By Chris Stirewalt | Friday, September 11
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By Chris Stirewalt
Friday, September 11
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AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
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A pseudo-policy at a pseudo-convention
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DALLAS — They shouldn’t really call it a convention, since it isn’t convening anything. There’s no business being done — at least on stage — at the American Airlines Center.
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Watch Whole Hog Politics live: Hill Insider members can join us today at 9 a.m. EDT as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon offer a special episode for the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, including Bill’s experience as a White House reporter inside the presidential bubble when then-President George W. Bush was informed of the attacks.
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In the Democrats’ short-lived run at similar midterm events in former President Carter's era, they were careful not to call them conventions, but rather “conferences.” A convention, if you care about your party’s power and prestige, is supposed to produce something. It is supposed to be important. Not here. No delegates are voting. No platforms are being debated. No leaders are being selected. It’s just a happening.
The gathering here is the fullest flowering of the pseudo-event; the perfect realization of Daniel Boorstin’s description of “synthetic novelty.” It’s like a bigger, better version of CPAC. Even the star-spangled logos for the two events look alike. This is part fundraising blitz and part trade show for right-wing influencers, but mostly an effort to get the national news media to pay even more attention to President Trump than usual — which is saying something given that coverage of him has consumed all other stories like a galaxy-crushing black hole since 2015.
The Republican National Committee hasn’t produced a real party platform for a decade, opting in 2020 to wave a press release in front of reporters’ faces, saying in so many words that it wouldn’t be tricked into adopting policy positions that could be used against its candidates or as a way to highlight future reversals. In 2024, there was something it called a “platform,” but it was itself just a press release repeating Trump’s campaign boilerplate with hard or divisive issues all sidestepped.
At the Democrats’ convention of 2024, the last vestige of actual party work — the official nomination of a presidential candidate — was deemed too risky, so it was done on a glorified Zoom call in advance just to make sure nothing would interfere with the coronation of a nominee who had never won a single delegate.
So, in its own way, this gathering in Dallas is the ideal expression of the hollowed-out political parties of our time. A pseudo-convention for a pseudo-party.
But there is a question on the floor here: What’s a majority worth, anyway?
The president told his supporters here that the opening bid was about $1.3 trillion — roughly the size of Saudi Arabia’s annual gross domestic product — paid out in $5,000 bonuses to every adult citizen of the United States if voters agree to keep Republicans in power in the upcoming midterm elections.
That’s in addition to Vice President Vance’s soccer mom stimulus that would pay $9,000 to married, stay-at-home parents and a newly unveiled $500 in preelection sweeteners to about a million ObamaCare recipients who are getting squeezed by ballooning insurance prices.
Unlike the Vance payments or the ObamaCare booster, which can be done by creative accounting under existing laws, the president’s self-titled “Trump Dividend” is pie in the sky. It’s not impossible that an imagined Republican majority next year would authorize an inflation bomb of that magnitude, but it seems extremely unlikely, even in the populistic GOP.
Consumers are already getting crushed by inflation, high interest rates and high prices. Bond traders are punishing Uncle Sam for becoming a fiscal basket case with a $40 trillion debt and not even concepts of a plan for what to do about it. Even the most cynical Republican lawmaker would be able to see how the hangover would be worse than the high — a lesson Democrats learned the hard way in the Biden era.
So, like the tariff bonuses and DOGE dividends Trump has promised voters before, the midterm payola probably falls into the familiar category of “stuff the president says.” But like his decision to try to rescue two struggling Atlantic City casinos by opening a third one, Trump loves to raise the stakes. Trying to pay off voters with money mortgaged against future generations is a little like using his creditors’ cash to bring in Michael Jackson for the grand opening of the Trump Taj Mahal.
But who is the target audience for the dubious dividend? It certainly isn’t conservatives, who are already feeling seasick from a wild fiscal ride with Trump so far. It can’t be progressives and liberals since, even if they liked the idea of Trump’s anarcho-Keynesianism, they wouldn’t believe his promises anyway. The customers Trump is trying to get through the doors of the GOP casino are those who a) think a massive debt-financed stimulus would be good and b) still tend to believe the things the president says.
The share of Americans who believe that Trump keeps his promises slid from a November 2024 high of 51 percent to 38 percent this spring, and given his many failed efforts to declare victory in the Iran war since then, one does not imagine that number has increased.
Are there enough voters who both a) believe Trump will actually deliver on his promise and b) think that it’s a good policy to lift Republicans’ chances to at least avoid a wipeout of the kind they faced in 2018? People do love free money, but the belated introduction of such a wild policy proposal makes it hard to predict. Certainly, Republicans running in suburban districts and states with large numbers of college-educated voters won’t look forward to explaining their thoughts on the debt bomb.
Their best bet will be to say that it’s just Trump being Trump, and not a serious policy proposal — just a little confection whipped up by the president and nothing to really worry about. That would be fitting: pseudo-policy at a pseudo-convention.
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Programming alert: Watch “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt — Get the latest from decisionmakers from around the country and Washington insiders, and, as always, our best-in-the-business panel of journalists. Be sure to catch us on NewsNation at 10 a.m. EDT / 9 a.m. CDT or your local CW station.
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Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions & amplifications: WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com.
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Change from last week: ↓ 0.6 points (-24.4 points)
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Change from one month ago: ↑ 2.8 points (-27.8 points)
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[Average includes: Quinnipiac University: 33 percent approve — 59 percent disapprove; Reuters/Ipsos: 33 percent approve — 63 percent disapprove; American Research Group: 30 percent approve — 66 percent disapprove; Echelon Insights: 38 percent approve — 61 percent disapprove; Emerson College: 40 percent approve — 56 percent disapprove.]
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Democratic: 48.8 percent
Republican: 41.6 percent
Advantage: D + 7.2 points
Change from one week ago: ↑ 0.8 points (D +6.4 points)
Change from one month ago: ↑ 1 point (D +6.2 points)
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[Average includes: Quinnipiac University: 49 percent Democratic — 38 percent Republican; Reuters/Ipsos: 43 percent Democratic — 38 percent Republican; Echelon Insights: 50 percent Democratic — 44 percent Republican; Emerson College: 51 percent Democratic — 43 percent Republican; Marquette Law School: 51 percent Democratic — 45 percent Republican.]
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The Dispatch: “On April 4, 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it intended to give away its product for free. Over the ensuing decade, thousands of lecture notes, exams, and, increasingly, recorded classes were uploaded to the public MIT OpenCourseWare website. Other universities, as well as dozens of other non- and for-profit organizations, soon followed with their own 'massive open online courses' (MOOCs). … The MOOC did not kill the university, which isn’t much of a surprise; what everybody knows—what MIT knew—is that coursework is only a part of college’s appeal to most students, and an outright drawback to many. After tensely sending out the last of his applications, the teenager collapses into a daydream not of tests and textbooks but of the charmed social life he’ll lead among verdant quads and sun-mellowed brick halls. The college environment, that’s to say, seems at least as important to him as the book learning. The care that’s been devoted to those more tangible aspects of academia is the subject of a new book, The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood.”
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Legal losses for Trump mail-in voting rules
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Another court nixes Trump’s mail-in ballot blockade: The Hill: “A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on the Trump administration’s restrictions on mail-in voting, as the Supreme Court considers the case. Three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit concurred with U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who last week blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing President Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterms. That executive order, which Trump signed in the spring, instructed the service to send mail-in ballots only to residents of states that have submitted a list of eligible voters to the administration. Despite having voted by mail himself, the president has long claimed the practice is rife with fraud, without providing substantive evidence. In blocking Trump’s order last Friday, Talwani wrote there was ‘no evidence relating to fraudulent mail voting' to support the implementation of the Postal Service’s directive.”
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Probably too late to implement anyway: The Dispatch: “All this comes as election season is already underway. North Carolina mailed out ballots last week—60 days before Election Day, as required by state law. Plenty of other states will join them in the coming weeks. And federal law requires that military and overseas ballots ('UOCAVA' ballots) go out at least 45 days before Election Day. Even if the Supreme Court ultimately deems the new USPS requirements lawful, the idea that election officials could fully implement them for this upcoming election is absurd. [As an opponent of the rules points out in a brief to the court] that there are more than 10,000 voting jurisdictions in the United States, some with zero full-time election workers. A number of these jurisdictions still hand-address their outbound mail ballot packets. It’s silly to think those offices can, in a matter of days, redesign their envelopes, buy new envelopes, destroy old envelopes, address the new envelopes, assemble new mail ballot packets, and learn how to use a new USPS portal.”
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A stubborn Democrat may protect a GOP Senate seat in Montana: Semafor: “The failure of two candidates — one Democratic and one independent — to consolidate anti-Republican support against GOP candidate Kurt Alme is propelling him to victory, according to polling first shared with Semafor. Alme is currently winning 44% of the vote, while independent Seth Bodnar is capturing 22% and Democrat Alani Bankhead is getting 19%, according to a late August survey from Peak Insights commissioned by the Alme campaign. Thirteen percent of voters remain undecided. Both Bodnar and Bankhead declined to withdraw from the race this summer as they split the anti-Alme vote, a dynamic that has cleared the path for Alme to succeed retiring Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont. The poll finds that Bodnar and Bankhead are splitting the Democratic vote, 49% to 43% respectively. Bodnar is only narrowly winning independent voters over Alme.”
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El-Sayed faces a rabbinic ultimatum over Israel rhetoric: The Hill: “A petition signed by more than a dozen Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders was launched Tuesday, pushing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to shift his rhetoric on Israel as lingering anxiety and frustration from the primary pour over into the general election over the progressive’s stance on the U.S. ally. ‘American Jews now feel forced to fight for the party they long claimed as their political home, asking its leaders to treat explosive bigotry and violence against our community as the national emergency it is not with platitudes, but with urgency and moral clarity,’ said the petition, which was signed by 15 Michigan Jewish leaders, including Michigan Board of Rabbis president, Rabbi Aaron Starr. ‘Treating Israel’s existence as a live question; using eliminationist language to describe Israel; raising an objection to ‘ethnostates’ that is never raised about any other state; or vilifying Israel as uniquely malevolent, are variations of the same demand: the dismantlement of only 1 out of the 193 countries in the world,’ the petition said.”
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Sununu and Pappas set for November showdown in New Hampshire: The Hill: “New Hampshire is emerging as a key state to watch as the primary season wraps up, with Rep. Chris Pappas clinching the Democratic nod last night to face former Sen. John E. Sununu (R) in the general election in November. By most accounts, Democrats should be in a good position to keep the blue-leaning seat, which will be vacated by retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D), and strategists say the national mood and President Trump’s record-low approval ratings should help Pappas. However, in a University of New Hampshire (UNH) poll released Aug. 26, Sununu led Pappas 45 percent to 43 percent. Two months earlier, the hypothetical match-up showed Pappas leading, 47 percent to 44 percent. Both results were within the margins of error. Election forecasters Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both rate New Hampshire as lean Democrat.”
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Elon Musk opens the spigots for Paxton: Austin American-Statesman: “Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is spending big to support Republican candidates, including increasing the amount that his America PAC has doled out to help Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate campaign against state Rep. James Talarico. The Musk-led political action committee has spent more than $1.6 million supporting Paxton, including more than $1.36 million on digital media and $246,000 on printing, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Printing expenditures can include campaign materials such as signs and flyers. Musk's support for Paxton — who had raised $9 million to Talarico's $68 million as of June — is just part of a spending spree by America PAC. It is also spending on races in other states, including more than $204,000 for advertising against Mary Peltola, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska, and more than $170,000 to support Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican incumbent who is facing one of the toughest re-election campaigns of her career.”
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Fetterman praises GOP, trolls fellow Democrats with convention video: The Washington Sun: “Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman sought to tamp down speculation about his political future on Wednesday, vowing to remain a Democrat if his party wins the Senate in November. ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party-and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the 51st vote that I ran on,’ Fetterman said in a statement to The Washington Sun. Fetterman spoke out after his surprise cameo at the Republican convention in Dallas earlier Wednesday night. In a short video appearance, Fetterman criticized democratic socialists and praised his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Republican Dave McCormick. The appearance was highly unusual and drew sharp criticism from some Pennsylvania Democrats. … Speculation has grown rampant within both parties about Fetterman’s political future in recent months following his criticism of Democrats while their odds of taking control of the Senate have grown ahead of the November midterms.”
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Mike Collins’ Georgia Senate bid unraveling: The Wall Street Journal: “When Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins announced his candidacy for Senate last year, his official ‘war room’ account on X posted a short campaign video that ended with the on-screen slogan: ‘Georgia, Let’s Ride.’ From that widely mocked spelling mistake on day one to a House ethics probe to revelations that his son-in-law made white nationalist posts on social media, Collins has suffered a series of setbacks that have hobbled his campaign. Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has developed a national profile by blasting President Trump and surged in state polls. Most politicos see the race, once considered a tossup, as firmly blue, strengthening Democrats’ long-shot push to take back the Senate this fall and marking a big disappointment for the GOP. ‘With lackluster fundraising, ongoing scandals with staffers and family,’ Collins is ‘really having difficulty breaking through,’ said Jordan Fuchs, a longtime Georgia GOP strategist who worked closely with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.”
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Illinois governor JB Pritzker (D) is shelling out for midterms, and maybe 2028 — The Washington Post
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Former DSA member William Lawrence is trying to flip a purple Michigan district — The New York Times
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County fair turns dark when armed man charges at gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton — The Washington Post
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Fact Check: Democrats stretch the truth on Republican Epstein votes in ad campaigns — The New York Times
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TABLE TALK: 'Trump-a-palooza' Edition
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“I’ll never forget two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys. And I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here,’”
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“He’s got great opposition, he’s going to have great, great success.”
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— Trump interrupting the convention crowd booing Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) with some words of affirmation.
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““He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I've ever seen.”
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— President Trump commenting on his Texas Senate candidate, Ken Paxton.
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Write to WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, recipes, and, always, good jokes.
Please include your real name — first and last — and hometown. Make sure to let us know if you want to keep your submission private.
My colleague, Camille Miner, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack!
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As was foretold in journalism 101
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New Haven [Conn.] Register: “A suspect bit a police dog in West Haven during a pursuit and struggle with officers, police said. A social media post on Saturday from the West Haven Police Department's canine unit said West Haven officers were called to assist state police on Interstate 95 with a motor vehicle stop of an erratic driver Thursday afternoon. The driver took off on foot, police said, ending in the apprehension of the suspect. ‘A struggle ensued, at which point the suspect began to become combative with the officers and troopers. K-9 Ado was deployed and successfully assisted the officers and troopers with taking the suspect into custody,’ police said. ‘The suspect bit K-9 Ado in the leg. Luckily, thanks to K-9 Ado's excellent and overwhelming training and experience, coupled with his eight-year law enforcement career in numerous apprehensions, this did not cause K-9 Ado to disengage with the suspect. K-9 Ado was vital in ensuring the officers and troopers did not obtain any injuries to themselves during the arrest of a potentially violent person. The suspect was successfully placed in handcuffs without any physical injury to the officers. K-9 Ado was evaluated but sustained no visible injuries,’ police added.”
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Chris Stirewalt is political editor for The Hill and NewsNation, the host of "The Hill Sunday" on NewsNation and The CW, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of books on politics and the media.
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