What the apparent post-convention message is is that Republicans are winning over black Gen Z

From changes to the GOP platform that liberalized the party’s stance on gay marriage to a convention featuring black speakers, a Teamster president and social media stars, the Republican Party is reaching out to young people and minorities once considered out of reach.

As calls for President Biden to withdraw from the race grow louder by the day and the party is mired in internal strife, Democrats are formulating strategies to counter desertions. Rumors of an open convention and the possible bypassing of Vice President Harris are prompting warnings from black Democratic leaders.

“There would be a riot,” said Donna Brazille, interim chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Democrats once thought the young vote was a given. Biden won the 18- to 29-year-old vote by more than 20 points in 2020. “If you’re not a liberal at 25, you don’t have a heart,” the saying goes. He has continued to seduce these voters with student loan relief, climate change policy and Title IX overhauls.

Yet chants of “F–k Joe Biden” have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel protests. He’s not winning against the far left, and young men in the industrialized world are increasingly moving to the right.

After Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that Mr. Trump beat the incumbent president by 8 points among registered Gen Z voters, sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party.

Last week, at the Republican National Convention, the rightward shift of young men was clearly visible in the crowd. Outside the Fiserv Forum, fraternity boys in tailored pants mingled with older Republicans in suits, a newer, working-class contingent from the Midwest and South that Trump had brought to the party, and black Americans in “MAGA Black” hats. The Sun heard much of the refrain: “This ain’t your grandpa’s Republican Party.”

Republicans are coming out of their Milwaukee convention with the wind at their backs. The talk of “party unity” grew stale as the week wore on, but it was hard not to feel it on the ground.

“A lot of this is a result of President Trump’s own conscious decision to move the party toward being more welcoming to everyone,” New Hampshire GOP Chairman Chris Ager told the Sun.

Log Cabin Republicans celebrated the removal of “traditional marriage” language from the platform. Gay dating app Grndr reportedly called the Republican National Convention “basically Grndr’s Super Bowl.”

The Sun found only a handful of older conservative lawmakers who said they were upset about the platform changes. Despite declining support for same-sex marriage among Gen Z and a noticeable rise in homophobia among the online right — likely a result of a backlash over transgender issues — none of the young men who spoke to The Sun cared about the party’s platform changes. “This is Trump’s party,” they said. “He’s the nominee.”

Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt on the final night and Kid Rock rapped. Only Fans star Amber Rose, with her forehead tattooed, spoke on the first night about how she once “believed the leftist propaganda that Donald Trump is a racist” before doing her own research. A pro-Trump rap video by Forgiato Blow, “Trump Trump Baby,” was streamed on the convention floor.

“Kid Rock and Franklin Graham back to back — I mean, that’s amazing. I’d never heard of Amber Rose, but apparently she has 24 million followers, so that’s not bad,” Mr. Ager says. “It’s mainstream counterculture. It’s cool to be MAGA right now.”

Cool is a relative term. At a Turning Point USA party on the convention’s penultimate night, the Sun spoke to several Gen Z men in Milwaukee for their first convention. Most said they joined the Republican Party because they grew up in a conservative Christian household or because they or a close friend experienced an attempted cancellation over a Halloween costume or social media post.

Their conversion to Republicanism did not have the transgressive aura of those who came out of the MAGA closet five years ago.

These young men were full of praise for Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate, but most had never heard of Vance’s mentor, Peter Thiel, or New Right political philosopher Curtis Yarvin, whose number Vance reportedly has in his phone.

“Has Peter Thiel run for public office in California?” a 24-year-old from Texas, Joshua Hendrickson, asked the Sun.

This is despite the influence that Mr. Thiel — who spoke at Mr. Trump’s 2016 convention — likely had on the selection of Mr. Vance and the inclusion of Hulk Hogan in the lineup. One tech celebrity these men did mention was Elon Musk. They praised freedom of speech.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert spoke briefly on stage at the Turning Point USA party, as did Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec. Ms. Boebert told the Sun that it was important for the party to attract younger generations. She praised Trump’s choice for VP. “I think it’s great that he’s a younger man full of vigor and energy,” she told the Sun.

Ms. Boebert also appeared to be unaware of who Mr. Yarvin was. When asked if Mr. Vance had Mr. Yarvin’s number in his phone, Ms. Boebert replied, “I have Governor Jared Polis’ number in my phone, so yes, we have to communicate with people on some level.”

When asked about her political influences — citing that Mr. Yarvin or Blake Masters and Vivek Ramaswamy share a common political origin in the libertarian works of Rothbard — Ms. Boebert was quick to respond. “That’s easy. That would be Jesus. I’ve read the Bible,” she said.

Part of this GOP big tent is made up of intellectuals, culture warriors, and Bible-thumpers — even if they’re vaping and hanky-panky in a theater during a BeetleJuice performance. Many of the latter group have the largest social media followings. This is Trump’s GOP, after all.

Trump famously used the phrase “What have you got to lose?” when he was trying to win the black vote last cycle. This time around, he’s talking about the unemployment of black people during his term and the current unaffordability of housing. The first night of the convention featured seven black speakers.

“I believe he’s going to get between 34 and 40 percent of the black vote, and a lot of that is really due to the disenfranchisement that’s happened because of the Biden administration,” Oz Sultan, president of the Harlem Republican Club, told the Sun, perhaps too optimistically.

A photo of a Trump mural on Chicago’s South Side went viral this week. After Trump’s attempted assassination, rapper 50 Cent projected a photoshopped cover of his album, “Get Rich or Die Tryin,” with Trump’s face on it during a concert.

Mr. Sultan wore a MAGA Black hat to the convention. He wasn’t the only one. “You have to remember something. Who got ASAP Rocky out of jail? Trump. Who’s actually been there and done something for black communities? Trump,” he said.

Another black convert to the Democrats is Seson Adams, who is running for the New York State Assembly from Harlem as a Republican. “I heard, ‘If you don’t vote for me, you’re not black,’” he says of Biden’s 2020 campaign blunder. He says illegal immigration, bad schools and years of Democratic control without improvements drove him to the GOP.

“The last time I was at a convention that was like this was Obama 2008,” Van Jones said on CNN.

Trump comes out of the convention with a growing 5-point lead in a CBS News/YouGov poll. To put that in perspective, it’s been more than 20 years since a Republican won a national popular vote.

Meanwhile, Democrats are worried about black support eroding, not necessarily because it’s going to Trump, but because black women are choosing to stay home. “If Kamala gets passed over, it’s a slap in the face to African Americans and they’re more likely not to vote,” Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told the Sun.

Protests planned by the far left for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month and predictions that it will be 1968 all over again do not bode well for the party. Richard Nixon defeated incumbent Vice President Humphrey that year, lest Democrats forget.