Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
A four-day tent revival in Milwaukee celebrated total surrender to the cult of Donald Trump — and maybe the end of America as we once knew it.
I came to the American heartland to cover a political convention, but all I found was a tent revival, Brother Trump’s Traveling Salvation Show.
The Republican National Convention took just minutes after Monday’s opening gavel to officially nominate its Dear Leader for the third and probably not last time. The roll call, once the highlight of past conventions, is now an empty ritual. A party platform that was probably written on a Mar-a-Lago cocktail napkin was rammed through with no dissent. RNC schedulers quickly liberated all four nights for the only real purpose they had here in Wisconsin.
The deification of Donald J. Trump.
Michael A. Cohen/MSNBC:
Today’s GOP has no past, present, or future. It’s just Trump.
It’s as if MAGA wiped the GOP slate clean and made 2016 its Year Zero.
Nineteen presidents have been Republicans.
But if you watch the 2024 Republican convention, you are likely to hear about only one: Donald Trump. It’s as if MAGA wiped the GOP slate clean and made 2016 its Year Zero.
Other than Trump, there’s only one other living Republican ex-president: George W. Bush. He’s one of only four Republican presidents in history to win two presidential elections and serve eight years in office. And the chances of hearing Bush’s name mentioned in a positive light by convention speakers in Milwaukee this week are close to nil.
This race remains competitive because Donald Trump and his agenda remain unpopular except with Republicans. But they win if we don’t show up.
Marc Caputo/The Bulwark:
White Men Can Vote: The Logic Behind J.D. Vance for VP
The Trump campaign sees a clear path for victory: juicing turnout among white men.
“Trump wins white men in 2024 the way he did in 2016, he wins. There’s no question,” said an adviser to the Trump campaign on condition of anonymity. “And we’re starting to get close to 2016 levels now from them, winning them big. That holds and it’s over.”
White men weren’t just a cornerstone of Trump’s narrow victory in 2016, they were one of the biggest causes of his defeat in 2020. His margins shrunk by more among white males than any other major demographic bloc, according to a Bulwark examination of exit polling data that compared his first and second presidential bids in the six swing states he lost. Trump still won the white male vote in 2020, but not by as much as in 2016. And that difference was catastrophic to him.
Split Ticket:
We Polled Black Voters. Here’s What We Found.
Four years on, President Biden’s candidacy finds itself on the edge of collapse following his late-June debate debacle against former President Donald Trump, and although key allies like Jim Clyburn and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) continue to back him publicly, multiple elected officials have openly called for his exit from the Democratic ticket.
Some of the discourse supporting Biden centers around his strength with Black voters, and the backing he has received from this group. While some public polls show erosion with this demographic, there remain virtually no public, post-debate polls specifically studying Black voters and their views.
To get a better sense of this, we partnered with Data For Progress to conduct a survey of 1,011 Black likely voters in the seven core battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The poll was fielded between July 12 and 14, using an online web panel, and was weighted for age, gender, race, education, geography, and recalled 2020 vote.
Rolling Stone:
J.D. Vance Endorsed a National Abortion Ban in the Grossest Way Possible
Trump’s running mate said a national abortion ban was necessary to keep George Soros from flying “Black women” to California for abortions
IN 2022, THEN-SENATE candidate J.D. Vance sat down with Aimee Terese — a pundit and podcaster little known to the American public, but prominent in the sloppy trenches of hyper-online digital reactionaries — and removed his filter.
“I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” Vance said in the episode, explaining why regulating abortion at the state level wouldn’t work. “Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overruled,” he said. “Ohio bans abortion … you know, in let’s say 2024. And then, every day, George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity.”
It wasn’t the only time that Vance would express support for a national abortion ban: Later that year, he characterized a 15-week national abortion ban proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham as “totally reasonable.”
Washington Post:
Biden’s political crisis deepens as Schiff calls for him to drop out
The president tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday, just hours after Schiff, a top Democrat, became the 23rd member of Congress from the party to call for Biden’s exit from the race
Biden has claimed that ordinary Democrats support him remaining in the race. But polls conducted after his shaky performance in his June 27 debate with Trump have found anywhere between 40 percent and 65 percent of Democrats saying the president should drop out of the race.
Time is running out for change at the top of the Democratic ticket. On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee reaffirmed its plan to hold a virtual roll call to nominate Biden during the first week of August, nearly two weeks before the party’s convention is set to begin.
In his statement, Schiff called Biden “one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but questioned his ability to defeat Trump and said a “second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy.”
Jody Hamilton and Cliff Schecter on the state of the Democratic nomination, changing by the hour:
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