CLEVELAND _ The allegations that a chunk of Melania Trump's speech Monday night was lifted from Michelle Obama almost certainly won't change anyone's vote.
That doesn't mean they won't affect the Trump campaign.
The problem for Trump and his allies is lost opportunity. The whole purpose of a modern political convention is to serve as a 96-hour-long advertisement for the nominee and his or her party. The aim is to spend every minute of each of those hours pounding home a few basic messages.
Even in the best of times, Trump has little patience with that sort of message discipline. And to be sure, his seemingly freewheeling, unconstrained style forms a big part of his appeal to his core constituency.
But even Trump's allies agree that his most faithful supporters, who have proved willing to stick with him through any controversy, are not enough to win the general election.
At the convention, "he has to convince some of the doubters" that he "can deliver" on his promises, Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the campaign, told reporters Tuesday.
It's that effort to reach out to the uncommitted where the apparent plagiarism interferes. The issue is not that voters necessarily care about whether Melania Trump, or more likely someone working for her, lifted parts of her speech, but that the controversy gets in the way of the message Donald Trump wants _ and needs _ to convey.
For much of the campaign, Trump has demonstrated that with his celebrity and mastery of social media and the cable television news cycle, he can shape his message without having to worry much about any filter from the media.
But at a convention, the media coverage of a campaign is at a peak, with thousands of reporters eager to find any bit of news that breaks from the campaign's prepared script.
The plagiarism charges _ easy to understand and quickly illustrated with side-by-side video _ were perfect fuel for a media fire, and the Trump campaign's shifting explanations served only to fan it hotter.
So, too, did the internal intrigue that has swirled around Trump's operation for months. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski suggested on CNN, his current employer, that rival Paul Manafort should be fired from his job as campaign chairman because of the fracas.
And so, on the second day of his convention, Trump's campaign spent the entire morning talking not about him, his reasons for running or his qualifications for office, but about the ethics of his wife's speech.
Of the convention's 96 hours, at least 12 have vanished into the maw of Melania Trump's speech. That's time Trump will never get back.
