Marshall writes about Ron Brownstein's article channeling unease among Democratic operatives that Harris hasn't closed the deal. It's the age old question of Trumpistan: Why is this even close? Of course, we are making assumptions about whether it actually IS close, but whatever.
Paul Campos talks about how far too many people have a rosy view of Trump, because they have somehow memory-holed that Trump was president during the annus horriblus of 2020. Biden wasn't president until 2021, but since he was elected in 2020, people who don't really follow politics kind of think he was the president then.
I'm not really convinced by Campos' point, because Trump's "inject with bleach" nonsense is more resonant than actual calendars. However, he links to one of his "Ariana Grande voters" (people with very low political engagement) who is "undecided". I think those of us who follow politics a lot are baffled by these people but they basically don't pay attention to politics.
What I think is interesting about the person they interview is that she voted for Trump in 2020. This goes to my theory that there simply aren't going to be a lot of people who voted for Biden in 2020 and then will vote for Trump in 2024. Not after January 6th. However, there are likely to be a non-trivial number of either Trump>Harris voters or more likely Trump>Non-Voter.
Does Harris need to drive a fear-based message about Trump in order to make that happen? I think the campaign has settled instead on a "Trump is old, confused and weak" and that seems to be a stronger attack on Trump's strengths than attacking him for his botched Covid response or even January 6th.
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