So, Donald Trump did not spend 90 minutes calling for a civil war last night.

That was nice.

After the assassination attempt, his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention – and the entire week – easily could have become a literal call to arms. (Literally literally, not figuratively literally.)

Instead last night, we got a rambling, 90-minute, low-energy, boring speech.

Most political speeches are boring. And the rambling isn’t particularly new for a Trump rally speech. He did seem more subdued and had seemed so all week. That seems natural to me after a near-death experience.

Some will say the speech proves he’s incoherent. There are crazy moments. (Hannibal Lecter?) But I don’t see it incoherence. Instead, I’ve always seen it as the technique of a snake oil salesman.

Rummage around a bit in the minds of your audience by throwing out a bunch of ideas, lines, and hot takes and see what rings their bells. Once you’ve identified that, run with it. Truth, accuracy, and principle are secondary considerations at best.

In other words, he’ll only be as coherent as voters let him be.

To that point, I don’t think his strongest supporters are interested in “unity”. Unity was supposed to have been Trump’s new theme since the assassination attempt. He did say that he wants to be “president for all America. There is no victory for winning for half of America.”

Yet later he leaned into his 2020 attack on the election process – in other words, invalidating the choices of more than half of America. He said at one point that “they used covid to cheat”, and “we’re never going to let that happen again.” After January 6th, we have to assume the worst when he says these things. We have to take this as a concrete threat to our democracy.

“I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country,” Trump said last night. Count me as skeptical. And still worried about election day.