Suddenly, donkeys are happy again.
Photo: Dustin Chambers/Reuters
Even for Democrats who had faith in Joe Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump, the Biden strategy and message were unquestionably a bummer. Having apparently lost the ability to convince swing voters his administration was doing a good job on the key issues of inflation and immigration, Team Joe was stuck when it came to having the prime objective of making the election about the terrifying prospect of a Trump presidency rather than any happy thoughts about a second Biden term.
To use the language of political strategy, Biden had to avoid a “referendum” election like the plague and try to make swing voters focus with great intensity on Trump’s lawless character and conduct, recognizing all the while that his own age made it impossible to paint an optimistic picture of America’s future under his guidance.
So even before his horrific performance in the June debate brought his candidacy to a crisis point, the best-case scenario for the Biden campaign was a long, hard slog designed to make voters even more fearful and discouraged, driving both his and Trump’s favorability ratings to the bottom of hell in hopes he would win a lesser-of-two-evils contest. It tells you a lot that for the first time in living memory, Democrats were hoping for a low-turnout election to save their bacon from a sour and mistrustful electorate.
Kamala Harris’s replacement of Biden as the Democratic nominee has changed all these dynamics, and accordingly her strategy and message are looking very different as well, as Axios reports:
Instead of portraying Trump as a dictator-in-waiting, Harris has dismissed Trump as “weird” and mocked him as scared to debate while also calling his agenda “extreme.”
She also initially signaled the campaign was not all about Trump, telling a rollicking crowd in Wisconsin: “Let’s also make no mistake: This campaign is not just about us versus Donald Trump. This campaign is about who we fight for.”
Harris, more than twenty years younger than Biden, has also tried to portray herself as the candidate of the future as she has embraced the tagline “we’re not going back.”
In her Atlanta rally Tuesday evening, Harris also did not mention Biden by name.The main super PAC supporting Harris’ candidacy also began running a new ad Wednesday that concluded with “let the future begin.”
Harris appears to be adopting a “two futures” message, comparing her agenda to Trump’s instead of mostly offering dark warnings about her opponent. It enables her to promote the most popular elements of the Democratic platform — most notably a restoration of reproductive rights along with practical steps to help the middle class address high living costs, along with some targeted bashing of corporations — without an extended defense of the Biden record. It’s a decidedly upbeat message that accompanies a big strategic shift: With young, Black, and Latino voters beginning to return to the Democratic column, Harris’s potential winning coalition is beginning to look at lot like Biden’s in 2020, which would benefit from higher, not lower, turnout and open up the possibility of wins in Sun Belt states Biden had all but written off this year.
This doesn’t, to be clear, mean Harris won’t “go negative” on Trump; she will, particularly if she manages to get into a debate with the 45th president. It simply means her Trump-bashing will be more forward-looking and probably less apocalyptic. Axios suggests that Team Harris believes Biden’s efforts to get voters to dwell on Trump’s responsibility for January 6 just didn’t work, so we will probably get less of that, at least up until the moment MAGA preparations for overturning another loss go into high gear.
But it’s not just the tone of her campaign that will represent a big change from Biden’s: It’s the timeframe as well. Biden was engaged in a four-year struggle with Trump. Harris needs to navigate fewer than 100 days. If, as many Republicans believe, the veep’s big vulnerability is an ideology too far left of center for comfort, there will be less time for Team Trump to dramatize (or fabricate) it. As RealClearPolitics’s Sean Trende argues, Harris is a candidate better suited for a sprint than a marathon:
I don’t think Harris is probably viable over the course of a year-long campaign …
She doesn’t have to run a year-long campaign, though … Consider: Harris will almost certainly pick her vice presidential candidate this week. She has a large number of attractive choices from which to select, which will earn her another week or two of positive press.
That gets us to mid-August, when the Democratic National Convention begins. It will likely be a carefully scripted, well-managed event …
Then, in mid-September, Trump will be sentenced following his conviction in the New York fraud/hush money case. Regardless of whether or not he receives jail time, it’s another distraction from any substantive discussion of the issues in 2024. The attention is diverted from Harris and falls on Trump in a relatively unflattering light … [T]he election actually shapes up as a referendum on Trump at this point.
Harris can wage a campaign that’s brighter, sharper, and shorter than what could have been expected with Biden as the candidate. You can expect more of a traditional Democratic effort to mobilize the party base while giving swing voters an attractive and, above all, fresh alternative to the ever-alarming Trump. The voters who will decide this election won’t be asked to face their greatest fears head-on before choosing a flawed incumbent.
Lighten up, America! Maybe even laugh a bit with “Laffin’ Kamala” Harris.
Source link
