYT:

A fight for control of the Senate is raging across the country, but viewers who tuned in to the Republican National Convention this week could be forgiven if they did not realize it.

In a two-and-a-half-minute taped address on Thursday night, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, urged voters to back Republican senators as a “firewall” against Democrats. But other than those remarks on the convention’s closing night, vulnerable Republican senators battling to hang on to their party’s majority were almost absent from the stage.

One who did appear in prime time, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, focused on a wind storm that hit her state without even mentioning that she was running for re-election, or that control of the Senate — crucial to the next president — was on the ballot.

And when Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader responsible for retaking control of the House, spoke early Thursday evening in his own taped remarks, he said nothing about his party’s efforts to reclaim the majority, an endeavor that most now privately concede is unlikely to succeed. The only candidate he mentioned was President Trump.

GOP Convention Meh!

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.  

Brian Stelter at CNN:

President Trump's Thursday night convention speech making the case for his reelection was lower-rated than his challenger Joe Biden's speech one week ago, according to overnight Nielsen ratings.

About 23.8 million viewers watched coverage of Trump's RNC address across thirteen cable and broadcast networks, down from 24.6 million viewers who watched Biden's DNC address on twelve of those same networks.

The gap between Biden and Trump was wider earlier in the day, when fewer networks were counted in the total. Nielsen released its final audience estimate late on Friday afternoon, bringing Trump within a million viewers. Still, Biden clearly edged out Trump.

The Democratic convention was also higher-rated than the Republican convention overall when the audience for all four days is tallied up.

Kendall Karson at ABC:

President Donald Trump's efforts to build his appeal and define his opponent at the Republican National Convention, using pageantry and the White House as the backdrop, had little apparent impact on the electorate's impressions of both him and former Vice President Joe Biden, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.

Trump's week of celebration did not improve his favorability, even among his own base, and the country still remains widely critical of his handling of the major crisis of his presidency: COVID-19.

Less than one-third (31%) of the country has a favorable view of the president in the days after he accepted the Republican nomination for the second time -- a stagnant reality for Trump. His favorability rating stood at 32% in the last poll, taken a week earlier, right after the Democratic National Convention.

Trump finds himself in a much different position than his chief rival.
In the new survey, which was conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, Biden's favorability remains higher than his unfavorability, 46% to 40%, solidifying his improvement in favorability from last week, when attitudes about the Democratic nominee improved to a net positive from his slightly underwater position prior to the convention.

Biden's favorability ticked up from 40% in an Aug. 13 poll to 45% just after the Democratic convention.

Trump's Permission Structure

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway. 

Mike Allen and Alayna Treene at Axios:

The four-night Republican convention had twin aims, officials tell Axios:

1. Make Trump more palatable to suburbanites who hate his rhetoric but like some of his policies.
2. Ratchet up the fear factor for the Biden-Harris ticket, mostly using riots and safety as hot buttons — "deadly sanctuary cities," and charges Biden would let in jihadis, take down the wall and turn criminals loose.

Parts of the convention were effective — including stories of personal empathy, and testimonies from Black allies like Herschel Walker, the former NFL star, who said: "I take it as a personal insult that people would think I've had a 37-year friendship with a racist."

The bottom line: All those moments were designed to create a permission structure for nervous suburbanites to vote for Trump despite possible stigma in their social circles, a Trump aide told Axios.

• But Trump advisers admit there was there was lots of contradictory messaging, such as hitting the Biden-backed 1994 crime bill as too harsh, while crowning Trump the candidate of law and order.
• And harping on rising violence in big cities, when Trump is in charge.

Yes, the permission ramp was quite rickety.

Damon Linker at The Week:

Donald Trump is far behind with female voters. Given that fact, one would expect the Trump campaign to make some moves to appeal to women. Yet on Tuesday night, anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson addressed the RNC and its audience of millions, despite her holding views that go far beyond garden-variety opposition to abortion.

Earlier in the day on Tuesday, Johnson faced a firestorm of criticism for saying in a YouTube video earlier this year that her "brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons." Then, shortly before the RNC began, a White House reporter for CBS News drew attention to two of Johnson’s tweets from May in which she expressed support for "bringing back household voting," which would give each household a single vote — and give husbands "the final say." (Johnson doubled down on this outlandishly retrograde position on Tuesday evening just a few hours before her speech.)

No wonder, then, that when she stood at the podium at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington D.C., Johnson unleashed an unmodulated attack on her former employer Planned Parenthood, denouncing its "racist roots," deploring its "barbarity," and even pausing to evoke "what abortion smells like." The assault naturally culminated in gushing praise for the anti-abortion efforts of President Trump.

Illegality and the Republican Convention

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway. 

Trump aides proudly flout the law.

Molly Blackall at The Guardian:

Featuring an executive pardon for a bank robber turned social entrepreneur, a naturalisation ceremony for new US immigrants, and a speech from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, during an official visit to Jerusalem, the second day of the Republican national convention led critics to accuse Donald Trump of turning politics into a series of reality TV-style stunts.

But the implications of this display of presidential power may be more serious: legal observers warned that these segments appeared to violate the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from taking part in political activity while on duty, and a senior Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee has launched an investigation into whether Pompeo’s appearance broke the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky at LAT:

President Trump is almost surely violating the law and certainly violating the norms of the office in giving his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention from the South Lawn of the White House. But we have become so inured to Trump’s behavior that this will likely produce little more than a shrug.

Federal law, specifically the Hatch Act, is clear that federal employees cannot participate in partisan political activities. The Hatch Act, adopted in 1939 after it was revealed that employees of the federal Works Progress Administration had been involved in congressional election campaigns the year before, broadly forbids federal civilian employees from engaging in political activities.

The Supreme Court has upheld the law as constitutional, even though it dramatically limits the speech and political activities of government employees. The court explained the importance of keeping federal employees from feeling pressured to engage in political work and of preventing officeholders from using federal workers to help their campaign

Sinead Baker at Business Insider:

Trump aides "take pride" in pushing the boundaries of ethics laws that are supposed to separate public office and political activities, The New York Times reported.

The Daily Beast, citing two former officials, said one motivation is that such acts frustrate the media with few consequences for themselves.

Biden Beats Expectations

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway. 

Matt Wilstein at The Daily Beast:

For months, President Donald Trump and his campaign have been systematically lowering expectations for Joe Biden by painting him as a senile old man who can’t string two sentence together. So when he performed far better than anticipated at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, even the ultra-conservative hosts on Fox News seemed surprised.

Donald Trump Jr., however, seemed to be riding high during an appearance on Fox following the closing night of the DNC. He was swiftly brought back down to earth by Laura Ingraham. “He did beat expectations, Don,” she said as the broad smile disappeared from Trump Jr.’s face. “I mean, people were expecting him to flub every line and have a senior moment.”

Trump Jr. couldn’t deny the reality of what she was saying, so he resorted to falsely accusing Biden of supposedly lying about President Trump’s Charlottesville comments about the “very fine people” on both sides of that 2017 clash between white supremacists and anti-racists.

Never Trump During the D Convention

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.  

An unusual number of prominent Republicans and former administration officials have broken with Trump.

NEW: Testimonial ad from Trump's Former DHS Chief of Staff @MilesTaylorUSA, declaring his support for Joe Biden and describing Trump's presidency as "terrifying" and "actively doing damage to our security."

WATCH & go to https://t.co/Nz2NiSCquN for more. pic.twitter.com/iChqOdIIew

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@RVAT2020) August 17, 2020

I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country’ — Listen to former GOP Ohio Governor John Kasich slam Trump and explain why he’s voting for Joe Biden in 2020 pic.twitter.com/nABSt4qke7

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 18, 2020

August 13, 1996: John Kasich and Susan Molinari address Republican National Convention.

August 17, 2020: John Kasich and Susan Molinari address Democratic National Convention. pic.twitter.com/OC2skT8MDq

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 18, 2020

"He Paid With His Life" "It Is What It Is"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

This show, this longest political TV ad ever, isn’t designed for the junkies but for people who dip in for 10 minutes before going back to Netflix. And that’s smart. #DemocraticConvention

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) August 18, 2020

Mike Allen at Axios

On opening night of their awkward but stirring virtual convention, Democrats prioritized racial justice along with the pandemic and the recession.

• Why it matters: On issues, Joe Biden's widest margin over President Trump in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll is race relations — a 24 point spread.

....

Trump's handling of the virus animated the night's top zinger — from Kristin Urquiza, who wrote a viral obituary for her father, Mark Urquiza of Arizona:

• "My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life."

Michelle Obama owned the night, and used a line from President Trump’s "Axios on HBO" interview as a rapier: "[H]e is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is."

• 'Those five words — down from her seven-word catchphrase at the 2016 convention, "When they go low, we go high" — have become a cultural shorthand for Trump's handling of the virus.

The former first lady encouraged viewers to "request mail-in ballots tonight," and urged them to be prepared for chaos at polls:

 

The Wolf Through the Gate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.  

Dan Balz at WP:

The Democratic National Convention will open Monday in a spirit of unity and shared purpose, with the party’s often-warring moderate establishment and galvanized liberal wings agreeing for now to set aside their differences to defeat President Trump in November and deliver the White House to Joe Biden.

...

That Democrats today appear far more unified is testament in part to the work of Biden, Sanders and their teams over the past several months to avoid a repeat of the 2016 experience. But the unity owes much more to the occupant of the White House, whom many Democrats fear could inflict lasting damage to the country and its democratic institutions if he gains a second term.

“Four years ago, you could point to Donald Trump as the wolf at the gate, but it was still theoretical,” said Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor who ran unsuccessfully against Biden in the primaries. “Now the wolf is through the gate, eating the chickens.”

...
Robby Mook, who was Clinton’s campaign manager in 2016, said there are major differences between the eve of this convention and four years ago. One is Trump’s presidency, another the personal relationship between Biden and Sanders, which is better than the one between Sanders and Clinton, and then the impact of the pandemic in focusing people’s attention.

But Mook also cited a fourth difference, which is the result of Democrats having to stage a virtual convention rather than a traditional gathering. “There’s no convention,” he said. “In 2016, they [the most ardent Sanders supporters] had a stage on which to play. That stage is gone.”

..

A major piece of the strategy was the Biden campaign’s creation of issue task forces composed of elected officials and others who represented the full breadth of the party. Perhaps the most symbolically significant pairing was the task force on climate, which included former secretary of state John F. Kerry, an establishment Brahmin and close friend of Biden, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the star of the party’s insurgent wing.

Democrats this year have put together the most liberal platform in the party’s history, including ideas that were advanced by Sanders in his 2016 campaign but rejected then by many in the party’s center-left cohort.

Director Ava DuVernay on Instagram:

There is no debate anymore. There’s no room for it in my book. We either make this happen. Or literally, more of us perish. People are dying. Someone I love died. This virus is real. If it hasn’t visited your doorstep, it will. Oh but, Kamala did this or she didn’t do that. I hear you. I know. And I don’t care. Because what she DIDN’T DO is abandon citizens in a pandemic, rip babies from their mother’s arms at the border, send federal troops to terrorize protestors, manufacture new ways to suppress Black and Brown votes, actively disrespect Indigenous people and land, traffic in white supremacist rhetoric in an effort to stir racist violence at every turn, attempt to dismantle most American democratic systems of checks and balance, degrade women all day everyday, infect the Supreme Court with another misogynist hack, demolish America’s standing on climate, actively cultivate and further white supremacist structures and systems across all aspects of American daily life. I mean, that’s what she DIDN’T do. So I don’t wanna hear anything bad about her. It doesn’t matter to me. Vote them in and then let’s hold them accountable. Anything other than that is insanity. It’s ego. It’s against our own interests. It’s selfish. It’s disrespectful to our elders. It’s nonsense. It’s talking to hear yourself talk. This is a matter of life or death. We need all our energy focused. This is a fight for more than can be expressed here. There is no debate anymore. Not for me anyway. #voteblue2020

COVID and Trump Campaign Woes

In Defying the Odds, we discuss campaign finance and campaign technology.

Maggie Haberman, Patricia Mazzei and Annie Karni at NYT:

Bowing to threats posed by the coronavirus, President Trump reversed course on Thursday and canceled the portion of the Republican National Convention to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., just weeks after he moved the event from North Carolina because state officials wanted the party to take health precautions there.

The surprise announcement threw one of the tent-pole moments of Mr. Trump’s re-election effort into limbo, with the president describing in vague terms how the Republicans would hold his renomination in North Carolina and do “other things with tele-rallies and online.” It was an ill-defined sketch of an August week that Mr. Trump once envisioned drawing huge crowds and energizing his struggling bid for a second term.

While Mr. Trump has spent weeks urging Florida and other states to reopen their economies and return to life as normal, virus cases have surged in Jacksonville and across the region. The president had insisted on moving ahead with the event until Thursday, talking up the big party that Republicans would hold in Jacksonville even with the dangers of large gatherings and some G.O.P. leaders saying they would not attend.

...
The Jacksonville convention host committee had about $6 million in various accounts, and had spent some of that money already. It had $20 million in commitments that were still firm on Tuesday, according to two officials involved in the fund-raising. On Thursday, they were still assessing whether donors would be able to get their money back but assumed they would not be able to do so in full.
...
But as cases surged, voters, donors and elected officials from both parties expressed skepticism about holding a big gathering just several weeks away. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday showed that 62 percent of the state’s voters thought the convention would be unsafe to hold. The poll also showed Mr. Biden leading Mr. Trump by 13 percentage points in Florida; in a Quinnipiac poll in April, Mr. Biden had a four-point lead.

Alex Isenstadt at Politico:

News that Kimberly Guilfoyle contracted the coronavirus had barely surfaced on July 3 before she hopped on a private flight from Mount Rushmore back to New York with her boyfriend, Donald Trump, Jr.

Left behind in her wake after President Donald Trump’s pre-Independence Day address were more than a half-dozen junior campaign staffers whom Guilfoyle oversees as the president’s national finance chair. The aides, who’d been in proximity to Guilfoyle, were forced to quarantine in their Rapid City, S.D., hotel rooms for three days and barred from face-to-face contact with colleagues as they pleaded with the campaign to get them home.
...

The episode was the latest example of upheaval within the fundraising unit that Guilfoyle oversees, which is primarily responsible for cultivating networks of donors who cut checks in increments up to $2,800. Interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans familiar with the campaign’s fundraising depict an operation beset by departures, staffers with no prior fundraising experience and accusations of irresponsible spending.

Trump is raking in big money online and has amassed an enormous war chest. But Joe Biden has outraised the president for two consecutive months, and there are growing concerns among senior Republicans about whether the dysfunction within Guilfoyle’s team is translating into money left on the table for what has become an uphill fight for a second term.

...
Guilfoyle’s unit is part of a massive Trump fundraising apparatus. Her department raises money into Trump Victory, a joint account between the reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee. While Guilfoyle’s team is mainly responsible for gathering $2,800 checks, the committee focuses on collecting donations into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is also the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which vacuums up small-dollar contributions.

Team Blue Wins the Battle of Conventioms

Gallup reports:

Americans are evenly divided on whether they view the Democratic Party more favorably (44%) or less favorably (42%) after the party's national convention last week. However, their ratings of the Republican Party after the GOP convention two weeks ago were significantly worse, with 35% saying they viewed the party more favorably and 52% less favorably.

The results are based on Gallup polls conducted in the days immediately after each party's convention -- the Republican convention in Cleveland from July 18-21 and the Democratic convention in Philadelphia from July 25-28.

Americans' assessments of the effect of the conventions on their image of each party largely mirror their assessments of how the convention will affect their vote in the 2016 election. By 45% to 41%, Americans say they are more rather than less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton based on what they saw or read about the Democratic convention. In contrast, many more Americans said they were less likely (51%) rather than more likely (36%) to vote for Donald Trump as a result of what they saw or read about the Republican convention.

Gallup has asked this question about Democratic and Republican national conventions since 1984, with the exceptions of the 1984 and 1992 Republican conventions. The 2016 Republican convention is the first after which a greater percentage of Americans have said they are "less likely" rather than "more likely" to vote for the party's presidential nominee.

Trump and Nixon

At The Washington Post, Dan Balz writes:

There were no echoes of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” George H.W. Bush’s “kinder and gentler nation” or even George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism in Donald Trump’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination here Thursday night. Instead, in both theme and target audience, Trump offered a powerful echo of Richard Nixon almost 50 years ago.

Trump’s speech proved once again that he would continue to throw out the traditional campaign rulebook that might dictate softer language and broader appeals. Instead, he offered his grim portrait of the country and a law-and-order message in the hope of summoning an army of disaffected and forgotten voters large enough to topple the political status quo in November.

No accident. At The New York Times, Michael Barbaro and Alexander Burns write:

In a startling disclosure on the first day of the convention, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, declared that the candidate was using, as the template for his own prime-time speech accepting the Republican nomination, Nixon’s convention address 48 years ago in Miami Beach. “If you go back and read,” Mr. Manafort said at a Bloomberg News breakfast, “that speech is pretty much on line with a lot of the issues that are going on today.”

Mr. Trump himself, in an interview, drew explicit comparisons between his candidacy and Nixon’s, and between the current political climate and that of the United States in 1968.

“I think what Nixon understood is that when the world is falling apart, people want a strong leader whose highest priority is protecting America first,” Mr. Trump said recently. “The ’60s were bad, really bad. And it’s really bad now. Americans feel like it’s chaos again. 

Danielle Kurtzleben at NPR:

However, in many ways, the America Trump will address differs vastly from Nixon's America. By the time of 1968's Republican convention, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and destructive riots had torn through major U.S. cities. Meanwhile, thousands of young soldiers were dying overseas — that year, casualties in Vietnam would reach their peak — and the Cold War was the backdrop to U.S. foreign relations.

And yet: Amid the horrors and divisions of 1968, Americans weren't as polarized as they are today; the major-party presidential candidates weren't nearly as disliked; and Washington wasn't as distrusted. Nixon was appealing to a nation still hoping for a solution to its ongoing catastrophes — a nation in which an overwhelming majority of Americans believed he was of "high integrity." Trump, meanwhile, is addressing a nation in which a majority of voters view him unfavorably, and where even more have seemingly little expectation that government can solve its problems.

Bad First Day for GOP Convention

In drafting Melania Trump's convention speech, the Trump campaign plagiarized Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech.Robert Costa, Dan Balz and Philip Rucker report at The Washington Post that the first day brought other problems, too:

Who had vetted the long and rambling speech by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, which prompted so many delegates to walk out that the closing act by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa — a rare next-generation star willing to address Trump’s convention — came close to midnight in a mostly empty Quicken Loans Arena?

Why had Donald Trump called into Bill O’Reilly’s program on Fox News, resulting in the network cutting away from the emotionally resonant remarks by Patricia Smith, whose son Sean was killed in the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya?

Then there were the day’s earlier developments: the brief revolt on the convention floor from rebellious anti-Trump delegates over a procedural dispute, as well as Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s decision to begin a week-long push for party unity by publicly chastising Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the Bush family over their refusal to support Trump.

The first 24 hours of Trump’s convention left Republican strategists — some of whom have long been at odds with Trump and his team — befuddled and concerned about the capacity of the Trump campaign to run a serious and effective general-election operation against the machinery of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

...
 Manafort and campaign spokesman Jason Miller worked to craft the campaign’s initial statement, which landed in reporters’ inboxes at 1:48 a.m.

“In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking,” read the statement, which was attributed to Miller. “Melania’s immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success.”

The statement conflicted with what Melania Trump told NBC News before her appearance Monday night. Asked by Matt Lauer whether she had practiced her speech, she said, “I read it once over, and that’s all because I wrote it with as little help as possible.”

Messy

Nick Gass reports at Politico:

After Bernie Sanders told The Associated Press that the Democratic National Convention would be "messy," the Vermont senator and his campaign have since insisted that the reference was merely to the democratic process and not a subliminal message to his supporters to create chaos in Philadelphia.

"The media often takes words out of context. The context of that was that democracy is messy. That people will have vigorous debate on the issues," Sanders told NBC News' Kristen Welker in an interview aired Tuesday on "Today." Asked whether the convention itself will be messy, Sanders replied, "Well of course it will be. But everything — that's what democracy is about."

Amber Phillips reports at The Washington Post:

In an election cycle in which the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is arguably louder and more powerful than ever, it's perhaps not a surprise that the party's top official has a primary challenger for the first time.

Nor is it surprising that Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's primary -- and to a lesser extent the Florida congresswoman's main challenger, law professor Tim Canova -- has the potential to become a battleground for the establishment/grass-roots divide that's playing out at the presidential level.

Case in point: Increasingly defiant presidential candidate Bernie Sanders endorsed Canova in an interview with CNN on Sunday. Sanders, a senator from Vermont, said his views align more with the liberal law professor and added that if he were president, he probably wouldn't have Wasserman Schultz heading the Democratic National Committee. Sanders even sent a fundraising email for Canova ahead of Florida's Aug. 30 prima

Democratic Friction

At Politico, Daniel Strauss reports on continuing Democratic friction:

The most recent flare-up occurred last week, when Sanders publicly released a letter to Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accusing her of stacking the deck against him on the convention's standing committees. “[W]e are prepared to mobilize our delegates to force as many votes as necessary to amend the platform and rules on the floor of the convention," wrote Sanders, several days after a tense phone conversation with the chairwoman.

According to a Sanders official with knowledge of the call, the senator demanded more representation on the committees but Wasserman Schultz would only assure him that he would have representation. A DNC spokesman declined to characterize the conversation and would only confirm that it took place.

For a party that's anxious to unite all its factions behind likely nominee Hillary Clinton after a long slog of a primary, it was an inauspicious — and worrisome — start.

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, chair of the Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee, had a suggestion for Bernie Bros. Harper Neidig reports at The Hill:

“I think it’s gonna be a great convention, but of course the key to it is the Sanders people. Bernie’s gonna have his name placed in nomination; we’re gonna have a roll call; there’s gonna be a demonstration in support of Bernie; he’s gonna lose the roll call,” he said. “His supporters have to behave and not cause trouble. And I think they will, and I think Sen. Sanders will send them a strong message.”

Threats

Outsiderism often includes a whiff of intimidation. Eli Stokols and Kyle Cheney report at Politico:

Since Donald Trump came up empty in his quest for delegates at the Republican state assembly in Colorado Springs nearly two weeks ago, his angry supporters have responded to Trump’s own claims of a “rigged” nomination process by lashing out at Republican National Committee delegates that they believe won’t support Trump at the party’s convention — including House.

The mild-mannered chairman estimates he’s gotten between 4,000 and 5,000 calls on his cellphone. Many, he says, have ended with productive conversations. He’s referred the more threatening, violent calls to police. His cellphone is still buzzing this week, as he attends the RNC quarterly meetings in Florida, and he’s not the only one.

In hotel hallways and across dinner tables, many party leaders attending this week’s meetings shared similar stories. One party chairman says a Trump supporter recently got in his face and promised “bloodshed” if Trump doesn't win the GOP presidential nomination. An Indiana delegate who criticized Trump received a note warning against “traditional burial” that ended with, “We are watching you.”

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Trump’s campaign has never explicitly encouraged violence. But it has promoted tactics that have contributed to delegates’ fear. Earlier in April, a top Trump adviser posted online the cellphone number of Tennessee state party chairman Ryan Haynes, along with a message accusing the state party of trying to “STEAL your vote TODAY.”

Dark Horses

A number of posts have discussed the possibility of a contested convention.

The piece I did today at Fox and Hounds makes for a fun followup to The Best Man:

The Republican National Convention is probably going to pick Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or (much less likely) John Kasich. Since 1972, every major-party presidential nominee has come out of the primaries and caucuses, and GOP voters seem to have little appetite for breaking with that practice. Moreover, it is not even certain that the convention will adopt rules allowing for the nomination of another candidate. A dark-horse nominee seems impossible.

And yet, 2016 is the year for believing six impossible things before breakfast. Just 12 months ago, who would have thought that Trump would be the leading candidate – or that many “establishment” Republicans would see Cruz as the best alternative? So imagine that multiple ballots result in deadlock, and that convention procedures allow delegates to pick anybody they want. Who could emerge?

For years, conventional wisdom had it that Republicans liked to turn to the candidate next in line, that is, somebody who had previously sought the nomination but placed second. In 2008, that candidate was Mike Huckabee. In 2012, it was Rick Santorum. The trouble is that both Huckabee and Santorum both ran this year, and both flopped badly

It might be logical to consider the party’s congressional leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan has a lot going for him: brains, a solid conservative reputation, and national exposure as the 2012 vice presidential nominee. But he has taken himself out of the running with the strong declaration that he would not accept the nomination. As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: if you look up the term “Washington Insider,” you may see his picture. Finding that he had a 16 percent national approval rating, one pollster dubbed him “the most unpopular major political figure in the country.” Ted Cruz called him a liar, and is standing by that characterization.

Some anti-Trump conservatives are floating the name of retired Marine Corps General James Mattis. Not only did he build an awesome military career, but he also earned a couple of nicknames that will appeal to various wings of the party. “Mad Dog” would be a huge draw for foreign policy hardliners, while moderates would like “the Warrior Monk,” a soubriquet referring to his contemplative and analytical side. He has shown the physical courage that Trump only pretends to have, and his knowledge of key national security issues would put all the current candidates to shame.

Though Mattis is attractive in many ways, the experience of the most recent general-turned-dark-horse is not encouraging. In 2004, General Wesley Clark entered the Democratic race with an outstanding résumé, but his candidacy quickly fizzled when he displayed total ineptitude on the political battlefield. Though warfare has much to teach us about politics – I wrote a whole book on the topic – running for office requires skills that military officers do not automatically acquire. Dwight Eisenhower succeeded brilliantly in both realms; but alas, the Good Lord made only one of him.

Republicans might want someone with political experience, the ability to unify the party, and the potential to broaden its reach. Two South Carolinians fit this description. Governor Nikki Haley is a fiscal and social conservative who won acclaim last year for her response to the Charleston massacre, and her support for removing the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds. As 44-year-old Indian American woman, she would undercut the stereotype of the GOP as the party of elderly white guys.

So would 50-year old Senator Tim Scott, the first black Republican senator from the South since Reconstruction. He has strong ties to Christian conservatives and the tea party faction, but he has also won solid reviews from unexpected quarters. Shortly before he moved from the House to the Senate, Eliza Gray wrote in the liberal magazine The New Republic: “For as long as he’s been in politics, Scott has had a knack for navigating the complex internal politics of the GOP. Armed with an ever-present smile, Scott has been able to be all things to all people. He is an insurgent Tea Partier beloved by the House leadership who keeps his constituents happy with the occasional pork project. In a Republican Party that is constantly at war with itself, Senator Scott will offer much more to the GOP than the color of his skin.”

Obscure figures who suddenly land on a national ticket can quickly get into trouble, as Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin learned. Accordingly, the choice of Mattis, Haley, Scott, or any other outside candidate would be an enormous gamble for the GOP.

But would it really be a bigger gamble than nominating a bombastic billionaire with a 67 percent unfavorable rating?

Ballots

At Pew, Drew DeSilver makes a key observation about multi-ballot conventions:

Republicans opposed to Donald Trump as their party’s nominee are pinning most of their hopes on stopping him at this summer’s national convention in Cleveland. Although Trump has more delegates than his two remaining rivals (760 or so by our count), he needs at least 1,237 to win the nomination on the first ballot. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are hoping to win enough delegates in the remaining primaries to keep Trump from reaching that magic number. After the first ballot, the thinking goes,most delegates become “unbound” and can vote for other candidates. They could even draft a completely new candidate (though House Speaker Paul Ryan, a frequently mentioned “dark horse” alternative, ruled himself out earlier this week).

If all that sounds a bit like a Hail Mary pass, bear in mind that these situations have happened before. Not recently, mind you (the last time was at the 1952 Democratic convention), but they have happened. Since the Civil War there have been eight Republican and 10 Democratic conventions that took more than one ballot to pick a nominee. In only seven of those 18 instances did the first-ballot leader win the nomination.