The Media is Helping Trump Win. Again.

But not the way you think.

An emotional Alice Marie Johnson embraces her pardon document after President Donald J. Trump granted Johnson a full pardon Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, in the Oval Office at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)

Why was the 2020 RNC convention so effective?

First, let’s spend a few moments putting to rest any delusions voting Democrats might have that the RNC convention, four nights of rah-rah Americanism featuring a parade a diverse speakers, was not effective.

It was.

Since the closing days of the RNC convention, as protests have raged on in almost 50 American cities and scenes of violence continue to unfold in the news cycle, Joe Biden has been falling rapidly in the polls.

Leaving aside the fact that these polls are probably still skewed to favor Joe Biden- and that most pollsters are still under-sampling Republicans, missing shy Trump voters completely, and sampling mythical turnouts as opposed to studying what actually happened in 2016- this isn’t good news.

The DNC needs to score a win, build enthusiasm for the Biden campaign; Joe Biden needs a win. The DNC convention was not it. Not only did the party not get a post-convention bump in the polls, Donald Trump and the RNC did receive one after theirs.

Donald Trump is catching Joe Biden in swing states. And the RNC convention is one reason why.

It was superbly produced and perfectly executed television, with exactly the kind of slick stage management an undecided voter might expect from a former reality television star turned American President.

But what really made the convention a rousing success were the featured speakers. People from all walks of life; regular, ordinary, working Americans telling their stories; people who had endured great hardships; small business owners and U.S. immigrants.

What a terrible idea.

Why did it work so well?

If someone were to have asked the television viewing public whether they would rather watch Julia Louise Dryfuss host a star-studded cast of celebrity Democrats speaking, performing and trotting out all the reasons Americans should vote blue this November, or watch a bunch of regular folks speaking about their real-life experiences, I doubt the second idea would have gained much traction.