Republicans Run Toward Their Base. Democrats Run Away From Theirs.
This year’s RNC was predictably a circus, while the DNC was largely pitched to a relatively small sliver of affluent professionals and suburban conservatives. While conservatives are pulled ever rightward by an increasingly radicalized fringe, liberal elites discipline their base into accepting a message crafted for someone else.
Donald and Melania Trump attend Mike Pence’s acceptance speech for the vice presidential nomination during the Republican National Convention on August 26, 2020 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Though it shouldn’t be taken as a mark of praise, August’s two big political conventions were certainly an apt summation of the current balance of forces in American politics.
Last week’s DNC, predictably enough, sought to showcase the Democrats’ chosen image as the country’s safe and responsible managers-in-waiting. Complimented with the usual symbolic nods to inclusion, America’s liberals pitched themselves as the harbingers of a more civil and respectable order, their nominee Joe Biden pledging to “restore the soul” of the nation while a host of speakers made the case that a Biden presidency will reestablish the political and cultural equilibrium that was lost in 2016.
Beat for beat and note for note, it was a spectacle perfectly in sync with the guiding ethos of a party that is perennially generous in relation to elite donors and wealthy professionals and parsimonious toward its electoral base.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.