REPUBLICANS HOLD CONVENTION, DEMOCRATS CRACK UP. Milwaukee — The remarkable thing about the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, and now into Thursday, is that the news, the chatter, the buzz, isn’t about Republicans. It’s about Democrats. The theme of Wednesday was supposed to be the speech of new vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. Beyond that, it was to continue to shine a spotlight on Donald Trump. That was the plan. But the real focus was on Joe Biden, with Republicans watching in real time as the political walls closed in on the aged and infirm Democratic president.
The fascination continued Thursday, with more news about what appears to be a coordinated effort by the nation’s preeminent Democrats — former President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and others — to push the 81-year-old Biden out of the race.
News producers reformatted their shows to lead with the Democratic story. Combined with the worsening scandal surrounding the Secret Service actions related to the assassination attempt on Trump, that meant the convention was the third-most important story of the moment.
Thursday night, of course, will be all Trump and will be the emotional highlight of the convention. It is impossible to exaggerate how much drama and import the attempted assassination has added to Trump’s already enormous presence at the convention. The delegates were already wildly enthusiastic about him. They feel he has been put through crisis and tribulation — investigations, impeachment, indictment, trial — for his aggressiveness in leading the Republican Party. And now he has been shot, showing real courage and presence of mind literally under fire. Whatever their level of appreciation for Trump previously, it has gone up exponentially.
So nothing will overshadow that. But at this moment, there is a split screen of news going on, with Trump’s nomination and Biden’s ouster happening at precisely the same moment.
At some point Wednesday, nearly the entire political class came to the conclusion that Biden cannot survive. That meant that a problem the Trump team has been working through in prospect — what would happen if Trump’s opponent drops out of the race? — has become a much more immediate matter. The campaign has been thinking about what a race against Vice President Kamala Harris would look like and what might happen if a Democratic wild card ends up with the nomination.
Now, the Trump team is rhetorically pressing on another angle, a crucial angle, of the Biden matter. If Biden has to pull out of the race because he is too cognitively impaired to serve as president starting next year, how is he in good enough shape to serve as president right now? For the Trump team, the word of the day became “coup.”
“This is nothing more than an attempted coup by the Democrat Party,” senior Trump campaign strategist Chris LaCivita told Politico Thursday. “They are actively engaged in an attempt, in my view, and a lot of people share this view, in deposing the president of the United States. Because, look, you can’t step down as a candidate for president because you’re cognitively impaired while still being president. The two are linked.”
“This is a political coup — let’s not call it anything other than what it is,” said Jason Miller, another senior Trump adviser, on Newsmax. “Democrats are running a political coup on their own candidate. Joe Biden … is the president of the United States right now. Here’s the important point: You can’t, as a Democrat or a member of the media, say Joe Biden has to drop out of the race but then he stays in as president. If Joe Biden leaves the race for president, he has to step down as president because that is saying he is too mentally incompetent to run the country.”
They have a point. And they will make it over and over regardless of how Democrats resolve their Biden problem in the coming days.