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After week of doom and gloom in Cleveland, it's the Democrats' turn

CLEVELAND - Before he can get about the business of making America great again, Donald J. Trump has decided to make Americans afraid again.

In Cleveland, GOP nominee Donald J. Trump, with running mate Mike Pence, sought to make Americans afraid again.
In Cleveland, GOP nominee Donald J. Trump, with running mate Mike Pence, sought to make Americans afraid again.Read moreDAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer

CLEVELAND - Before he can get about the business of making America great again, Donald J. Trump has decided to make Americans afraid again.

His just-concluded Republican National Convention, capped by what may have been the bleakest acceptance speech by a major-party presidential nominee, painted a picture of a nation rotting from the inside and beset by terrorist enemies.

Trump's tone opened an opportunity for Hillary Clinton as she defines her vision and the stakes of the election this week at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, strategists said.

An uplifting message could sway voters; it's axiomatic that the sunnier candidate usually wins presidential elections. Think of Ronald Reagan.

"It certainly wasn't 'Morning in America' in Cleveland," Democratic strategist Daniel F. McElhatton of Philadelphia said.

McElhatton said he expects the Clinton campaign to seize the chance, using its convention speakers and her acceptance speech to express optimism while recognizing real threats in the world.

Clinton's just-named running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, perhaps previewed the convention Saturday as he repudiated the dark vision Trump outlined in Cleveland.

"America is not built on fear," Kaine said at one point. "America was built on courage and imagination."

He also referenced his mother's advice: "If you want to be right, be a pessimist. If you want to do right, be an optimist."

McElhatton predicted Democrats would take aim at Trump's proposals to build a wall on the Mexican border and to ban Muslim immigration to the United States. They will recount his history of sexist statements.

"The message will be that we are a great, powerful, strong, and welcoming country - and Donald Trump thinks we're weak," he said.

If voters feel relatively safe, confident, and optimistic in November, Clinton likely will win, strategists say. Of course, it won't be as easy as it sounds. The frustration roiling the electorate is real, as Trump's rise shows.

To cheers and applause on Thursday, Trump decried a spike in violent crime and warned of homicidal illegal immigrants "roaming free," with innocent children "sacrificed on the altar of open borders." America, he said, is "shocked to its core."

"Beginning on January 20th of 2017, safety will be restored," the real estate developer and former reality-TV star asserted in his acceptance speech, in which he repeatedly described himself as the candidate of law and order. It evoked President Richard Nixon, who won with that theme in 1968, another tumultuous year.

And Clinton has the more difficult task of trying to meet the deep desire for a shake-up of the political and economic systems, while also honoring her pledge to build on the work of President Obama, whom she served as secretary of state.

Obama enjoys high approval ratings, yet big majorities of Americans indicate that they believe the country is on the "wrong track." So Trump's play is to convince voters that the situation is worse than that: It's a psychic and existential crisis, and he is the strongman who can make everything better.

Clinton, for all the historic import of her drive to be the first woman president, has been known for her policy expertise and dogged work, not her rhetoric. She does not hold and inspire crowds like Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

If it weren't for Trump, Clinton would be the most disliked nominee in recent memory. Many voters distrust her, polls say, and the battle over her handling of classified information on a private email server illustrates what non-fans consider Clinton's secrecy and calculation, her attitude that normal rules do not apply to her.

"It's interesting - we haven't had the lesser-liked of two candidates win since Richard Nixon," said Michael DuHaime, a GOP strategist who helped shape Gov. Christie's two successful runs for the New Jersey Statehouse and his 2016 presidential campaign.

DuHaime also wondered if the combination of Clinton and Trump might make 2016 the first election of the millennium when voter turnout drops.

Typically, conventions bring a polling boost for the party holding the gathering because it dominates news coverage and can drive its message and sway voters with weak partisan leanings or the dwindling number of up-for-grabs independents.

The trend since 1992 has been for conventions to confer ever smaller bumps, because the country has become more polarized in political attitudes and there are fewer true swing voters to influence. This year, the proximity of the conventions also could limit Trump's bounce.

Experts say that Trump can win the election but that he has a relatively narrow path to the White House, with a daunting political map and demographic changes that favor Democrats.

Democrats have won 18 states in the last six presidential elections, giving the party's nominee an expected lock on 240 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Republicans have won 13 states for a total of 102 electoral votes in each of those elections. Adding others that the GOP has carried in most of those elections, Trump can count on just about 200 electoral votes.

Trump would need to take all the states that Republican Mitt Romney won four years ago and several more that the 2012 nominee lost, including Florida, Ohio, and at least one large industrial state in the Northeast or Midwest.

"The window is so narrow for Trump," said GOP consultant John Brabender. "Any Republican starts out structurally as the underdog."

The average of the latest bunch of polls shows Trump narrowly behind in North Carolina - a state Romney carried - and essentially tied with Clinton in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

The Trump campaign has made the Keystone State a prime target; it has a large number of older and white working-class voters, who were Trump's biggest supporters in the primaries.

Trump's team believes that he can energize and turn out a large pool of blue-collar, largely conservative voters who sat out the last two elections.

"The Republican Party was veering very close to becoming the party of the elites," said Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump's campaign, speaking last week at a forum held by the magazine the Atlantic.

"Donald Trump has made it the party of the worker," with his advocacy of tougher trade policies, opposition to illegal immigration, and embrace of the blue-collar sensibility, Conway said. The hope is that his appeal will make competitive states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and maybe even the white whale of Wisconsin.

Yet the polls show that with his racially tinged campaign, Trump is repelling many in the fastest growing groups of voters: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the young. He has a particular problem with college-educated women in suburban areas.

"There could be a closet Trump vote, but he really has to pass the cocktail-party test," Brabender said, becoming acceptable to suburban voters.

tfitzgerald@phillynews.com

215-854-2718

@tomfitzgerald

www.philly.com/bigtent