Here & Now

McCoshen & Ross on Impacts and Implications of the 2024 RNC

Frederica Freyberg:
Senior political reporter Zac Schultz brought live analysis from Media Row at the convention all week. And tonight wraps it up with our political panelists, Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross. Zac?

Zac Schultz:
Thanks, Fred. Well, I am back once again. End of the week. Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross. Thanks again for all this week and for today. Let’s start with the big speech last night. Bill, what did you think? Was this Trump’s unity moment? Did he sail it through?

Bill McCoshen:
I think he did what he needed to do as it related to unity. CNN had a focus group of females afterwards, and they thought they heard a different tone from him and they liked it. They responded to it. Personally, I think the speech was too long. It should have been 45, 50 minutes, not 90 minutes. I think he got into rally mode there and that’s a different beast altogether. But I think as far as the unity message, the different tone, I think he was a different man last night. Whatever, whatever happened last Saturday night with the assassination attempt had a pretty profound impact on him.

Zac Schultz:
Scot, did you hear two speeches at once? One with the prompter and one without?

Scot Ross:
What I heard was, you know, I don’t want to say I disliked the speech because the Abraham Lincoln, you know, adage, which is I never heard a short speech I didn’t like because it went on a long time. But what I heard from the speech was, you know, his delivery wasn’t great, but it just, you know, it culminated the most divisive, the most extreme, the most alarming national political convention I think we’ve seen. And again, embodied by the fact that for the first time in American history, a major political party has nominated a convicted felon to be its presidential nominee. That really says something.

Zac Schultz:
Being in the arena last night, we were all there listening to it. What was your reaction of the people listening to it as it went on? Was he losing the audience? Was he losing the crowd as it kind of got into the old, old hits?

Bill McCoshen:
It came and went, right? There were certain lines, bringing back the American Dream that got huge applause. Eliminating the EV mandate got huge applause. There were a lot of those throughout the night, and I think that may have caused him to go off script a few times when he thought that the crowd was a little subdued. I would have preferred he just go with the speech that was in the prompter, and I think that would have been just fine. The good news for us is it was a great convention. I’ve been to five national conventions. My former boss, Tommy Thompson, has been to 12. We both think it’s the best we’ve ever seen. Milwaukee looked great. They showed great. That’s going to lead to more business for Milwaukee and Milwaukee County going forward.

Scot Ross:
I would definitely agree with that. Milwaukee did a terrific job. The facilities were fabulous. You know, they — everybody was courteous. You know, I know there were some incidents and stuff outside of the perimeter.

Bill McCoshen:
We proved we could do this as a state.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you know, so what was going on sort of outside of what was being talked about in Fiserv was good. But what was being talked about in Fiserv, I think was alarming. Some of the biggest lines I heard that got applause was, you know, the attack on Nancy Pelosi, you know, which is, you know, red meat to the base. It’s not under — it’s not unexpected but towards the end, he got into a rant against trans people. That got so much applause and that was really disturbing. And I think you know, it sent the message that I think they wanted to say, which is, again, this is going to be a very divisive person if we put him back in the White House. I think we need to do — in terms of performance, I’ll say this. You know, I think that he kind of yawned through it. You know, it was stumbling and long. And I think in the end, you know, he performed the announcement speech version of Joe Biden’s debate performance.

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah. I think one of the most notable things is he only mentioned Joe Biden by name one time.

Zac Schultz:
And that was an accident.

Bill McCoshen:
In 90 minutes.

Zac Schultz:
He acknowledged it was an accident.

Bill McCoshen:
Well, he sort of walked into it so he had to name him and said, “I won’t name him again tonight” and I think that was smart.

Scot Ross:
Whoa, one mention of Joe Biden. Zero mentions of abortion, which I think was the most telling thing about the night. The thing that he bragged about getting rid of the right to choose and making women second class citizens and he doesn’t say anything about it in the biggest audience he’s going to get.

Zac Schultz:
Well now the attention will shift to Biden. Earlier today, Congressman Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Madison, announced he can no longer support Biden on the ticket, asked for him to step down. Scot, is this all unraveling here in front of us?

Scot Ross:
I don’t know if the word I would use is unraveling. What it is it’s a challenging campaign because when — it’s a — when you’re, when the focus becomes a referendum on your weaknesses, that is a problem. It happened in 2016. It was a referendum on whether or not Clinton should be around still. In 2020, it was a referendum on Trump because of his performance. Now that it’s a referendum on Joe Biden’s age, that’s problematic because he’s not going to get younger. You know, the thing is, is that if the Democrats, you know, if Joe Biden decides he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to be the nominee and steps down, this goes back to focusing on Donald Trump, which I think is great for the Democrats, because they know what they get with Trump. They got 3 million lost jobs. They got, you know, COVID being bungled, you know. And again, Joe Biden’s going to put country first. He always has. I think we can agree with that. He always has put country first. On the other hand, you got Trump. You know you got Trump. Ivanka had 18 new — I’m sorry, if you need to, if you need to — yeah, I’m ready to go. I’m ready to go on that.

Bill McCoshen:
If Dems are in disarray for the next month leading into Chicago, we’re totally good with that. The fact that this guy has — he earned 14 million votes in the primary. Dems cleared the field for him so that he didn’t have a primary with Robert Kennedy, Jr. and now they’re trying to push him off. I mean, so much for democracy.

Zac Schultz:
So we’re going to have a big test coming up because Kamala Harris, the vice president, is coming to Milwaukee on Tuesday. What does that look like? What are you expecting to hear?

Bill McCoshen:
I think she’ll promote the Biden agenda as she has in the past. And if she ends up being the nominee, we’ll see if there’s an open convention, if she can actually win it. I think the Biden agenda is what’s dragging them down. Yeah, Joe Biden’s age is a big negative for them. No question about that. Yes, his debate performance has lingered on for three weeks after, and we’ve never seen that in our lifetime. But I think she’s going to have to answer for those same policies.

Zac Schultz:
Will she be announcing she’s a candidate at that time, or is she still the VP?

Scot Ross:
I’m still waiting for my call, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. I have to say, I — you know, again, there’s lots of talk. I mean, you know, it was — there was a buzz, you know, amongst media last night about what is going to happen here. You know, and I have to disagree with Bill. I think it’s going to come back. I do think it’s going to come back to policy. But I think Biden, Biden and Democrats win on that. 16 million jobs created, 21 million more people put on health care. And again, you go back to the Republicans: anti-democracy, anti-abortion, anti-worker, giving $5 trillion in tax breaks to rich people.

Bill McCoshen:
Says the party trying to push their guy out with a backroom deal.

Scot Ross:
He gets to…

Bill McCoshen:
…by the influence peddlers.

Scot Ross:
The president gets to make his own decisions. He will make the decision. And I believe he will put country first.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Just a couple of seconds for each of you. Absolute chaos in Chicago or orderly convention?

Bill McCoshen:
Oh, I’m going to have fun.

Scot Ross:
In Chicago?

Zac Schultz:
Yes.

Scot Ross:
Well, as Nietzsche says, out of chaos comes order.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross. Thank you so much. We will be all together in Chicago for the whole week. Can’t wait. Thanks again.