I am weirdly pollyannish about Harris/Dem X versus Trump. The "cheapfake/selective video" convo fits better with Harris - bc she makes little news, all people see of her are the wackiest/loopiest quotes.
The basic "you lied to us and said Biden could handle it" problem is bigger.
I think the “you lied to us” problem could be put to bed with a “Joe declined” argument. That would work even stronger if he gave her a strong endorsement and said “I’m not up to it, but I trust Kamala.”
Would she actually do better? 🤷🏻♂️
I'm seeing a lot of these discussions going around right now and I think they really fail to reckon with how warped the current media environment is and how all attempts at messaging are swimming upstream in rapids. I see a lot of "They should just say X" without reckoning with how X will be COVERED
Like, I'm really genuinely coming to believe that spending a ton of energy trying to come up with messaging strategies is, at this point, pretty ineffective. At least on a national scale. I think the local rally approach the Biden campaign has been taking is probably correct