5 Questions Ahead Of The Republican National Convention

Enlarge this image

President Trump will give his Republican renomination acceptance speech outside of the White House on Thursday night.

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Elections
Convention Gives Trump A Chance To Explain How He’ll Make America Great Again, Again

Elections
The Republican National Convention Starts Monday. Here’s What You Need To Know

This convention has taken a winding road to get to this place. It started as what was supposed to be an in-person convention in Charlotte, N.C., but was derailed by the coronavirus. Upset that North Carolina state leadership couldn’t guarantee that he could hold an in-person convention with thousands of people in attendance, Trump hastily moved it to Jacksonville, Fla. He then abandoned that plan, however, when COVID-19 cases began to spike in that state.

Democrats made a point of showing how to do a convention safely — virtually, or with masks and proper social distancing. Will Trump’s convention do the same?

There are so many other questions about this convention — what it will be like and what the message will be. Here are five:

1. Can Trump make this election a choice, not a referendum?

The stakes are high for Trump for this convention. There’s more pressure on him to have a better convention week than Joe Biden did because Trump is behind.

Biden leads Trump nationally by an average of 9 points in the polls. And that’s a fairly historic margin. Trump is just the fourth modern president with a polling deficit larger than 1 point heading into his convention, as CNN’s Harry Enten points out. The other three were Harry Truman in 1948, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980. Their races all tightened, but both Ford and Carter lost. Truman, who wound up winning, was down by about 10 points, but he «didn’t have an opponent who was already pulling in more than half the vote [as Biden is],» Enten writes.

More than the head-to-head match-up, Americans have consistently disapproved of the job Trump has been doing. His approval rating stands at 42%, according to an average of the polls aggregated by FiveThirtyEight. That is historically low, which is problematic for a president seeking reelection.

As president, Trump’s highest average approval rating was 47.8% — days after he took office — and hasn’t risen above 45.8% on average since. And apart from those first days in office, Trump has never been more positive than negative in his approval rating — in more than three years. So Trump is at a disadvantage if this election is a referendum on his tenure as president. It’s why he needs to make this election a choice between him and Biden, and sell Biden as unacceptable to voters in the middle.

Unfortunately for Trump, he’s already tried a number of attacks on Biden that appear to have not stuck — from painting a Biden presidency as something that would lead to rampant crime, or Biden being a Trojan Horse for the radical left. Will the convention get more conspiratorial about Biden’s record — or his son Hunter’s? Rudy Giuliani, who led the charge to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine, something that helped to get Trump impeached, is speaking Thursday.

Enlarge this image

Republican National Convention delegates arrive at the Charlotte Convention Center on Sunday.

Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty Images

2020 Election: Secure Your Vote
More Than 550,000 Primary Absentee Ballots Rejected In 2020, Far Outpacing 2016

Politics
A New Biden Administration Would Face Old Problems With Congress

«If you want a vision of your life under a Biden presidency,» Trump said Thursday, «think of the smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town and every single town in America.»

On Friday, Trump said, «I’m the only thing standing between the American Dream and total anarchy.»

Trump’s campaign says each night will feature remarks from political leaders as well as «everyday Americans whose stories are filled with hope and patriotism.»

We’ll see if that delivers hope and optimism. Trump’s rhetorical history suggests otherwise.

4. How much talk will there be about how to solve the coronavirus or race relations?

For as much as Trump is running on a version of Make America Great Again, Again, Trump is president, and the crises in the country are happening on his watch.

More than 5 million Americans have come down with COVID-19. More than 175,000 Americans are dead because of the virus. On many counts, the U.S. is not measuring up well against other developed nations in dealing with the pandemic. A majority disapprove of how Trump has handled it, and two-thirds say they don’t believe what he has to say about the pandemic, according to the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

Tens of thousands of Americans of different races have also taken to the streets over the last several months to protest racism. And, again, a majority disapprove of the job the president has done on race relations and believe he’s made tensions worse.

Coronavirus Live Updates
FDA Authorizes Convalescent Plasma As Emergency Treatment For COVID-19

Expect Trump to tout progress on coronavirus treatments and vaccines, because he needs to show that things are getting better to win reelection. On race, expect there to at least be some talk of criminal justice reform and Opportunity Zones. But how much will those crises be emphasized?

In 2004, George W. Bush, the last incumbent Republican to stand for reelection, leaned into the key issue holding him back – the Iraq War. Bush sold the need to stay the course with a steady hand. You’d expect a president to do that and show how he’s making problems better. But it’s not clear Trump can or will do that effectively.

5. Will Trump give a clear rationale for why he should be reelected?

In an acceptance speech, presidents up for reelection have taken hold of the narrative of their first term, leaned into the struggles of the day, and outlined what they want to pursue in a second term.

«Tonight, I will tell you where I stand, what I believe and where I will lead this country in the next four years,» Bush said in 2004, for example.

Bush offered a long laundry list of specific items for a second term at that year’s convention. He also pivoted to try and turn the election into a choice by contrasting his intended policies with those of his opponent, John Kerry.

You can expect Trump to tout his accomplishments and attempt to warn about the dangers of going another way. As for what Trump is promising for his second term, the campaign released an outline Sunday night — including job creation, developing a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2020 (still his first term), cutting prescription drug prices, «fully fund» and hire more law enforcement officers, and «stop endless wars.» It will be interesting to see how Trump tries to crystallize the rationale for why voters should give him four more years.

It’s notable that Bush, the one living Republican former president, won’t even be on hand for this convention. There isn’t much more needed to know about just how much this has become the Trump party, rather than the Republican Party.

• 2020 presidential election
• Republican convention