An unconventional week in presidential politics

Gold balloons fell (along with red, white and blue) when the Republican National Convention Last week ended with operatic flair. It was a fitting end to a gathering marked by a sense of drama and history, and came just days after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. Trump’s defiance in the aftermath brought some Republicans to tears. “I had God on my side,” Trump said.

Trump’s 90-minute acceptance speech, the longest in convention history, drew mixed reactions, captivating many early on with his account of the attack before falling back on old grievances: “And then we had this horrible, horrible result that we will never let happen again, the election results,” he said, repeating the lie about a stolen election. “We will never let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat.”

There is discussion about the impact of the rest of the conference.

Contacts were made with working Americans, especially those from the industrial Midwest, home to Trump’s running mate, the 39-year-old Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. There was celebrity and spectacle (including former wrestling star Hulk Hogan taking off his shirt). And there was a parade of speakers who were supposed to show that Trump’s critics have changed their minds, like former South Carolina governor and former primary rival Nikki Haley, who her deputies released earlier this monthShe told the convention: “I want to start by making one thing very clear: Donald Trump has my strong support, period.”

But was the past week a sign of a coming Trump victory? Or was it a fleeting moment, with much testing yet to come?

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also ran against Trump for the nomination. Although he was in Milwaukee, he remains reserved about the former president. Asked if he believed the talk of Republican unity, Hutchinson said, “Well, it’s definitely unified here at the convention.”

He would not, however, endorse his party’s candidate. “My hesitation is January 6th,” he said. “My hesitation is character that (Trump) has shown in the past. I think character is still important for the leader of our country.”

Winning over some conventional Republicans could pose a lasting challenge for the unconventional nominee. And in choosing Vance as his running mate, Trump leaned into his own populism — elevating someone who has embraced Trump’s overturning of GOP policies, and someone who has said he would have done the opposite of what Mike Pence did on Jan. 6, 2021, when the former vice president refused to reject slates of candidates for Biden.

On February 4, Vance told “ABC This Week”: “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed multiple slates of electors, and I think the United States Congress would have had to fight over that from that point on.”

Trump also faces legal trouble over the Capitol attack and could face a prison sentence this fall after his conviction in New York.

Some Democrats look at all this and see an opportunity for President Biden to gain ground.

On Friday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “The future couldn’t be more different, between Donald Trump’s future and the future that Joe Biden wants to lead us to. And Americans already agree with us.”

Democrats say they must now focus on portraying Trump as a threat to democracy and abortion rights.

A Biden/Harris campaign ad released Wednesday features a Kentucky woman, Hadley Duvall, who recounts being raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12. Duvall said that when she found out she was pregnant, she had options that fewer women have today after Roe v. Wade was overturned. “Trump and J.D. Vance don’t care about women,” Duvall says in the ad. “They don’t care about girls in this situation.”

But Democrats seemed to be doing everything they could last week But with the focus on Trump, following the fallout from Mr. Biden’s performance during his debate with Trump in June. In recent days, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s longtime ally, California Congressman Adam Schiff, has sparked a storm of protests in Washington when He urged Biden to withdraw from the race – the beginning of a tidal wave of Democrats calling on the president to leave the stage

Biden’s advisers have been tough on opponents. Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden-Harris campaign manager, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday: “Absolutely, the president is in this race. You’ve heard him say that over and over again. And Joe Biden is more determined than ever to beat Donald Trump.”

And they say he’ll be campaigning again soon.

Molly Ball of The Wall Street Journal, author of a biography of Pelosi, told Costa: “Democrats are now at a stage where they believe that if he doesn’t leave this race, the election is lost. Now, it may be that they’re lost anyway, but they don’t think they can win with him on the ticket, and so they’re basically going to stop at nothing.”

Like Mr. Biden did stand aside, chaos could arise.

“We have no idea what would happen if Biden were to leave the race,” Ball said. “I think a lot of it depends on the terms of his departure and what he decides to do. Does he decide he wants to hand the reins over to a successor, whether that’s the vice president or someone else? Does he anoint this idea of ​​an open or a brokered convention? We don’t have a sitting president who has been off the list for over 40 years.”

This puts Democrats and Republicans at a crossroads: some Democrats are tense about President Biden, some Republicans are tense about Trump.

And voters are bracing for unrest.

Story produced by Amol Mhatre. Editor: Lauren Barnello.