∼ ∼ ∼ This article is part of a series — At 250, Who Will America Be? — reporting on threats to American democracy as we approach the nation’s Semiquincentennial, on July 4, 2026. ∼ ∼ ∼
Donald Trump sits at the very top of the Republican pantheon — that much was clear from the GOP convention in Milwaukee, which started just two days after a would-be assassin’s bullet almost blew his skull apart. George W. Bush, the last Republican to win the popular vote, was effectively excised from history. Ronald Reagan, once the GOP’s patron saint, had to settle for a biopic starring Dennis Quaid that was relentlessly advertised around town. Otherwise, the delegates didn’t have much to say about the Gipper either.
It was Trump! Trump! Trump! Everyone in attendance seemed to be certain about two things: divine intervention had saved Trump, and there was no way he could lose in November. Of course, the backdrop to all this triumphalism was the coming end of Joe Biden’s political career. The 81-year-old president had been batting back the growing calls from party elites that he leave the ticket altogether; the impetus was his disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, where it became readily apparent that Biden was having trouble finishing sentences. On July 21, just a few days after the RNC ended, Biden was finished as well, with Kamala Harris poised to replace him.
Milton Friedman and Reaganomics were nowhere to be found at this GOP convention.
Trump and his allies very desperately wanted to run against Biden. The convention was all about lashing him. If you were to take the convention speakers at face value, America had devolved into a burnt-out, Marxist hellscape, immigrants and criminals obliterating cities, inflation unleashing a new Great Depression. If Trump doesn’t win in November, they insisted, the United States as we know it will cease to exist. Trump himself, after a relatively sober retelling of his near-death experience, launched into his usual meandering litanies about Biden, the Democrats, and the coming collapse. He even made time for old race-baiting bits, like calling the coronavirus the “China” virus.
It is inarguable that Trump has unified the Republicans through the sheer force of his personality and celebrity. His new running mate, J.D. Vance, has much in common with far-right populists around the world, and he offers Trumpism an intellectual foundation, marrying a fierce social conservatism with leftist instincts on economics that would have made him a Republican apostate even a decade ago. In the Senate, Vance has partnered with Democrats to regulate railroads, cap the price of insulin, and halt corporate consolidation. He has even offered faint praise for unions. Milton Friedman and Reaganomics were nowhere to be found at this convention. But Vance is still a Republican in good standing, because he wants to restrict immigration as much as possible and he is furiously anti-abortion. When he published his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, he likened Trump to Hitler. Now, he worships at Trump’s altar.
The convention itself was a remarkable experience. It was like a Trump Super Bowl, a Trump Comic Con. A delegate on the convention floor wore an enormous cardboard Trump mask on his face. The Alabama delegation donned baseball jerseys with “Trump 24” on the back. A man in full Uncle Sam regalia sang about stolen elections to the tune of “All About That Bass,” as Peter Navarro, freshly sprung from prison, waved to his adoring fans at the Hyatt Regency, where the military stood guard. Merch was for sale everywhere. Biden’s face, superimposed on the Chef Boyardee logo, seemed to have few takers: It read, Chef Boy Are We Fucked. On the way to the arena, I briefly trailed behind an elderly man with his own message on the back of his shirt: Your First Mistake Was Thinking I Was One Of The Sheep. A woman inside the arena tried to hand me a novelty Trump ear bandage.
In preparation for Trump, downtown Milwaukee was militarized. Secret Service with their assault rifles, local police, and state police all patroled as helicopters hovered overhead. The streets leading to the arena were all closed down. Choice hotels inside the security perimeter had metal detectors. No copycat shooters were going to emerge.
Republicans didn’t want Biden gone.
The confidence in the air reminded me, funnily enough, of 2016. Except it was the reverse — Democrats then were utterly convinced that they were going to win the next election. At their convention in Philadelphia, I never met a single person who believed Trump could actually be elected president. Eight years later, Trump is an ex-president and a polling leader. Harris is untested as a potential nominee. Republicans believe they have a landslide on their hands. All they have to do is show up.
Except, except … the race isn’t over yet. Harris will get to pick her own running mate and is already enjoying a media boost after winning endorsements from many top Democrats. Harris is a deeply flawed politician, but she can prosecute the anti-Trump case far better than the slowing Biden. If her vice presidential candidate is someone like Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, or Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, the ticket will be able to aggressively compete in the swing states that Democrats need in order to retain the White House. Most Democratic voters believed Biden was too old to go on. Their convention is arriving in August. A new Democratic ticket is, for a period at least, a new lease on life for the party. And Republicans know it. They didn’t want Biden gone.
Trump’s success, to a degree, can be explained by the failure of national Democrats over the past eight years. Trump was in Milwaukee last week, with Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock screeching, because in 2016 Hillary Clinton ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern American history. Trump is still contending because Democrats throttled not one but two national primaries. Clinton, thanks to Barack Obama’s intervention, was coronated in 2016, even though she had never won a competitive election and most voters were plainly revolted by the concept of a Clinton political dynasty. The only viable alternative was the septuagenarian Bernie Sanders, who took it upon himself, despite the rancor of the Democratic establishment, to campaign. It was then that Joe Biden should have run. Instead, he was forced to wait until 2020, when he won because most Americans were tired of the pandemic and tired of Trump. The implicit promise of that campaign was that he would be the bridge to the next generation of Democrats after slaying Trump. But it turned out Biden very desperately wanted a second term, even as he has physically and mentally declined. Had he decided, a year ago, not to run again, Democrats could have held a normal primary; they wouldn’t have been scrambling to dump Biden a month before the convention. This was the crisis they earned. Now it’s up to the Democrats, and Harris. ❖
Ross Barkan is a writer from New York City.
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