GOP’s Milwaukee happy days contrast with the Democrats’ Biden drama

Republicans displayed an almost giddy sense of confidence about their prospects this fall, with some asserting that the “hand of God” spared Trump’s life on Saturday night so he could return to the White House. With Trump ahead in polling averages in the key battleground states, Republicans have been talking about a landslide victory.

“I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength, and hope,” Trump said at the start of his speech. “Four months from now we will have an incredible victory and we will begin the four greatest years of our country.”

Meanwhile Democrats aren’t even sure who will face him.

They’re wrestling with whether Biden, 81, the oldest president ever, should drop his reelection bid in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance in June. Pressure has increased for a change since the assassination attempt, which pumped rocket fuel into a Republican Party already charged up about Trump.

Biden, who has been defiant about staying in the race, reportedly now is receptive to the idea of stepping aside. He left the campaign trail on Wednesday after the White House said he had been diagnosed with COVID. But a Biden campaign official said Thursday that Biden has not changed his mind.

“The president has made his decision. I don’t want to be rude, but I do not know how many more times we can answer that,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told reporters here.

For the third day in a row, the Biden campaign’s attempt to counter the Republican convention message with a morning Milwaukee news conference was derailed by questions about the president’s fate. And it clearly frustrated Fulks.

“The sooner we get past talking about this and talking about what’s at stake and what we’ve heard for the first three nights of this convention, and what we’re going to hear tonight from Donald Trump, the better off we’ll be,” he said.

But Democrats have been unable to get past that question. And the clock is ticking on the possibility of replacing Biden, with the Democratic National Convention set to begin Aug. 19.

“We’ll unify. We’ll get there,” said Representative Jake Auchincloss, a Newton Democrat, who has acknowledged that his constituents have concerns about Biden’s ability to beat Trump but hasn’t called for him to step aside. “But we’ve got to get conviction about the top of the ticket.” '

Representative Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said there’s still enough time for the party to coalesce around its candidate. He’s been pushing back against an effort by the Democratic National Committee to use a virtual vote to formally nominate Biden as early as this month. The move originally was needed because of a pre-convention deadline for the Ohio ballot. But even though that deadline has since been moved until after the convention, the DNC said it still plans a virtual vote sometime after Aug. 1.

“I still think this is a very winnable race. There’s a pretty serious debate about whether it is winnable with Biden at the top of the ticket,” said Huffman in a Thursday interview. “But all of the polling I’ve seen suggests with a change at the top of the ticket, this race could be completely reset and invigorated.” Huffman joined the public call for Biden to step aside on Friday.

Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who supports Biden, dismissed the Republican display of unity this week.

“What you’re seeing from Republicans isn’t unity. It’s falling in line,” Padilla said. “Donald Trump has bent this political party to his will. They do not allow for dissent, and that’s why you haven’t heard it at the convention.”

But Republicans are falling in line behind Trump because he’s wildly popular in his party, despite his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his conviction in May on 34 felony counts in his New York hush-money trial.

And then there was the assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa.

“If you’d told me a month ago that the two conventions and the two parties are going to contrast this way, I wouldn’t have believed you. . . . But now we have a much greater unity of purpose,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “The affection for Donald Trump that’s really been elevated and amplified as a result of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, last week, I think contributes to a lot of that.”

Even Republicans who opposed Trump in the primaries have come on board. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who had already endorsed Trump but wasn’t originally invited to address the convention, was given a speaking slot Tuesday night after the shooting in the spirit of bringing the party even closer together.

“Obviously, this is a week of Republican unity, and I think what everyone is seeing is really positive on the Republican side,” New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who backed Haley, said in a livestreamed event by CNN and Politico. “But as soon as this convention is done, around Monday morning, the whole world is going to put their cameras right on Joe Biden and say, ‘Now what are you going to do?’ Because clearly the numbers aren’t there.”

Sununu said Republicans should start preparing for a different Democratic opponent, because “that is a very different race than running against Biden.”

The logical replacement for Biden if he steps aside would be Vice President Kamala Harris. And Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign cochair, said that having her at the top of the ticket would not fundamentally change the dynamic in the election.

“The last time I checked, it’s Biden-Harris, right? So every single thing that Biden did is an issue that she is complicit in,” LaCivita said at a live CNN/Politico event in Milwaukee.

Democrats have one advantage as they wrestle with whether Biden should stay in the race: an intense shared desire to keep Trump from returning to the White House, said Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and a former Democratic communications strategist.

“Once the nomination question is put to bed . . . the Democrats are going to unify very, very quickly as well because this whole fight within the Democratic family is being driven by a completely unified goal of defeating Donald Trump,” said Elleithee, who has been in Milwaukee with a group of Georgetown students.

But the longer the debate goes on, the greater the risk of dampening enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket, he said.

“The Democrats who are airing their grievances in public are creating a very stark contrast,” Elleithee said. “When the country sees one party energized behind their candidate, and the other party in a fight over whether or not they’re backing theirs, that just creates an enthusiasm gap that they’ve got to put to bed. They have to get past that.”

Republicans are hoping the Democratic drama continues. But Cramer said he doesn’t think the race is over yet.

“We have two things that if you can arrange it, you should always have: the [polling] lead and momentum,” he said. “But we live at a time in an era where politics is quite emotional. And the moments are all replaced by another moment. And just as sure as you and I would have probably switched the scenarios around not so long ago, those scenarios can change again.”

Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera. Emma Platoff can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emmaplatoff. Tal Kopan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @talkopan.