WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump spent the week of the Democratic National Convention spurning what has verifiably been an officeholder’s most prominent favourable position: He’s in the activity his challenger needs.
Traditionally, an occupant would give the week of his opponent’s convention to reinforcing his own credentials as a leader. Yet rather than concentrating on his order of the activity or utilizing its capacity, Trump hit the campaign trail, where he mocked his own administration’s pandemic safety guidance and expressed gratitude for support from adherents to a fanatic paranoid fear, QAnon.
It was an outcome of Trump’s reluctance to share the spotlight yet in addition a vital endeavour to move the November campaign from a choice on his activity execution to a decision among himself and Joe Biden. Ten weeks out from Election Day, as the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Trump’s reelection chances, associates have perceived that a vote on his administration isn’t one he is probably going to win.
Acting “presidential” — holding briefings and leading negotiations — won’t suit him, in the view of many aides, if his presidency is what is holding him back.
Trump is not hoping to win over converts. Instead, his reelection strategy hinges on his ability to animate his most loyal supporters with fears of a Democratic administration, motivating them to show up at the polls and attempting to turn away moderates who might be leaning toward voting for Joe Biden.
The dynamic will be on display next week as Trump prepares for his own convention. While he is set to rely on the trappings of the office — including the unprecedented use of the South Lawn as the backdrop for his acceptance speech — the crux of his message is expected to be sounding the alarm over the consequences of a Biden victory.
“No one will be safe in our country, and no one will be spared,” he said Friday.
Sensing vulnerability, Democrats spent their convention hammering Trump’s fitness for the job he currently occupies, with former President Barack Obama declaring that Trump has “no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama said bluntly.
In appearances this week, Trump at times seemed to be trying to prove their point.
Terry Sullivan, the campaign manager for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, who found himself on the receiving end of similar attacks, said Trump “only knows one way to campaign.”
“He floods the zone with his message via events and Twitter attacking his opponents,” he said. “It’s worked for him in the past so, in his mind, there is no reason it won’t work again.”
Trump has torn up other norms in politics, so abandoning the traditional calendar is hardly a surprise — and could help him as he tries to overcome his deficit with voters.
Photo credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci
News source: The Associated Press
