Faulty Messaging, Living Life Like It’s 2019 & Upstaging the DNC – Top 3 Takeaways – August 23rd, 2024
- I don’t think it’ll work. I have a saying. You can lie to people about what policies will do and those who are inclined to believe you will, but you can't lie to people about what is or isn’t in their wallet because they know. From Joe Biden to the three Big O’s, former assistant football coach Tim Walz (yes, we’ve learned that he wasn’t even the head football coach) and Comrade Kamala Harris last night there was one very peculiar theme. That Donald Trump is the boogey man and all of the things that are wrong with this country are because of him. And thus “we can’t go back”. Now, four years ago, when he was the President of the United States that was an easier hand to play. And the only reason that hand won then is because of a once in a hundred-year pandemic that already had people in a bad mood. But four years later? I get that Donald Trump as the boogey man plays to the radical left-wing base at a convention. What I don’t think it does is resonate with rational people who aren’t part of the radical left-wing base. That's because their problems are real, and their problems having only grown worse for three and a half years with Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president. Every time there was a reference to Trump (veiled or direct), I couldn’t help but to think of the tactic potentially backfiring. And the reason is this. For potentially persuadable voters, when they’re reminded of Donald Trump’s presidency what do you think comes to mind? A time when things were better or a time when things were worse? Yet for example, Oprah explicitly said “we’re not going back”. Ok. That’s easy for someone worth $3 billion to say. But let me ask you...
- Would you like to go back? Would the average American like to go back to when inflation averaged 1.3% while wage growth averaged 4.7%? Would the average American like to go back to paying $2.30 for a gallon of gas? Would the average American like to go back to having access to sub-3% mortgage rates? Would the average American like to go back to having an enforced southern border where any illegal border crossers were deported and those seeking asylum were made to remain in Mexico until they had a hearing? Would the average American like to go back to having 30% less crime? I could continue almost indefinitely but you get the idea. I have no doubt, none whatsoever, that the average non-Marxist whacko American would go back to the way things were when Donald Trump was president in a heartbeat. The Democrats spent their entire convention pretending that they’re not the party in power and reminding people of the president who was in power when life was better. I don’t think it’ll prove to have worked. Even with the godless, soulless and slanderous news media fawning all over them and it. You can lie to people about policy, but you can’t lie to people about what’s in their wallet – they know. And they also know who’s in power.
- Upstaged? The DNC is done with Kamala Harris & co. hoping to have created enough momentum, with the help of a willing and fawning news media, to have the presidential race won. There’s now only one known potential catalyst on the calendar left to help boost Democrats from here, the ABC News debate on September 10th (with the potential caveat of Donald Trump’s sentencing in the New York state case still currently scheduled on September 18th – though NY prosecutor Alvin Bragg submitted a brief this week to Judge Juan Merchan that did not oppose the Trump team’s effort to move the sentencing until after the presidential election). What that means is that this presidential race has now almost completely taken shape. And today, as Democrats are hoping to ride a post-convention wave of support into Election Day, there’s an effort that’s likely to upstage their perceived momentum. If you recall it was just a month ago that Republicans were riding high coming out of their convention and then the Dems dropped Joe that weekend and in the news media the Trump assassination attempt was gone from the news, so too the talk of GOP momentum and all that seemingly has mattered since has been Kamala’s assent. Today we’re set to see the inverse of this playout as RFK Jr. is set to dropout and endorse Donald Trump. Now, will this news be as big as Joe dropping out? Of course not. But does it have the ability to have a similar impact? It does. As outlined in yesterdays Q&A, since Kamala Harris has entered the race RFK’s remaining in the race has hurt Trump in the polls. And according to the three most recent polls a majority of RFK voters have said they’ll break for Trump if RFK’s out of the race. If that holds true the 5% Kennedy has consistently polled with throughout this race has the potential to move this race closer to where we were politically at the end of the GOP Convention, than where the Democrats wanted to be at the end of theirs. On that note, in the betting markets Kamala Harris was an 8-point favorite over Donald Trump a week ago. Today, at the end of the Democrat’s convention Trump is now a 2-point favorite. Kamala Harris and the DNC appears to have been upstaged. First by their own messaging and today by a former lifelong Democrat in RFK.