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Trump’s convention portrayed the president as a champion of ‘law and order’, targeting voters who do not approve of his divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, but who may be on edge over months of protests over racial injustice and police brutality that sometimes they have become violent.
United States President Donald Trump greets the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Charlotte Convention Center on August 24, 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – The back-to-back presidential nomination conventions that concluded with Donald Trump’s speech showed that both sides intend to fight for the fraction of independent and moderate voters who will decide the election, each with a wildly different strategy in the final sprint to On November 3. .
A self-described showman, Trump used all his reality show talents during this week’s Republican convention to try to win back supporters alienated from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with a dire warning Thursday night from a United States. United without law if his democrat rival Joe Biden takes power.
That illustrated the Republican strategy for the next two months: changing the subject from a pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans and shackled the American economy, and blaming the Democrats for the violence in the streets.
Republicans largely abandoned talks about the health crisis as if it had subsided, in favor of reminding voters of the robust economy that existed beforehand. During the Democratic convention last week, Biden focused on holding Trump accountable for his actions during the outbreak.
“These two conventions have provided very different images of reality, in terms of where our country is now and what the future holds,” said Christopher Devine, an expert on US elections at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
The Trump convention described the president as a champion of “law and order,” targeting voters who do not approve of his divisive and incendiary rhetoric, but who may be nervous about months of protests over racial injustice and police brutality. sometimes they have become violent.
“This is their attempt to ground the ground and mobilize them to come out and vote,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“But I do think he’s trying to peel off some of those indecisive women, the people he calls ‘suburban women.’
Biden has a seven-point lead over Trump nationally, roughly the same position he held before the conventions, according to the Reuters / Ipsos opinion poll conducted Aug. 19-25. But it showed that the race for suburban voters was narrowing, a troubling sign for the former vice president who had previously widened his lead with the crucial constituency of voters.
Suburban women, a cohort seen as key to the election, have become less critical of Trump than in June. Biden’s lead with this group has dropped to nine points in the latest poll, compared with a 15-point lead over Trump in a similar Reuters / Ipsos poll in June.
The August poll also showed Biden with a 5-point lead over college-educated white Americans, compared to his 7-point lead in July and an 11-point lead in June.
But by reaching out to suburban voters with unapologetic anti-crime messages, while showing little empathy for protesters demanding racial justice, Trump may have further bolstered African-American support for Biden.
The August poll had Biden leading among African Americans by 62 points, 6 points more than in July and the largest advantage for Biden among this group in at least six months.
Trump’s message would have been more powerful before the pandemic, said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Policy.
“It could be successful if COVID is not as focused on the fall as it is now. It seems difficult to imagine, but it is possible, ”he said.
MIDDLE TONE
While he praised Trump throughout, his convention was as much about convincing wavering Republicans as they were undecided voters that Biden, who was running largely as a centrist candidate in the Democratic primary, would be indebted to elements of extreme left of his party.
A group of speakers accused Biden of turning a blind eye to the crime and violence that have clouded the mostly peaceful protests for racial justice sparked by the May police murder of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis. The latest police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sparked a new wave of protests.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican consultant close to the Trump campaign, said much of the convention’s programming was aimed at voters who “might have gotten mad” at Trump because of his divisive style or who were still looking for reasons to support it.
First lady Melania Trump expressed her sympathy for those who had suffered from the pandemic, a gesture of comfort her husband has rarely shown, and Vice President Mike Pence offered a more statesman critique of Biden that may have drawn weary Republicans. Of the president’s invective. .
Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist in Virginia who is not affiliated with the Trump campaign, said this week’s riots in Wisconsin may propel Trump in ways other protests have not.
With the pandemic still raging and the economy struggling, “chaos and uncertainty are the best friend you have,” Donovan said.
VIOLENCE AS A STRATEGY?
Speaking at a fundraiser Thursday, Biden also suggested that Trump welcomed chaos. “The violence you are seeing is in the Donald Trump administration, in Donald Trump’s America. Did they forget who the president is? Biden said. “Violence is not a problem in Trump’s eyes. It is a political strategy ”.
The protests have been a thorny issue for Biden, who prefers to keep his focus on the virus. While showing solidarity with the protesters, he has also criticized the destruction of communities and has not endorsed the underfunding of police departments as demanded by his party activists.
But Jim Messina, who was President Barack Obama’s campaign manager for re-election in 2012, said the fiery rhetoric from Republicans against the protests could put off independents who want an end to bitter polarization.
“Trump has gone so far to the right that he left the middle to take,” he said.
The Biden convention underscored deep-seated fears within the Democratic Party that voter turnout may be depressed by the pandemic and Trump’s efforts to limit voting by mail, which Trump has denounced as prone to fraud even though it does not exist. such evidence.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama urged Americans to “vote for Joe Biden as if our lives depended on it.”
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