Just how successful was this week's Republican national convention? And just how well did the RNC and Trump campaign aim their message at persuadables?

One measure of this comes from an unlikely source -- CNN's Van Jones. During a segment in which the other panelists poked fun at the inclusion of Hulk Hogan and other colorful speakers, Jones warned that critics missed the big picture of a fighting spirit and unity. In fact, Jones declared that he hadn't seen anything like it in at least 16 years, and then among Democrats:

Van Jones: “The last time I was at a convention that felt like this it was 2008 with Obama. Something’s happening.”

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— ModernSonsOfLiberty (@MdrnSonsLiberty) July 19, 2024

After CNN contributor Scott Jennings spoke with excitement about wrestler Hulk Hogan, UFC head Dana White and former President Trump’s upcoming speeches at the RNC, Jones said, “This spirit that this guy [Jennings] has, you guys think it’s because he’s drunk, he’s not, this whole thing is like this.”

“The last time I was at a convention that felt like this was Obama 2008. There’s something happening,” he said.

Jones had a fuller explanation earlier in the evening, drawing obvious contrasts between the week that Republicans had with the week Democrats experienced. Trump turned a nightmare into a dream, Jones said, while Democrats turned their Biden dream into a nightmare:

“Dreams become nightmares and nightmares become dreams. You’re watching a nightmare become a dream for Donald Trump,” Jones said. “He has had a nightmarish summer with, you know, convictions and indictments and all kinds of stuff, almost got shot. It’s becoming a dream for him.” ...

“Biden’s the opposite. The dream that he had for himself as a young man to stand up and to rescue this country and to move it in a positive direction he actually delivered, he actually delivered on that. He did beat all those odds. He has done extraordinary things. He is extraordinary man,” he said. “But by holding on too long it’s becoming a nightmare. And the donors who have written huge checks for him, I mean the biggest checks are the ones who are stepping back.”

He followed by noting that Biden’s “peers,” like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, “are now turning on him, and now tonight he’s sick and he’s watching all this happen. It may take him a moment, but I believe he will get where he needs to go. This is a terrible, terrible moment for Joe Biden.”

Indeed. And let's not forget that Democrats have authored their own nightmare by conspiring to hide the reality of Biden's cognitive decline from the American public -- including their own voters in the primaries. The Protection Racket Media conspired right along with them by insisting that Biden could run circles around aides ... but only when cameras were off, for some reason. The media gaslit Americans about clear signs of senility that Americans could see with their own eyes was merely a "stutter," and that any evidence to the contrary was nothing more than "cheap fakes."

But Democrats authored this cover-up, and now they face the "nightmare" of the consequences they sowed.

David has offered his thoughts on the convention already, and I've offered mine on Donald Trump's speech. To me, the entire week was a Republican triumph on a scale I have not seen from party conventions in the past. I've watched them since the Reagan years, and not one had the sustained emotional resonance that the GOP convention did this year. That owes something to Trump's survival of an assassin's bullet, of course, but much more to the careful planning of speakers and issues each night of this week. Rather than stick just to candidates and incumbents, the GOP found people who could articulate the need for their agenda from the experiences of their own lives, sometimes tragically. In doing so, they presented a broad, compelling, and unifying message of needed change from a disastrous and disgraceful status quo of Joe Biden's presidency.

More compelling, however, was the contrast that this convention provided to Democrat disarray. While the GOP united around its nominee or at least papered over some of the fault lines in the party, Democrats ramped up an internecine coup attempt to push an incumbent president off its ticket after having rigged their primaries to ensure his nomination. Just before Trump took the stage to accept his nomination, the Biden campaign blasted its party leaders as fools and worse. The whole week has provided a crescendo of intrigue into efforts to invalidate 50 primaries and hand-pick a replacement in the name of democracy.

No matter how well the GOP planned this convention and executed its staging -- and it was near-perfect in both regards -- they couldn't have hoped for a better contrast this week. Republicans still have to work hard to win this election, especially down ballot in Senate and House races. But the American public certainly saw the dream this week that Republicans want to advance, and the absolute nightmare of Democrat authoritarianism and corruption. I'll take that as a triumph.