#Trump redefined the race and other commentary

President Trump speaks from the White House South Lawn on the last night of the RNC.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

RNC journal: Trump Redefined the Race

Democrats’ strategy doesn’t involve Joe Biden winning, argues Daniel McCarthy at Spectator USA. “He just has to accept office when the coronavirus and the media have defeated” President Trump. Yet the GOP convention “tore up” the narrative and “wrote a new script, one focusing on the violence raging in cities run by Democrats,” redefining the race. For the left, “it’s still about COVID, racism and the personality of the candidates.” But for Trump, it’s about “what he’s accomplished” — and what’s happening in US cities. “Biden says little about the flames, riots and killing in the cities because there’s nothing he can say” without either admitting “his party is controlled by cultural pyromaniacs” or that “he’s become a firebug himself.” Will Trump’s gambit work? “Reality is on the president’s side, and it’s a hell of an equalizer.”

Pollster: Prez Contest Is Poised to Tighten

President Trump’s acceptance speech Thursday “drew clear and arguably persuasive contrasts between himself and former Vice President Joe Biden in many areas, including their broad-based visions for America, the economy and law enforcement,” Doug Schoen contends at Fox News. The RNC “also made clear strides to emphasize diversity within the Republican Party, with noteworthy speeches by” the likes of Sen. Tim Scott and ex-Gov. Nikki Haley. So — while much will turn on how the economy, the pandemic and urban unrest play out in coming weeks — “it’s very likely that after the four-day Republican convention, the race will tighten.” In all, it seems “the race for the White House will be much closer than most people are predicting.”

Media watch: An Unfiltered RNC

Because the media have been “so hysterically anti-Trump,” the RNC was the first time in four years that “non-leftist Americans have seen other Americans” reflect positive views about President Trump, observes Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist. On foreign affairs, they saw a “return to realism,” with multiple speakers spelling out policies based on the national interest. There was “substantive outreach to black voters”: Everyone seemed “ready to fight the slurs from the media” about Trump and Republicans being racist. True, the press still “lashed out against the Republican convention, sometimes ridiculously so” — even after gushing about the Dems’ shindig. But watching Americans speak positively about Trump was “emboldening for Republican and independent voters,” as they prepare for a fall campaign sure to ­include surprises.

From the right: The Nikki Haley Haters

Few “flavors” of abuse are “more ugly than the scorn showered” by many overwhelmingly Democratic Indian Americans on Nikki Haley, declares Tunku Varadarajan at The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, his praise of her RNC speech prompted criticism that Haley, née Nimrata Randhawa, “anglicized her name” to run for office. And if America isn’t racist, as Haley claimed, then why did she “change her name to ‘Nikki’ ”? Yet that reflects a belief that it’s “fitting for America to accommodate immigrants” but not “for immigrants to have to accommodate America.” Besides, “Nikki,” a Punjabi word for “little one,” is actually on ­Haley’s birth certificate as her middle name. To suggest she is “trying to pass for white” and “bury her own identity” is “not only desperately overheated. It is racist.”

Libertarian: Is US the Next Northern Ireland?

“Chaos in the streets,” such as in Kenosha and Portland, laments Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, is “a sight with which we’ll become very familiar if the situation in this country continues to spiral out of control.” BLM hard-liners, antifa, alt-right Proud Boys and other groups are increasingly mixing it up, endangering ordinary people and property. Talk of Civil War 2.0 might be overblown, but “countries don’t have to collapse for chaos to reign.” We could see a scenario like Northern Ireland’s Troubles: simmering tensions, occasional flashpoints, two irreconcilable communities of left and right inhabiting the same geographic space. “To avoid the spread of that conflict, we’re going to have to find a way to live with each other, or to leave each other alone.”

— Compiled by the The Post Editorial Board