Weird that the first post-debate ad buy from Donald Trump is a digital ad in the seven swing states simply saying that a vote for Biden is a vote for Harris (with no actual explanation for why that's bad).
No, the problem is that he’s very good at this.
This—the racist dog whistles, populist pablum, and his charlatan charisma—are pretty much the only thing he’s good at
What they aren’t doing is making serious plays for young or minority voters even though they are supposedly gaining with them. A rally in the Bronx isn’t it.
They have never had a solid swing voter strategy and they don't have one now. 2016 was about base depression and third-party defection. 2020 they tried to sell the record, 2024 is the same strategy to lesser effect.
As if there are no racist or sexist swing voters?
The racist and sexist swing voters hear what they hear. Many other swing voters hear “Biden is old and frail and will probably die”, which doesn’t inspire confidence. Dunno, I’m not as convinced that it’s bad messaging
I think there’s a difference between “he’s old” and “he’ll probaby die”. The message as described hits the latter point.
And, yes, I do worry that in America there are swing voters that are fine with a woman as VP but would have pause with her at the top of the ticket
There's a meaningful percentage of the vote difference between Hillary and Biden that are old union guys that are fine voting for the most racist person they know before they would vote for a woman.
The "we almost had a mommy" guy outside Trump's inauguration...
archive.org/details/WJLA...
It is actually appealing to a lot of people. The Trump Administration revealed to me just exactly how many racists we have in this country. I had no idea that 40% of the public hated The Other, but here we are.
A lot of democrats already know this and they are hesitating. Nothing scares a considerable majority of white Americans, a majority of Democrats even, more than a Black woman in power.
There are a couple options here.
1. They are very bad at this and they're doing this because they're racist and they assume other people are.
2. They've done their own polling and found that Biden is more popular than Harris and so they want to make her the focus of the race.
Australian politics some 20 years ago. "A vote for Howard is a vote for Costello". It failed because if you were going to vote Howard, having a successor was a bonus, and if you weren't going to vote for him then it didn't matter. Of course sadly in this case skin colour and gender may be an issue.
She is a cop, and her tenure as the head of California's grotesque carceral state was notably exploitative.
But somehow I don't think that's what he's alluding to.
