Democrats cautiously optimistic after Trump’s impromptu convention speech | Democrats

As Donald Trump took flight at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, largely improvising one of the longest presidential acceptance speeches in U.S. history, the adulation among his Make America Great Again (Maga) audience inside the hall was matched outside by a cautious sigh of relief from Democrats.

After several painful weeks of the Democratic Party imploding, as an aging Joe Biden isolates himself because of Covid-19 and calls for his resignation grow, Trump has managed to give desperate Democrats what they least expected: hope. Van Jones, a former special adviser to Barack Obama, summed it up succinctly on CNN.

“He had the whole world in his hands. If he had persisted in this message of unity, he could have created problems, but he could not help it.”

For the first 15 minutes, Trump was the center of attention, drawing millions of American prime-time viewers to where he wanted them. His right ear still bandaged, he described in powerful but restrained terms the assassination attempt he narrowly avoided last Saturday.

Was this the new human Trump, the contemplative, caring national unifier that Republican strategists had promised to see on stage?

But suddenly things were back to normal. For the next hour and a quarter, old Trump was firmly in the saddle.

He hurled insults – “crazy Nancy Pelosi” – demonized undocumented immigrants – “killers and illegal criminals” – and even revived his bizarre hero worship of “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” from The Silence of the Lambs.

According to one fact-checker, the former president has committed at least 22 outright lies, including his equally bizarre claim that “107 percent” of jobs created under Biden were filled by “illegal immigrants.” (In fact, 15 million jobs were created under the Biden administration, while up to 2.5 million undocumented immigrants entered the country.)

For Democrats dismayed by Trump’s lead in the polls, by the idea that he is now untouchable as an assassination attempt survivor and by rumors of a new, more moderate version of the former president, it was a godsend. “This is the first good thing that has happened to Democrats in the last three weeks,” said David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief presidential campaign strategist. “It reminded everybody why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular with everyone outside this room.”

Axelrod added on social media that Trump’s unruly speech had derailed a remarkably controlled and well-choreographed Republican convention. Milwaukee’s most fiery speakers had been confined to earlier timeslots, where they could do less damage to daytime viewers.

Meanwhile, the prime-time speaker lineup has largely stayed on message, sticking to the theme of a nationally unifying Trump after the shooting.

Which quickly disappeared when the man himself returned to his dystopian vision of how Democrats were “destroying our country” and pushing the world to the “brink of World War III.”

Seasoned political observers could sense in real time how Trump’s rhetoric was stiffening Democrats. Ezra Klein, a prominent New York Times columnist and podcaster, noted on X that “no Democrat thought Trump was unbeatable.”

Bari Weiss, the Free Press’s executive editor, said that before Trump’s acceptance speech, the consensus was that Trump was largely in favor of the presidency. Afterward? “Now it’s like finding a Democrat who has a pulse, who can read a teleprompter and says, ‘Go for it!’”

All of this does not mean that Democrats are out of the woods. Far from it. It is entirely possible that a catastrophic descent into chaos and acrimony surrounding Biden and his eventual successor is only just beginning.

The Trump campaign will also have plenty to mine from the first 15 minutes of his speech, cutting out clips that are suitable for online distribution to the American public. It is likely that many more voters will consume these bite-sized pieces, where Trump speaks emotionally about the attack — “I’m supposed to be dead” — or about unity, than those who read his entire 90-minute speech.

What changed was the feeling among a growing proportion of Democrats that the game was already over. All that remained was to decide whether to emigrate to Canada or Portugal.

Now, even some Republicans are worried about a potential change in leadership at the Democratic helm. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told Politico that if a Biden change were to occur, “everything would change.”

That would energize the party, Sununu said. Independent voters would reward Democrats by saying, ‘Hey, none of us liked this Biden-Trump ticket to begin with. You had the courage to change the candidate,'” Sununu said.

Some commentators believe that the renewed optimism felt by some Democrats after Trump’s acceptance speech could itself encourage a campaign to oust Biden. As Klein put it, “the best argument against any party replacing Biden was fatalism; if you’re going to lose anyway, you might as well lose conventionally.”

Now that the new Trump has reverted to the old Trump, that logic no longer applies. His acceptance speech, Klein said, “was an antidote to fatalism.”