Three days have passed since Donald Trump took the stage to address than assembled Republican National Convention and accept their nomination for President of the United States of America. The speech he gave was one of the most bizarre I have ever heard from a nominee for the highest office in the land. The ways that it defied tradition are striking and worth noting.
By many accounts, the speech delivered by Donald Trump was among the darkest ever presented during an acceptance speech. By the end of the speech, I was genuinely surprised that Hillary Clinton had not been accused of euthanizing thousands of puppies and kittens in animal shelters across the country. Donald Trump accused his opponent of everything under the sun, and painted a picture of an incredibly dark country in desperate need of his guidance. In campaigns past, the job of being the aggressive attacker has typically fallen to the Vice Presidential nominee to do to allow the man at the top of the ticket to remain above the fray, as it were. By taking that responsibility upon himself, Donald is creating an interesting dynamic in the election and threatening to make his vice-presidential nominee irrelevant.
Another issue with Donald Trump's speech was the glaring lack of any policy details. There were no real policy details revealed at all in Mr. Trump's speech. There was plenty of discussion of the ills of society and what was needed to make this country great again, but the speech was lean on any details of how exactly the Republican party intended to do just that. The acceptance speech at the convention is typically the nominees' chance to have a captive audience to discuss his party's plans. Instead, Donald treated it more like a an opportunity to state his manifesto. It was not as if he did not have enough time either, as his speech was the longest such speech in more than 40 years. Considering the length, the lack of policy details becomes even more of a deficiency.
So, with this disaster of an acceptance speech, it would have seemed like the Democrats were ideally positioned to take advantage and come out of their convention in Philadelphia in command of the election. Then the emails got leaked and the convention was thrown into chaos. In the fallout from the damning emails that exposed the scandalous plan of the powers that be to prevent a Bernie Sander's victory, the chair of the party has announced her resignation following the convention. Only time will tell how damaging that fallout will be.
If there was any doubt before, the last week and a half has shown that this will be one of the most fascinating election seasons in our nation's history.
