The point of a modern political convention is to gather a party’s most die-hard supporters to hear a series of speeches meant to appeal to undecided voters. This is less incongruous than it seems; you get an audience of people falling all over themselves to celebrate whatever’s being said, even if those things are not what party leaders might whisper to each other away from any microphones. Parties hope that those watching at home will think, Well, hey! If all of these people like these ideas, I should, too.
It’s useful, then, to consider what the speakers are actually saying. There are certainly speeches that are fervently and unavoidably partisan, like former White House adviser Peter Navarro’s on Wednesday night. Navarro started the day in a federal prison in Florida and ended the night disparaging his jailers before a rapturous crowd of Republicans. But Navarro was also relegated to a speaking slot earlier in the evening, when it was less likely that non-Republican die-hards would be tuning in.
One thing I’ve noticed over the course of the convention so far is how utterly feeble the push to impeach President Biden turned out to be. The party was obsessed throughout 2023 over the idea that Biden was corrupt, dedicating multiple House committees to conducting inquiries aimed at proving Republicans’ allegations. They failed, at times spectacularly. As a result, the allegations have barely gotten a mention at the Republican convention, with disparagements of Biden’s son Hunter mostly focused on rehashing complaints about his laptop from 2020.
There is another telling pattern in the rhetoric that’s been deployed over the first three days of the Republican convention: Vice President Harris is being brought up a lot more than she was four years ago.
At the Republican convention in 2020, Harris was the recently named running mate of Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger to the incumbent. Over the first three nights of that convention, my analysis of transcripts published by Rev.com indicates, Biden was mentioned about 300 times. Harris was mentioned about two dozen times.
This time around, Biden has been mentioned nearly twice as often. Harris, on the other hand, has been mentioned 160 times — seven times as often as she was in 2020 and half as often as Biden was four years ago.
Of course, there have also been more words spoken in the 2024 convention to date, at least according to my tally. If we look at the mentions compared to all words spoken, we see, again, that Harris is coming up far more often than she did four years ago.
Relative to all the words spoken, Biden has been mentioned about 63 percent more often than he was in 2020. Harris has been mentioned about 520 percent more often.
There’s no mystery here: The GOP is hedging its bets. It seems increasingly possible, if not likely, that Biden will withdraw his nomination before the Democratic convention next month. If he does so, it’s likely that he will tap Harris as his successor, clearing the way for her to be Trump’s opponent in November. So speakers at the Republican convention are going out of their way to excoriate her (particularly on the border) and to tie her to Biden and his policies.
Given that the question at hand is Biden’s capacity to serve out another term, the focus on Harris makes sense even without a change at the top of the ticket. Should Biden win reelection but leave office before his term is up in 2029, Harris would become president anyway.
Other Democrats who have been mentioned as (long-shot) replacements for Biden have not come up as much. There have been only a smattering of mentions of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), despite a convention speech from his ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle. (Guilfoyle is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.) The party is directing its rhetoric at the president — but keeping a wary eye on Harris as well.
Given reports over the past few days indicating more pressure on Biden to stand aside, this pattern isn’t likely to change on the convention’s final night. If anything, Harris might prove to be more of a target than on the convention’s first three evenings.
Whether that proves compelling to undecided voters remains to be seen.