Remember Joe Biden? I vaguely remember him, besides his argument with former President Trump about golf (Trump would win, by the way). If you compared Kamala after September’s debate to Biden’s “debate,” it’s night and day. Trump and Vance are both underwater in their favorability. This sounds like a solid victory incoming, seeing the way the wind blows.
But… Why are the polls narrowing? Why is Trump’s approval rating creeping up in the margins? Why are bettors starting to bet on Trump, the guy who lost to 78-year-old Joe Biden after exacerbating a centenary pandemic? Well, it takes a lot of bad generals to ruin a perfectly good army.
One of the major reasons, at least in Michigan, has been the relentless Future Coalition PAC ads. Although the Israel-Palestine conflict is an intense, heated issue that absolutely can boost enthusiasm, the only ads I’ve seen are performing extremely poorly in Michigan. The major premise is “Kamala’s husband is Jewish, and they’d be a power couple just like the Clintons.” You couldn’t possibly couch a pro-Israel message in much worse framing. Not only are both the Clintons disgraced or tainted, but the liberal angle of identity politics falls flat. You shouldn’t emphasize in your message to vote for someone based on their ethnicity, or gender—exactly like Clinton’s 2016 failure. And voters largely don’t care. They vote for things that directly affect their lives, like their fear of losing family members in the Middle East or being harassed on campus—-of which Kamala has an unclear, focused-grouped message. Even though this ad campaign appears to have direct ties to Republican benefactors, a dirty trick that Democrats used in the 2022 Midterms against Republicans, Harris’s lack of a coherent counterattack is putting Michigan at the top of the target list for Trump’s campaign.
Another massive failure that the Kamala campaign has done post-debate is their silence on labor. In interviews, she references economic policy and the retraction of her fracking policy; however, I have yet to see one direct Union ad in Michigan. Just one (and I’ve seen those Future Coalition PAC ads 10x each)! Unions are at their most popular in a long time, and the Rust Belt has three presidential swing states and senate races. Even Trump was courting Union endorsements! If Trump’s advisors are somehow giving better advice on labor messaging than the supposedly level-headed Harris campaign, you’ve made massive staffing mistakes. Trump even came out against the union-backed PRO Act this week, giving you the easiest, lowest-effort ad to film of this entire election cycle! It’s a lay-up issue, yet it has been overshadowed by bad optics and failure to message.
One of the most sensationalized policies that Kamala cannot stop talking about is her neutered immigration policy. Rather than coming out with a policy that actually solves illegal immigration through better processing, citizenship programs, and efficiency-based border reinforcement, she essentially promoted a watered-down version of Trump’s previous stance. Her fugazi ace-in-the-hole is the bipartisan border bill that died in Congress, which is NOT the ringer she thinks it is. For one, the framing sounds exactly like 2016 Trump, talking about more border agents and strengthening the border itself. For two, you are conceding that the Democrats were wrong on the border and that Trump’s original position was correct all along. Why would anyone buy a knockoff soda when they can get classic Coke? Whoever is giving her this guidance should join Biden in a gracious, rich-guy retirement.
Speaking of the Delaware debutant, Harris’s optics as sitting Vice President also fall flat. Instead of distancing herself from Biden, just about two months later, she is attaching herself to his unpopular administration. Even though some of Biden’s policies are objectively popular, his declining abilities led to an impossible communication problem, where whatever his message actually was became more indecipherable by the day. And now, she has done something even sillier: attach herself to one of the most unpopular politicians in American history.
Dick Cheney, the face of the now-universally frowned upon Iraq War and big lie about weapons of mass destruction, endorsed Kamala Harris. Rather than distancing herself, she said she felt “honored” by the endorsement. What exactly is honorable about literally the most aggressive, warmongering Vice Presidents in American history? What is honorable about lying to the American people and exposing tens of thousands of people to toxic burn pits? Also, how does this help your campaign at all? The 2024 GOP vehemently dislikes Cheney, especially since Trump has criticized the Iraq War since 2016. Obviously, most Democrats hate him. Does anyone like Dick Cheney? I’m sure his daughters do, most of the time. And what advisor said this was a good idea? Sure, he is one endorser, but as a microcosm of the poor decision-making as of late, he is the pure encapsulation of the shockingly bad advice that Kamala has been absorbing with reckless disregard.
Rather than take her promising momentum into a solidified electoral victory, the DNC and Kamala’s advisors may have forgotten to run a campaign. They seem obsessed with mirroring the Republican party on some policies and embracing the dusty veneer of bipartisanship, despite the polarized electorate indicating that is an effective strategy. Their border bill funds much of the wall they claimed to hate just a half-decade ago. Harris essentially recycles Biden’s talking points on Israel-Palestine but looks better on camera. And, for their most popular policy ideas which are labor rights, the environment, and abortion, they largely avoid campaigning on the merits other than restoring Roe. If your campaign is predicated entirely on restoring a policy that already existed while your posturing on everything else continues to flip-flop, knowing much of your agenda will be filibustered anyway… are you really aiming to win? Or is your goal simply to compete and enter another flaccid majority, where you’ll reconstruct budgets three times a year and confirm federal judges? At least if you acknowledge that, you’d be honest.
