U.S. elections

Trump can still win this election

Outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police were using billy clubs and tear gas to beat back anti-Vietnam War protesters. Inside the International Amphitheatre, Sen. Abraham Ribicoff was so enraged by the violence that he put aside his prepared nomination speech and declared, "with George McGovern as President of the United States, we wouldn't have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."
The convention's host, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, and other members of the Illinois delegation stood up and shouted insults at the senator from Connecticut. It was an electrifying moment, a rare case of the reality of the streets intruding on the packaged rhetoric of a political convention.
No such unscripted moment was allowed at this week's carefully orchestrated Republican National Convention, despite the tumult occurring outside: the protests after the shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday, culminating in the arrest of a 17-year-old charged with killing two protesters; the fierce hurricane slamming into coastal Louisiana; the wildfires consuming homes and forests in California; and the continuing march of a pandemic that has left more than 180,000 Americans dead.
With relentless discipline, wrapped in flag-draped videos, the convention hammered home President Donald Trump's message: that behind closed doors and contrary to all outward signs, he is an ardent feminist who cares deeply about the problems confronted by Black Americans, that Joe Biden is a "Trojan horse" for radical activists and that a Democratic victory in November would spell the end of the American dream.