Kamala Harris is enjoying an unprecedented political honeymoon since she helped stab Joe Biden in the back. If you can’t win a party’s nomination, steal one – kind of like how she got appointed by her married boyfriend to her first job in politics…without having to have sex with someone 31 year older than her. But the honeymoon will end. How the Trump campaign deals with it when it does will be the difference-maker in the 2024 election.
Polling has so good for Kamala Harris you really have to wonder if she was part of the Biden administration or not. How else could someone who was a part of a presidential administration historically unpopular, is now “winning” in most of the polls?
First off, beyond telling you what the sentiments of votes are long before anyone votes, polls are meaningless. You want to be ahead in them, obviously, but they are the wind this early – shifting in direction and intensity all the time. People aren’t really thinking about voting yet.
Second, they aren’t wrong. You can’t dismiss polls as being wrong, they are a pretty accurate capture of the moment in time they were conducted. That doesn’t make the more meaningful, election day is months away and any poll you read today was conducted last week. Those two time periods only have in common that they are points in time, nothing more.
It’s not about what was, or even what is, elections are about what is next.
That being said, past is prologue.
The Trump campaign needs to be on TV now, running ads on networks and shows that voters they hope to win watch, not Fox News.
Nothing against Fox, but if you’re a Republican presidential nominee trying to win over Fox viewers you’ve got bigger problems than you’ll ever be able to overcome.
This election is about appealing to 5-7 percent of the electorate who are open to voting for either candidate in the 5-7 swing states that will choose the next president. Nothing else matters.
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Never forget, Hillary Clinton spent a lot of money in Illinois in the final days of the 2016 election, even though she was going to easily win the state, because she wanted to run up the popular vote total in a friendly state so she could claim a large mandate when she assumed office. Had she spent that cash and effort in the swing states she barely lost, she might not have lost.
What you do matters, and so does where you do it.
There is a chance right now for the Trump campaign to make inroads in Pennsylvania they desperately need to make. And what they can do in PA can be replicated in other swing states.
This woman perfectly expressed what is THE issue this election: inflation. “They’re killing us without killing us,” she told NBC News while tearing up about her difficulty in supporting her family.
She is not alone, not by a longshot. But she, like millions more Americans, do not associate Kamala Harris, or even Joe Biden, with those struggles. When asked who she blamed her answer was as telling as it was terrifying: The federal government.
While that seems like a good answer, she doesn’t appear to associate Harris, Biden or even Democrats with the federal government. It’s a disconnect that will be an issue, if not changed. It’s like the senior citizens who carry signs telling the government to get its hands off their Medicare. Well, Medicare IS the government. And government – as run by Biden, Harris and Democrats – IS the problem with the economy.
Republicans and the Trump campaign need to take a break from the social media videos, no matter how good they are, and reach swing voters where they actually live – television.
They need to be on the air in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Madison, Atlanta, etc., on networks Republicans tend to avoid – Bravo, HGTV, Paramount and so on, along with the broadcast networks to reach that Philly woman, her friends and as many people like her as possible. And the message has to be along the lines of, “We know how tough Joe and Kamala made it, and we will fix it and make it like it was before.”
Trump’s campaign needs to marry Kamala to prices and inflation, using that video to do it. That woman’s fear is universal, as is her struggle. And they need to hammer that message every single day till the election. They can hit on other issues too, and still preach to the choir, but they need to reach black voters in urban areas like that woman with the message that Democrats are the cause of their problems and he has a plan to make it better. It must be subtle – continually calling Harris stupid isn’t going to work and will turn people off (Trump already has the votes of everyone that would work on).
If they can bridge that gap between people’s pain over inflation and the fact that Kamala Harris and Democrats caused it, the polls with change by a lot and permanently. If they don’t even try or drown out their own message with irrelevant tangents or unimportant personal attacks we can look forward to 4 more years of hell. Whether or not we can pull up from a nosedive that continues for another 4 years is anyone’s guess, but sooner or later, if Democrats maintain control, we will hit the mountain.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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