The presidential race boils down to understanding the reality that the next 45 days, and not Election Day itself, will determine the election. By then, how many undecided voters will have already voted based on Joy and Hope vs. the reality of who Kamala Harris is?
The Democrats have come up with a frighteningly effective strategy of obscuration. GOP messaging has highlighted the stark reality between what the Dems want you to believe about Kamala and her three-and-a-half year record as V.P., plus a super-progressive background that the Democrats want you to forget. So far, they are getting their wish.
There’s an old sage that goes something like, “If you can’t win on the facts, get a different set of facts.” I’ll update that to “If you can’t win on the facts, ignore them.” So far, in the absence of any press scrutiny or unscripted speech by the candidate, and with an electorate that is fine with calling this election an anti-Trump movement, this strategy is working. Democrats are, essentially, running out the clock, with time working against them.
The Veep is a gaff machine. All the scripting in the world will not insulate her from her first opportunity to electrocute herself. We all know that Fox will report such gaffes, but the question is, will the specific media sites that reach persuadable voters do their job and report them? Recent history is not encouraging. Media Matters and reports that Trump is reported unfavorably 89% of the time, whereas Harris is reported favorably by almost the same percentage. For someone who takes his cues from soft news such as social media and other unabashedly slanted sound bite platforms, Republicans are clearly outmatched, and to believe otherwise is foolish.
So what is Trump’s path forward? I see three actions to concentrate on:
- Trump must hold on to the large number of voters he can already count on. It is my analysis that this is Trump’s election to win and Harris’s election to lose. Trump has voters on the fringe whom he could lose. Trump’s messaging must be about policy and much less on unfocused and sometimes strange attacks that alienate too many voters who don’t like them. If he doesn’t, he’ll bleed voters he can’t stand to lose, who are the easiest to hang on to.
- Millions of voters potentially will not vote at all. It is these voters whom Trump must reach out to and persuade to vote and not stay home. Harris’s voter base is electrified with issues Trump can’t compete against, like abortion and the first black woman president. These are not logical voters; they are single-issue lemmings. Trump can and should find ways to communicate Harris’s gaffes and lack of readiness to be our nation’s leader.
- Trump must seek out every opportunity to engage Harris personally and through surrogates. Another old adage, that a picture is worth a thousand words, holds true. The upcoming debate(s) may be the single most crucial opportunity for America to discover the reality of the word salad candidate who is just as prone to collapse when off script as Biden. Biden’s debate may foretell a similar end to Harris’s; she’s just not that smart. The only thing to watch out for is Trump’s tendency to bully and dominate. He’ll be fine if he can thread the needle and confront her on the merits, not her identity. But can Trump do that?
One of the problems facing those running the Trump campaign is the uniqueness of this particular election. A trend started during the Obama years to run high-emotion campaigns instead of policy has brought us to where we are today: form over substance.
There is literally nothing that should scare every conservative more than the march toward a new kind of American democracy and the low-information voter. Couple this trend with the Democrats’ successful “expand the vote” strategy, and you arrive at where we are today. The majority of Americans today would find it difficult to explain what democracy is. We are coming to the definition that the new Democrat party has pushed us toward for the last 40 years: mob rule.
That’s what this election is really about. In the short time left before the die is cast, the real election, the one you don’t hear articulated in the press, is that Democrats want to take us back to the darkest days of the Roman Empire, which saw gladiators fighting to the death because it distracted the people from essential issues. They see the government giving the people what they want (the loudest, most progressive sector), be it destroying the only democratic country in the Middle East, pushing gender and transgender issues, open borders, the end of cheap and plentiful energy, or myriad other issues that collectively define Democrats’ ideas on how they see democracy playing out in practice.
I frequently wonder how historians will perceive this time in our history. I can’t help but wonder about the timing of Biden’s departure, Harris’s almost impossibly quick accession, and the short time remaining before the election. Could it be that this is much more than just happenstance? Did the progressives’ brain trust realize the impossibility of carrying off one of the greatest bait-and-switch schemes in history unless there was a very short window for them to run out the clock? We may never know for sure, but there are two versions of democracy on the ballot: one that sees America continuing to be America and the other ushering in not joy and hope, but a dark era heretofore never witnessed. God help us all if I am right.
Allan J. Feifer: patriot, author, businessman, thinker, and strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com.
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