Why Hillary Clinton's milquetoast message is enough for victory

The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia is just getting underway, and it promises few of the rhetorical fireworks we saw in Cleveland. There will be no equivalent to Rudy Giuliani screaming and scowling, no angry boos for a second-place finisher refusing to endorse the victor, no litany of shouted horrors from a nominee determined to convince voters they might meet a fiery death at any moment unless they vote the right way.

Though no one will put it this way, the fundamental Democratic message about the state of America is this: Things are pretty good. Maybe not great, but not so terrible, either. It's not what you'd put on a bumper sticker and it won't be the inspiration for any cringe-worthy country songs. But is it enough?

In an ordinary election, it might not be. Particularly after one party has held the White House for eight years, the impulse for change can be strong. But this is no ordinary election, most obviously because of Donald Trump. And while a standard-issue Republican might be arguing that the Obama administration hasn't done a good enough job bringing about prosperity and stability, Trump's message is far more extreme: He paints America as a hellish nightmare of suffering, where nothing works and the only thing we have to look forward to is terrorists and murderers putting us out of our misery.

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But do people buy Trump's picture of the world? Republicans will be quick to tell you that polls show that the American people think we're on the wrong track, which is true — as far as it goes. For instance, if you look at Gallup's measure — which asks people, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" — you see that only 30 percent or so say they're satisfied. The problem for Republicans is that Americans express this kind of dissatisfaction almost all the time. The last time the number of people saying they were satisfied exceeded 50 percent was January 2004, over 12 years ago. In November 2012, only 33 percent of Americans said they were satisfied — right before they reelected Barack Obama.

If the world really is as chaotic and threatening as Trump says, one response is to gravitate toward a strongman who tells you that if you leave everything to him he'll banish all the dangers. But another response is to look for stability, something predictable and reliable. And Hillary Clinton certainly is stable, not only because she has lots of experience but because she promises not radical change but methodical, slow, boring progress. If you think the country is on the wrong track, you're open to change — but not if the next track over has a burning tanker full of toxic waste on it.

There are plenty of criticisms one could make of the "pretty good" state of America. While unemployment is below 5 percent and the economy has created 14 million jobs since the trough of the Great Recession, income growth has been slow. While the Affordable Care Act has given millions of people health coverage and created security where none existed before, insurance is still expensive for many of us. Student debt is an enormous problem. Although crime rates have been steadily falling for two decades, there has been an uptick in homicides in recent months; no one knows whether it will persist.

Yet Trump's portrayals of these and other problems are so ludicrously exaggerated that one would imagine that no one who isn't already supporting him could believe them. But we don't know for sure.

There are some things Trump tells voters that they'd be able to refute from their own lives, and some they wouldn't. For instance, when he says that the world doesn't respect the United States anymore and every other country is laughing at us, most people have no direct way of knowing that he's completely wrong; in fact, America in general and President Obama in particular are admired throughout the world, with just a few exceptions (the Greeks, for some reason, can't stand us).

Trump also says that terrorists are about to kill you and your family, which is something people are much readier to believe; the fear of terrorism is always absurdly out of proportion to its actual risk. Since 9/11 fewer than 100 Americans have been killed here at home by jihadi terrorists (and that includes the Orlando shooting); over that time you were about five times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than by one of those scary Muslim terrorists. Yet oddly enough, the danger of lightning strikes didn't make it into Trump's acceptance speech.

But if you and everyone you know has a job, and you look around and see obvious signs of improvement in your community, it's much less likely to resonate when Trump says that the American economy is in the toilet. And when Democrats say, "Hey, things are pretty good," there's a stronger chance you'll agree with them, at least on that point.

But Democrats don't want to look like Pollyannas, and they don't want to deny the problems that still affect people's lives. That gives them a challenge at this convention and through November — it's a lot easier to say "Everything's great!" or "Everything's awful!" than to walk that fine line between the two. But with Trump as their opponent, it's a good bet they'll come up with some way to do it that's, well, pretty good. Or at least good enough.