“They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”
The Trump machine had in recent days begun a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz hammering Harris for her record on the border, an issue the former president’s campaign sees as a winner — and portraying her as ideologically out of the mainstream. One ad from a pro-Trump group labeled the vice president a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”
Harris had even begun defending herself from the attacks, hitting back Tuesday night in Atlanta about her border record, and simultaneously releasing a nearly minute-long video framing her as pro-border security.
But Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition. During the appearance, Trump said Harris “happen[ed] to turn Black … She was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black woman.”
His performance may have drawn some gasps from the audience, but I doubt it had the same effect on his fan base. He was not there to speak to the US as a whole; he was there to speak to his die hard supporters - those who actually enjoy his racist, sexist, hateful remarks and voted for him in 2016 because of them; the same people who were willing to stage a coup in his favour in 2021, after four years of ignorance, pettiness and hatred.
His strategy against Biden was winning because it gathered him bipartisan support - even Democrats were dubious about Biden being able to do a good job - but now that that’s out of the question, Trump has fallen back to his usual script, because it’s too late to do anything else. After all, questioning Obama’s birth and throwing sexist remarks against Clinton won him an election; why wouldn’t it work again? Just stick to the fanbase that won you an election once and almost won you another the second time, and hope for the best.
Oh, no, it’s having quite an effect on the fanbase. Mostly, they recognize what a losing strategy it is, even if they agree with it.
Just take a look at the old conservative stallwart site, Free Republic: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4255438/posts
There’s a few people weakly defending it, but there’s a general tenor of “oh shit, we fucked up”.
Amusingly, there’s a few people saying they should try winning on policy, not race. This after the Heritage Foundation put out a 900+ page PDF with their dream policies, and Americans were horrified by it. Guys, if you could win on policy, you wouldn’t have ever needed Trump.
People always talk about how he is doing things to please his fan base. Maybe. But they are at most 30% of the country and he needs more than that to win.
This is not going to help him with people who are not in his fan base.
I’d love to agree but gerrymandering, along with other dubious anti-democratic policies, means that Republicans have a gross advantage. This presidential election will probably be as close as the last.
Gerrymandering has nothing to do with a presidential election. It doesn’t even help with senatorial elections.
