Before I get to the convention, I’ll just say that political violence is very bad regardless of the target and it’s helpful for people to say so; that it’s obvious which presidential candidate and which party have been far more likely to normalize and encourage violence; that no one from either party should do so going forward; and that being honest and even blunt about the large consequences for US democracy at stake in this election is actually good, and not at all the same thing as encouraging violence. See also what Dan Drezner said. And also: Once again, political violence is very bad.
The quadrennial national conventions over the last 50 years have had three functions:
1) They formally nominate the presidential ticket and ratify the party platform. Normally that’s trivial, as it should be for Republicans this week.
2) They do all the things that any organization does at national conventions: Networking, deal-making, socialization, socializing. It’s quite important to those who attend and to the party in general, and it’s the reason that the conventions are very unlikely to go fully virtual or disappear altogether any time soon. That will happen this week, but it won’t make much news.
3) Adverstising. In particular, the conventions — and the subsequent fall campaign — are usually effective at reminding party loyalists who don’t think about politics very much outside of election season why they support their party.
Now, we shouldn’t overstate advertising effects. Not too many people will be directly influenced by the convention because not too many people watch, and most of those who do are the party’s, and the nominee’s, strongest supporters. In the old three-network days or even in the basic cable days, lots of people would still be exposed to the highlights through their normal TV diet. That’s still somewhat true; quite a few people still turn the network morning shows on most days. And of course the parties are going to try hard to get exposure through social media and streaming and whatever else they can, but we really don’t know much about how that will work.1
Regardless, given strong levels of partisanship and the how familiar the candidates are, I’d expect relatively small effects from the campaign overall, with even smaller effects from the convention.2 Remember: Huge events during the campaing are forgotten shockingly quickly. So a gaffe in a speech or an inapt line just aren’t likely to change any votes at all a few months from now.
So this is mostly not about direct effects from the convention, or even immediate indirect effects. But there’s still some reason to pay attention (or at least for someone to pay attention — voters don’t need to!). We might well learn something about the rest of the campaign, or even some further hints about what a new Donald Trump presidency would be like.
(And yes, we know a lot of things already; we might learn a bit more from four days of Republicans on display).
Here’s what I’ll be interested in while watching:
Can Trump and the Trumpy GOP even pretend to talk to anyone other than their strongest supporters? Trump’s campaign has made some minor efforts in that directly recently, and scored some successes with (perhaps unduly gullable) mainstream reporters. But listening to Trump’s speeches and those of his supporters throughout the campaign has required a secret decoder ring; as my colleague David says, “Looking forward to how much of the convention is going to be incomprehensible to people who don’t spend time in the right-wing marketplace.”
Second question: Can they get the mechanics right? Until 2016, the most famous TV-era convention flub was probably the botched balloon drop from the Democrats in 1980. As much as that symolized that year’s hapless Democratic efforts, it wasn’t really a clue to what was wrong with Jimmy Carter and the party. But the multiple glitches from the Republicans in 2016 really were an indication of an effort, and eventually a presidency, that repeatedly flubbed the basics. And even in 2020, the second Trump convention was no technical marvel at all (although to be fair the pandemic made it difficult). We’ve seen reports that this time around things will be different; the convention will be a reasonable test to see whether there’s much reality to that spin.
Third question: How will they reconcile the passionate policy preferences of party faithful with the reality that a lot of that agenda is deeply unpopular? Democrats were making some headway in the last couple of weeks by highlighting “Project 2025” items; will the convention stick to complaining about inflation and immigration and ignore the rest?3 This isn’t just a campaigning question; it will be a clue as to just how much Republicans in office will be willing to ditch some of their most extreme ideas. A normal president and a normal party would, but that hasn’t been Trump and the current Republicans.
Fourth question: Never say that politicians “can’t say” something. Still, if the Trump Republicans pair their usual rhetoric with appeals to Democrats to “lower the temperature” and stop criticizing them…there’s a chance they could very quickly forfeit the neutral media inclination to blame both sides equally for extremism. As strong as that inclination can be. So far, it’s not looking good, as they are telling their speakers to keep their speeches intact. But we’ll see.
Overall? Don’t tune into the conventions to decide which candidate to support. Don’t tune in, this time, to find out who the candidates really are. But if you want to know a bit more about the state of the parties, it’s possible to suss out some useful clues.
With increased partisanship, there’s less work needed to be done these days in nudging people back to where they were always likely to end up, and it’s likely that without the conventions doing that job something else would.
Perhaps it would help if they modernized the format. Couldn’t hurt. But I suspect the biggest effect would be that professional convention-watchers would find them less boring.
Yes, too much inflation talk runs the risk of being out of touch with the latest news given that inflation was really a 2022, or perhaps a 2022-2023, problem, but it does appear to still be a solid hit against Joe Biden and the Democrats. And it’s certainly safer for Republicans than talking about abortion.