Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Persuasion Vs Mobilization

 There are two basic strategies for winning an election: you persuade the undecideds and/or you mobilize your own partisans. The Harris campaign has decided - wisely - to try both. The mobilization is largely eased by the fact that Democrats hate Trump passionately. There is also the unique situation from June's debate, which demoralized Democrats - a dynamic that was upended by Biden dropping out and Harris coming in hot.

However, the future of American democracy hinges on a few dumb assed Pennsylvanians who apparently haven't made up their mind about Donald Trump. 

Last night's debate was the inverse of the June debate, in that Harris goaded Trump into being his angriest, unhinged self. It got lost in Biden's performance, but people didn't much like Trump in June either. Harris spoke in complete sentences, even complete paragraphs. Trump was mostly incoherent, ranting about stuff only the dark corners of the Right Wing Web fulminates on.

However...

Remember those dipshit undecideds? Well, Hillary Clinton easily won the debates in 2016, and we know how that ended up. The difference, I hope, is that people had largely made up their minds about Clinton and many haven't made up their minds about Harris. Hopefully, those people - unlikely to vote for Trump, but unsure about Harris - had their decisions made for them by seeing the two of them side by side.

Honestly though? It might make more of a difference in November that Taylor Swift endorsed her last night, MAGA will attack her and the Swifties will carry the day.

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