The Democrat strategy is to make the 2024 election about personalities and false narratives rather than a discussion over the issues that are most important to the American people.
When voters are asked to list their top five concerns, they are generally – in order of importance – the economy, inflation, immigration, crime and the future of democracy. According to the polls, voters believe Trump was – and will be – better in handling the first four. On the issue of democracy, polling tends to be split even within the margin of error.
In terms of abortion, Democrats maintain a clear lead – but it is further down the priority list. It tends to be a winning issue for Democrats only when it stands alone on the ballot.
Trump’s lead on the top critical issues has been sustained throughout the campaign. That is why President Biden – and now Vice President Harris – ducked, dodged and distracted from the major issues throughout the campaign. Democrats have a one-note strategy. The Trump personality and his personal baggage.
They place all their bets on demonizing the man – and by extension, all Republican officeholders and voters with a shame strategy. That is the negative side of their campaign. On the positive side, they still avoid the key issues. Rather they again talk about personality.
For most of the campaign, the effort was to sell Biden as that good old lunch bucket Joe. They now speak of Harris in glowing personal terms – focusing on her resume over her policies. Virtually all the talk about the newly dubbed vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is personality. According to the political spin, he is a common man … a nice guy … well-liked… who grew up on a farm and coached kids. The Harris /Walz team call themselves “happy warriors.”
What the Harris/Walz team avoid talking about are those issues of importance to voters. And they especially avoid talking about their own record and past policy positions. And if the subject comes up, they flip and flop like a fish on land.
That is because their record and past policy positions run counter to what people see as solutions to the major problems. Harris and Walz have been BIG inflationary spending advocates. They oppose limiting the size and cost of government. They are woke candidates. To find candidates as far left as Harris and Walz, you have to go back to George McGovern in 1972 and Franklin Roosevelt’s socialist Vice President Henry Wallace.
Harris and Walz have been consistent in their support of open borders – passively by doing nothing to control illegal border crossing and actively by establishing sanctuary cities … benefits for illegal aliens … providing drivers licenses … defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) … and reducing policing by defunding or redistributing law enforcement funding to worker programs.
In order to avoid inconvenient topics, Democrats have found their strategy in the Covid Pandemic. In the 2020 election, Biden used the pandemic to avoid unscripted public appearances and press conferences. He continued that practice in the years following the pandemic. Biden became the least available to the public and press as any President since the so-called “front porch campaign” of President Warren Harding. So far, Harris has be followed that strategy to the extreme.
Since Biden’s withdrawal, Harris and Walz have operated from a figurative bunker – reading scripted speech from the teleprompter and avoiding any interaction with the news media. Their strategy is to avoid inconvenient questions as they attempt to define – or redefine – themselves to the voting public. At some point – probably after the National Democratic Convention – they will have to occasionally come out of the bunker – initially with safe one-on-one interviews with fawning reporters.
Put simply, Harris and Walz do not want to have to defend their records until after they have done their best to define themselves in a more favorable light – convincing the public that they are not the politicians they were before they took on their new roles.
Until then – and even after – the focus on the Harris/Walz team will be Trump … Trump … Trump. They cannot win on the issues, so they will continue to carry out their hyperbolic scaremonger narrative of a political Armageddon if Trump is elected. It is a political narrative founded on political bullpoop – but it is all they have. And it could work. They just have to fool some of the people all the time … or all the people some of the time.
So, there ‘tis.