The RNC was a raucous, charged party. It likely doesn't change the race: ANALYSIS
The Republican National Convention featured top lawmakers and rising stars, famous entertainers rocking out and ripping shirts off and a former president who less than a week before had survived an assassination attempt. Media outlets spent gobs of money to cover the confab, deploying heaps of journalists to flood the zone with coverage.
The day after the convention ended, though, the race for the White House likely remains the same as when Republicans first swarmed Milwaukee on Monday.
President Joe Biden's campaign is still hanging by a thread amid calls from within his party for him to drop out, fueled by concern over his calamitous debate last month. Donald Trump, who had forecasted a more unifying tone after he was grazed by a would-be assassin's bullet Saturday, ended up giving a more typical speech, mixing details of last weekend's shooting with his standard grievances over immigration, his 2020 loss and more.
Such is life in a race between two men with virtually universal name recognition -- so long as it stays that way.
"Given the extraordinary, recent events, something as conventionalized as a convention may not move the needle, but Trump went into the convention with a lead and emerges with a lead, so they don't need it to," said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist and former top Republican National Committee official.
Already, the race has been shaken by seismic events. Biden had what was deemed a historically faulty debate performance, and Trump became one of the few federal, political candidates injured in an assassination attempt.
Polling has suggested that Trump received a bump after June's debate, and there haven't been enough public surveys released since Saturday to reveal how much the shooting changed the race.
Yet strategists in both parties said that history is the bar for what it would take to change the race.
Both Biden and Trump have been in the public eye for decades, and both men have served in the highest-profile political position in the world. Voter opinions of each are largely formed already, raising the standard of what it would take to spark any significant polling fluctuations.
To be certain, there has been noise along the way. Besides this week's convention and the selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as Trump's running mate, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Biden's son was also convicted on felony gun charges, protests rocked the country over the war in Gaza and more.
Still, polls barely budged.
"I think that this race at this point is so dug in, it takes what are akin to earthquakes to change anything," said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide.
There was widespread speculation that the Republican convention would make a hefty splash heading into Monday.
Trump was set to announce his vice-presidential pick, a process that had sucked up an intense amount of political and media oxygen, and his ear was still bandaged less than 48 hours after surviving the attempt on his life.
Beyond the raw politics, the event was also not without its fanfare.
Lee Greenwood repeatedly sang his "God Bless the USA" anthem, conservative media personality Tucker Carlson gave an unscripted stemwinder of a speech, and wrestler Hulk Hogan tore off his shirt to reveal a Trump-Vance tank top.
Trump then gave his keynote remarks Thursday night, opening the speech with the harrowing details of Saturday's shooting before drifting into the meandering grievance rhetoric that has been characteristic of most of his campaign rallies so far. He blasted the "invasion" at the southern border, called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "crazy" and accused his political opponents of "cheating on elections."
And after his team advertised ahead of time that he would not mention Biden by name, Trump appeared unable to help himself.
"If you took the ten worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the ten worst, added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done. Only going to use the term once, Biden. I'm not going to use the name anymore, just one time. The damage that he's done to this country is unthinkable," Trump said.
The remarks indicated a candidate and campaign largely unchanged -- even while ascendant -- and that the race would continue to see the same kind of rhetoric that's characterized the campaign trail for months.
"I didn’t think it made a difference. If you watch that convention, you already got your mind made up," said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders', I-Vt., 2020 presidential campaign. "The shooting probably had a bigger impact. But most of America has made up its mind."
That doesn't mean the way the convention went is without a shred of significance.
The RNC left some Democrats relieved that Trump's remarks veered away from solely focusing on unity, arguing that doing so could have put more daylight between him and Biden in the polls, even as they admitted the president likely currently trails.
"Overall, it doesn’t change anything, but they missed an opportunity to put this out of reach," one former senior Trump administration official said of Trump's speech.
"No, I don’t think the convention changed the fundamentals," added one source familiar with the Biden campaign's strategy. "A less MAGA VP pick and a more unifying message from Trump may have, but they opted to double down on MAGA and division."
