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8 Thoughts After the Republican Convention

8 Thoughts After the Republican Convention

Last updated on: July 21, 2024 at 12:49 pm by John Beckett

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8 Thoughts After the Republican Convention 2024-07-21T12:49:37-06:00 John Beckett

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This post was going to be “I watched Donald Trump’s speech so you don’t have to.” I expected to have plenty of points to rebut. But what I saw was a long, meandering stream of vague promises and outright lies. Honestly, I was bored. I usually find Trump somewhere between annoying and infuriating, but never boring. Thursday night I went to sleep before he was done – and I wasn’t even drinking.

So instead, here are eight things that strike me as particularly important a little over a hundred days before the election.

1. Trump still has no respect for facts

Candidate speeches at party conventions are not known for being particularly truthful. That said, Trump hit a new low, even by his own standards. CNN – which, if you haven’t been paying attention, is not exactly a liberal source these days – documented more than 20 false claims. You can verify them yourself if you don’t trust CNN.

One of Trump’s selling points to his base is how he makes things sound simple. Doesn’t matter if the problem is deeply complicated – just elect him and he’ll fix it on Day One.

Facts have never mattered to Trump. Part of that is living his whole life in wealth and luxury, with his every whim indulged. Another part is the influence of Norman Vincent Peale’s “power of positive thinking.” Now, positive thinking has very real benefits. But it’s no substitute for facing reality and dealing with it head-on, something Trump has never been willing to do.

2. J.D. Vance is a curious pick for VP

My Appalachian friends have despised J.D. Vance since well before he entered politics. His 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy is a condescending look at the problems of the region, written by someone who claimed to be Appalachian but in fact grew up 30 miles outside of Cincinnati; who graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School.

He doesn’t have much government experience – he’s 39 years old and has served less than 2 years in the Senate. He isn’t well-known around the country and Trump carried Ohio easily in 2016 and 2020. In 2016 Vance called Trump “reprehensible,” “an idiot,” and compared him to Hitler.

But he shares Trump’s isolationism, and he’s made it clear his values are flexible when it benefits him.

And he’s a favorite of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech billionaires who are bankrolling the Trump campaign, looking not just for lower taxes and less regulatory oversight, but also to advance socially conservative positions in the culture war.

3. Agenda 47 = Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is finally getting the attention it deserves. It’s a 900 page manifesto for how to radically remake not just the federal government but all of American society in the first 180 days of the next Republican President. It focuses on greatly downsizing and politicizing the federal bureaucracy, including eliminating the Department of Education and eliminating protections for jobs usually held by career Civil Service employees and replacing them with political appointees.

It call for outlawing abortion medication and for more legal obstacles that would make abortion increasingly unobtainable, especially for those who live in states that have outlawed abortion. It calls for defining trans people out of existence, and for more studies on the “negative effects of crosssex interventions.” They’re telling researchers to design studies to support their predetermined conclusions, while ignoring the existing studies that show gender affirming care is almost always a positive thing. It calls for outlawing pornography, and while it does not define it, the context makes it clear they mean anything with LGBTQ content, anything on sexual health, and even “spicy” romance novels.

The more people find out about Project 2025 the less they like it. So it’s no surprise Trump says he knows nothing about it. But 31 of the project’s contributors worked in the Trump administration, and many would work in a second Trump administration.

And also, the overlap between Project 2025 and Trump’s own Agenda 47 is considerable.

A vote for Trump is a vote for Project 2025.

4. I’m not worried about Joe Biden

Joe Biden is old. He stutters and he’s never been a good speaker. But we know he can be a good President, because we’ve seen him do it for the past four years.

If he gets to the point where he can’t do it anymore, Kamala Harris is perfectly capable of taking over and continuing the work.

And if we find ourselves in an in-between place, Biden’s team has shown they can carry on just fine.

This is what so many people overlook. You’re not just voting for a President – you’re voting for a team. Biden’s team has been consistent. Two agency heads have left office so far – Trump had 14 leave before completion of their terms. This is a good team and I want them returned to office (except for Merrick Garland, who has forgotten that justice delayed is justice denied).

5. Who really wants Biden to step aside?

We can argue that Biden should have declined to run for a second term (he said he would have if Trump hadn’t run again). We can argue that he should have had serious competition in the primaries (never weaken a sitting President with a primary challenge. See what Reagan did to Ford in 1976 and what Kennedy did to Carter in 1980). But those arguments are no longer relevant.

As I write this on Saturday morning, July 20, Joe Biden is still running and is still expected to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. That, in my experienced-but-not-expert opinion, is the best chance of defeating Trump and all he would bring with him.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has endorsed Biden remaining in the race. So has Senator Bernie Sanders. And so has Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC had more to say on this:

“When I’m talking to folks in rooms, I hear, ‘My donor this, my donor that.’ Those are the inputs that I am hearing reflected by my colleagues. It’s not, ‘My voters this…’ it’s like, ‘Big donors are saying this.’”

And also:

“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave that they will support Vice President Harris you would be mistaken … A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket.”

If the Democratic nominee is not Joe Biden, expect Republican lawsuits in every state to keep the nominee off the ballot. Even if they’re not successful, they’ll be a huge drain on resources.

There is nothing to be gained from more chaos between now and November 5.

6. This election isn’t complicated

For all that this election is like nothing the country has ever seen – starting with the fact that the nominee of a major party is a convicted felon – it isn’t very complicated.

Presidents get too much blame when things go badly and too much credit when things go well. At the same time, what Presidents do matters.

We know what Donald Trump will do – we saw it for four years. Chaos, cruelty, vulgarity, and every decision made based on what will make him look good in his own eyes.

We know what Joe Biden will do – we’ve seen it for almost four years. Competency, consistency, and policies that are mostly progressive, even if they don’t go far enough for my leftist friends.

There is no third option. Save your Gretchen Whitmer – Pete Buttigieg fantasies for the 2028 primary.

7. This election comes down to turnout

Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes. He won the electoral vote because he won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by razor-thin margins. Too many progressives and moderates “just didn’t like Hillary” and stayed home.

Trump lost the popular vote in 2020 by 7 million votes. Biden won most of the swing states and a clear majority of the electoral vote. Most of those stay-at-home progressives and moderates understood the stakes of the election and turned out to vote.

Trump will lose the popular vote in 2024. Whether he wins the electoral vote depends entirely on whose voters show up.

8. Our part in this is clear

I’m disappointed in the Democratic Party operatives who are trying to undermine the incumbent President, a strategy that has never worked.

But my part in this process is clear.

I’m voting for Joe Biden in November. If something happens to him, I’m voting for whoever is the Democratic nominee. I’m voting for Democratic candidates in the state and local elections. Remember that the vast majority of authoritarianism – especially the loss of reproductive rights – is coming from state governments, not from Washington. My U.S. House district is gerrymandered to the point of irrelevance, but I’ll vote blue anyway. Colin Allred has a good chance to unseat Ted Cruz.

Find the state and local elections where you are, research the candidates, and vote for the ones that most closely align with your values and your priorities, even if they aren’t a perfect match. None of them are perfect. But some will move the country forward, while others will move it backward.

What I saw from the Republican National Convention confirmed what I already knew – Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025 must be defeated.

And if we turn out to vote, they will.

And less than 24 hours later, Biden has dropped out of the race. I’m disappointed, but this election remains simple: turn out and vote for the Democratic nominee, whoever that is. I trust that will be Kamala Harris, but even if it’s not, the urgency remains. Trump, Vance, and Project 2025 must be defeated.

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