Republican reckoning: RNC delegates grapple with ’emotional whiplash’ of 2024 race
By
Naomi Lim
,
David Sivak
and
Rachel Schilke
August 13, 2024 3:29 pm
.
What a difference a month can make this election year.
One month ago in Milwaukee, former President Donald Trump made his triumphant return to the national political spotlight during the Republican National Convention, the undisputed front-runner in the 2024 race after surviving an assassination attempt. But with President Joe Biden cast aside over concerns about his age, mental acuity, and electoral prospects, his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, has put battlegrounds thought lost to Trump back into play amid a surge in enthusiasm.
Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist, described the Republican convention as the first of his political career where the party felt it was ahead, citing previous nail-biter presidential elections and Trump’s own come-from-behind victory in 2016.
“There was euphoria,” Jennings told the Washington Examiner. “There was just this view that he was ascendant and that Biden was a spent force, and everybody knew it. And you throw on top of that Hulkamania, and people walked out of there ready to rip their own shirts off.”
But four weeks later, it is now “a 50-50 race” and “Trump’s going to have to fight for it,” according to Jennings.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/presidential/3119165/republican-reckoning-emotional-whiplash-rnc/
