Unconventional #40: Day Three — The ‘Everybody Hates Hillary’ Edition

Coming to you live every morning from Cleveland, Unconventional is the one thing you need to read to understand what’s really happening at the conventions. Each edition will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the biggest (and weirdest) moments of the day, with original dispatches from the entire Yahoo Politics team — plus a sneak peek at what’s next.

‘Lock her up! Lock her up!’

CLEVELAND — “You won’t believe it.”

That was Donald Trump Jr. announcing from the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena that his father had finally, officially won the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

He was right. Donald Trump! The flashy New York real estate developer. The pouting, squinting reality-television star. The man behind Trump Steaks. It was almost impossible to believe.

Then it was almost easy to forget.

With the notable exception of Don Jr. — whose speech was a polished paean to his father and free-market principles — and a few other nonpoliticians, the speakers Tuesday rarely touched on the theme of the night (“Make America Work Again”), and most of them barely mentioned Trump.

They did, however, talk about some woman named Hillary Clinton. A lot.

Some of the evening’s monomaniacal Hillary focus was strategic on Trump’s part. Some of it was politicians — like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — sticking to a subject that’s still more comfortable for them to talk about than their party’s controversial nominee.

Still, the ratio was remarkably skewed.

Unconventional did the math. Based on prepared remarks, Trump — ostensibly the man of the hour — was mentioned by name 73 times Tuesday night.

Clinton was mentioned 107 times.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump’s brokenhearted VP also-ran, was a perfect example. He started his speech with 60 words — three sentences — about how Trump has been “a caring, genuine and decent” friend of his “for the last 14 years.”

Then Christie pivoted. “But this election is not just about Donald Trump,” he said, as if he had already exhausted the topic. “It is also about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.” The governor then spent the next 1,200 words excoriating Clinton “for her performance and her character.”

Benghazi, the emails, Monica Lewinsky, even Satan — it was all there, in speech after speech after speech.

“As first lady, you viciously attacked the character of women who were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of your husband,” said RNC Co-Chair Sharon Day.

“Friends, not since Baghdad Bob has there been a public figure with such a tortured relationship with the truth,” added McConnell.

“Are we willing to elect as president someone who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?” wondered retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, veering off-script to connect Clinton — via the subject of her senior thesis, community organizer Saul Alinsky — to the Prince of Darkness.

“Lock her up!” yelled the delegates.

Trump — who appeared via satellite hookup — will return to Cleveland tomorrow. He will accept the nomination on Thursday. Whether anyone other than his employees, friends or family members manages to sound half as passionate about his candidacy as they do about, say, Benghazi — that remains to be seen.

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Missed the speeches? We’ve got you covered.

Jon Ward on Paul Ryan: “Paul Ryan did his best to disguise it, but his remarks at the Republican convention Tuesday night made it clear that he was less than happy to have declared Donald Trump the party’s nominee for president.”

Olivier Knox on Mitch McConnell: “McConnell, arguably his party’s best political tactician, took pains to attack Clinton’s honesty, at a time when polls show that many Americans consider her untrustworthy.”

Holly Bailey on the Trump kids: “Tiffany was clearly interested in refuting the widely held view that her relationship with her father is distant. She spoke of the childhood report cards she still keeps because of “sweet notes he wrote on each and every one of them” and how, when someone close to her died, the first call she received was from him.”

Chris Wilson on Ben Carson: “When asked by a reporter earlier Tuesday what he planned to talk about in his speech, Carson replied, ‘Only God knows the answer to that.'”

Hunter Walker on Chris Christie: “Christie summed up his case against Clinton by saying that ‘the facts of her life and career disqualify her’ from being president.”

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Overheard

“Do you have anything that reads ‘Trump and Hillary can both go to hell’? I don’t like either one.”

— A shopper perusing the bootleg political gear for sale at one of the many sidewalk stands that have popped up in downtown Cleveland.

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Let the 2020 games begin

CLEVELAND — It was like a scene from some sort of alternate reality.

A big room. A schmaltzy cover band. A sea of red-white-and-blue Republicans packed shoulder to shoulder on the floor. And a popular GOP politician onstage rallying the faithful with a rousing address.

“Americans want to feel as though they matter — that people care about them,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich during a reception held in his honor Tuesday at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “This is about connecting hearts and minds again in America. It’s about showing that everybody has a chance to be successful.”

Kasich, of course, isn’t this year’s Republican presidential nominee. He has refused to endorse Donald Trump. He isn’t even attending the actual convention. Still, none of that has stopped the 2016 runner-up from reminding Republicans, at event after event this week in Cleveland, of what could have been — and perhaps hinting at what could yet be in four years’ time.

Technically, the general election hasn’t even started yet. But if you’ve been paying attention to the first few days of the convention, it’s clear that the jockeying for the next presidential race — and beyond — is already well underway.

Some potential White House contenders have opted to speak from the stage. (House Speaker Paul Ryan took his turn Tuesday.) Others are maneuvering behind the scenes. And still others, like Kasich, are steering clear of the Quicken Loans Arena altogether. But all of them seem to be making the same calculation: that Trump is likely to fail, either as a candidate or as president, and that this year’s convention is the right place to start positioning themselves for a post-Donald GOP.

On Monday morning, top Trump strategist Paul Manafort set the stage by claiming that the real reason Kasich isn’t jumping on the Trump Train is that he thinks he’ll “have a better chance to be president by not supporting Donald Trump.”

“[It’s] a dumb, dumb, dumb thing,” Manafort added.

A Kasich adviser insisted to Unconventional that the governor doesn’t have any ulterior motives. “We’re getting killed for not endorsing Trump,” the adviser said. “But he just doesn’t do things that don’t feel right.”

Glancing at Kasich’s schedule, however, it’s difficult to conclude that the only thing on his mind this week is principle. After Trump declined to address the NAACP Convention in Cincinnati on Sunday, Kasich filled in as a kind of bizarro GOP nominee, delivering a pointedly un-Trump message about his Ohio administration. “[We’re] going to make sure that we do everything we can to give every single human being a sense that they matter, that they count, that they can be hopeful and that justice will be done,” Kasich said.

Then he started circling the convention. The Ohio shindig seemed obligatory; Kasich is, after all, the governor. But every other stop on Kasich’s itinerary this week has had political — even presidential — undertones. Get-togethers with key swing- or primary-state delegations: Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire. A foreign-policy event (because foreign policy is a crucial part of governing Ohio). A speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“There’s talk of 2020,” says Ohio delegate Bob Sebo, an entrepreneur who’s close to Kasich. “Once you get bitten by that bug, it’s hard to shake. We’ll support him no matter what he chooses to do.”

It’s clear that Kasich sees himself as the opposite of Trump. His convention week is proof that he doesn’t want Republican voters to forget it.

Unlike Kasich, Paul Ryan has endorsed Trump. And Ryan couldn’t skip the convention. (He’s its chairman.) But for months now, Ryan’s embrace of Trump has been scrupulously equivocal, striking a careful balance between compliment, critique and “At least he’s not Hillary Clinton” rationalization that seems calibrated to preserve his future credibility — and his political prospects — should Trump go down in flames.

Since the start of the week, Ryan has been sidestepping the chaos in the Q, as Politico points out, by counterprogramming the convention with events of his own:

[L]istening to heroin addicts talk about their recoveries; attending a luncheon honoring a mentoring program for inner-city kids; addressing a crowd on how to secure the nation, talking to companies about trade and taxes reform, appearing at an event on empowering youth; conducting a “listening session” on health care at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic.

But nowhere was Ryan’s delicate balancing act on clearer display than in his speech to the convention Tuesday night. He mentioned Trump’s name only twice, and one of those times was to say that if Trump is elected president, the country has “a chance” — but only a chance — at “a better way.”

“Democracy is a series of choices,” Ryan said, resignedly. “We Republicans have made ours.”

But instead of praising his party’s nominee, Ryan praised conservatism. And he carefully framed his explicit criticisms of President Obama as implicit criticisms of Trump.

“In America, aren’t we all supposed to see beyond class or ethnicity or all those other lines drawn to set us apart and lock us in groups?” asked Ryan.

The message was subtle but unmistakable: Donald Trump doesn’t really represent the Republican Party. I do.

For the party’s presidential wannabes, that’s probably the theme of the week. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton — a rising star who has scheduled meetings with the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina delegations — made one reference to a “Trump-Pence” administration in his remarks on Monday. Expect a similar approach from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who’s meeting with those same delegations — when he speaks on Wednesday. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t even appearing in person, choosing instead to address the convention by video.

And then there’s Ted Cruz.

So far, the Texas senator — Trump’s chief primary rival — has refused to endorse the nominee. The word is that he still won’t endorse him in his speech Wednesday night. And he’s already doing more than any other Republican — both here in Cleveland, and nationally — to prepare for what comes after Trump.

Earlier this week, Politico reported that Cruz and his wife, Heidi, took a trip to Mexico with his campaign chairman, his national finance chairman and his campaign manager less than three weeks after losing the make-or-break Indiana primary. He soon ordered “a massive, top-to-bottom review of the decisions made in the presidential primary.” And in late June, he invited more than 100 of his top bundlers and donors to a retreat in La Jolla, Calif.

In Cleveland, Cruz’s strategizing has been just as obvious. The major rules fights here last week were spearheaded by two Cruz loyalists: former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Utah Sen. Mike Lee. And many of the reforms they were pushing — including an amendment that would block Democrats and independents from voting in Republican primaries — would likely benefit the Texan in 2020.

“Most wars,” Cruz recently explained, “are not won in a single battle.”

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Convention diary

Click through for the full Yahoo News Convention Diary from anti-Trump protester Bryan Hambley.

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The case for meaningful conventions

By Jon Ward

One of the last real levers of power that political parties hold in their hands in America is the nominating convention.

And the Republican Party this week used that instrument of power — which it controls almost completely — to push over the finish line the nomination of a presidential candidate whose ascendancy demonstrates how weak and ineffectual the party itself has become this election year.

Throughout American history, political parties have used their power to exercise quality control over the nominating process. By acting as private clubs, they have prevented extremists and fringe characters from gaining power.

At conventions, the party still reigns supreme. It can stick rebellious state delegations in remote hotels and far corners of the convention hall, complicating their logistics and making it harder for them to participate in floor proceedings. But this is only a shadow of the power parties once held across all parts of the presidential nominating process.

Read the full story here.

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The big picture

Photographer Khue Bui is on the ground in Cleveland, capturing all of the action for Yahoo News. Here’s his most unconventional pic of the day.

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By the numbers

20,000: The number of newsroom jobs lost across country since 2008 — a 38 percent decline

15,000: The number of credentialed media employees covering #RNCinCLE

(h/t Alec MacGillis)

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The best of the rest

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What to watch Wednesday

Theme: Make America First Again

7:20 p.m. session:

Remarks by Florida Gov. Rick Scott

Remarks by conservative commentator Laura Ingraham

Remarks by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

A video by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (who declined to appear in person)

Remarks by Texas Sen. — and 2016 GOP primary runner-up — Ted Cruz (who still hasn’t endorsed Trump)

Remarks by Eric Trump

Remarks by Indiana Gov. and Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence

Remarks by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (another defeated GOP primary opponent)

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