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Notes -
I watched the Harris speech this morning and wrote down some scattered thoughts. My apologies if any of them don't make sense without having watched, I was just typing a few things up as I watched.
Nice outfit - fairly warm while still professional.
When she mentioned going to Illinois, there was a small cheer, when she mentioned Wisconsin there was a much larger cheer. No one likes Illinois, not even the people that live there.
Talking about the experience of “injustice” is in such bad taste for the child of professors. These are privileged people that found immense opportunity in the United States. I realize that the whole Democrat schtick is playing up how oppressed people of color are, but it’s ridiculous for Harris.
The phrase, “I’ve only had one client - the people” is a fantastic way to spin never having held a private sector job. Good speechwriting!
The line referring to Trump as an “unserious man” is a good line. Trump’s lack of seriousness is obvious to all but his most ardent supporters. This criticism rings as much more on point than all of the Russia conspiracy and “coup” nonsense ever could.
The claim that Trump has an “explicit intent to jail journalists” is just an outright lie.
The callback to her earlier line with “the only client he has ever had - himself” is great speechwriting. Banger of a setup and punchline. Much like the lack of seriousness jab, this rings much more true than all of the dark conspiracy stuff.
The line that the Department of Education “funds our public schools” is pretty weird. It’s not quite literally false, the DoE does spend ~$20 billion on public school funding, but total American school spending is nearly $1 trillion and the vast majority of it is state and local money. Are people under the impression that school funding is a big thing that DoE does or is it just a bit of rhetoric?
Referring to abortion as “decisions of heart and home” is an interesting tactic. Abortion is a huge winning issue for Democrats, but it’s so frequently referred to with euphemisms rather than in the most literal terminology. I’m basically entirely on the same side as Democrats on the issue, which makes it more interesting to me that it tends to come with alternative phrasing rather than just saying what they mean.
Shoehorning every issue into “freedom” requires some downright Orwellian twists. Abrogating the constitutional freedom of the right to bear arms is inverted to “freedom to live without gun violence”. A massive regulatory state creating arcane rules for everything from flow of showerheads to the powertrains of vehicles becomes “the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”. I think the framing probably works for people on that side of those issues though.
Claiming that the recent Senate border bill was the “strongest in decades” is a lie. HR 2 from 2023 passed the House and was much stronger but was unacceptable to Democrats. I do understand that this one has become an accepted truth among Democrats though, so it probably plays pretty well. Continuing to push this one requires a fully complicit media, but she can safely rely on that.
The Israel line is politically palatable, but also pretty hollow. Israel has a right to defend itself, but the Palestinian people will get freedom and self-determination - OK, what’s that look like? As near as I can tell, Palestinian self-determination selects Islamist leaders. Islamist leaders want dead Israelis and the land returned to Palestinians from the river to the sea. You can’t solve this problem if you’re not addressing reality. Someone has to actually lose.
Overall, it was a well-delivered speech that tacks towards the middle on most issues. While I am personally not impressed by teleprompter speeches, her tone and clarity were both quite good. Simply being energetic and eloquent is a good look. If I were a Democrat strategist, I would feel good about the speech and consider it a positive step towards victory.
What I don't understand is, what in the world is the Trump campaign doing? I feel like Trump supporters have been on the back foot for a whole month now without being able to effectively counterpunch. This includes the Trump supporters on social media, both the genuine believers and the astroturf accounts. They have been spending too much energy on things like transgenders in sports, which I think mainly the highly online care about. I'm not convinced that the average swing state voter sees that as a big issue.
Meanwhile Trump himself has been spending too much time talking about minor ideas like getting rid of taxes on tips or the right to try. And I think that the right to try is a great thing, but is it really going to shift the needle much as far as the campaign goes? There's also the whole matter of the seemingly pretty large resources the Trump campaign has put into trying to swing black voters. But how much difference will it make to shift 13% of the US population a few percentage points pro-Trump? I just don't understand what they are doing.
I think that Trump's big problem is simply that Harris seems really young compared to him, and the average voter knows almost nothing about her, so it is easy for the Harris campaign to effectively present her as a young, dynamic force for hope and change similar to Obama in 2008, when his campaign attracted an essentially religious fervor mostly because of the symbolism of electing a young handsome eloquent black man to replace the architect of the Iraq War, rather than because of any policy ideas. Trump is old, quite visibly old at this point, and he has been so prominent in American political discussion for the last nine years that I think many people are simply bored of him at this point.
Trump is no longer the fiery, fun maverick of 2016. He is still entertaining and charismatic, but he has noticeably slowed down and he can no longer present himself as a dynamic outsider who is capable of changing everything if elected. I think that needs to emphasize crime, the economy, immigration, and the positive aspects of his first term as president. Real, substantial issues. Whereas Harris is largely running a fluff campaign based on youthfulness, momentum, and Democrats' joy at having a fresh face to vote for, meaning for the top seat this time and not just for the VP position, which almost nobody really cares much about.
But even though I think that Trump would benefit from hammering hard on his core issues, I do not think that is enough. Trump also needs a new emotional, symbolic narrative of some sort to counter the ceaseless waves of the highly energized and quite effectively organized Harris narrative. Obviously much of the Harris support is organic, but the astroturfing I have seen online so far is also quite skillful and persistent. What is the new Trump narrative? It would be hard to make it about him being an outsider this time around simply because at this point he is much more familiar to the public than Harris is.
Trump is visibly breaking down seemingly day by day. His mental state appears to be deteriorating noticeably to the point where even his followers in Twitter are starting to comment on it. Biden dropping out and Harris getting good poll results has apparently broken something inside him
You know the media's successfully pigeonholed reality when no one is mentioning that Trump was shot at and very nearly killed at a rally. Don't you think that would negatively damage ones ability to rally?
I would absolutely agree that might be a contributor or even the main cause but optically from a winning the election POV he needs to write the ship.
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