I think he did very well, particularly for the people who already support him.
Watching this speech I kept thinking of a word I never use: stem-winder.
It means a big, rousing political speech.
And that’s what this was.
It was well-written, it was clever, it was well-crafted, it was well-delivered.
Above all, it was a strong speech. Maybe even too strong for some.
Trump began by saying he “humbly” accepted the nomination, but nothing was humble after that. Speaking to those he calls the forgotten men and women of our country, he said, “I am your voice.”
Combine that with his stress on law and order, and he was talking to his base: mostly white voters, who used to be called the silent majority.
But he reached out, too.
He reached out to the gay community, he reached out to Bernie Sanders’ supporters, and then, he may have gone too far.
Because when talking about what he’d be like as president, he started raising the question of- would he be an autocrat? Would he be a single powerful leader? “Nobody knows the system better than me,” Trump said, “which is why I alone can fix it.”
Note that word *alone*. And then talking about trade he said, I will make individual deals with individual countries. That may be more efficient, but that’s not the way the country works.
At the end of the speech Trump also said, I’m with you. But the message to me was, elect Trump, give him the keys to the car, and he’ll take it from there.
The Republicans aren’t going to have much time to figure out if they’re getting a bounce from this campaign, because the Democrats are cued up to start their convention next week in Philadelphia. And you can be sure they’re going to dump on Trump and pounce, in an effort to get a bounce of their own.
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