I’ve harped on this theme the last several days—conventions have two purposes: 1) Unite the party, and 2) broaden the party and candidate message beyond that base and to the larger American electorate.
So far, this convention has only exacerbated party fault lines, with Donald Trump literally agitating divisions with the Ted Cruz wing of the party, while overall messaging has rarely strayed beyond “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!1!”, nonsensical references to “private servers”, fearmongering on immigrants, and and endless parade of Hillary hate. Now, that might fuel the crazy right, but how is that helping Trump push out of the high 30s in the polling, and closer to the 50 percent he needs to reach to win?
Trump may or may not get a bump out of this convention, regardless the content, because a whole week of Trump-dominated news may move numbers. We’ll see. But ultimately, any bump can’t help but be fleeting, because nothing this week (thus far) has changed the narrative about who Trump is, what he stands for, and what he’d do to this country.