The Harris campaign believes Trump-skeptical Republicans are the secret pro-Harris voters who will win them the election. Team Trump thinks it’s a mirage.
Two months of courting Republicans did basically nothing for Harris’s polling. That they think Mike Pence or Liz Cheney are influential Republicans kind of makes their hypothesis that there are secret defectors that don’t get counted in polls extra suspect.
Yeah, it’s a terrible strategy for a number of reasons. The big one isn’t even that they can’t be courted - they CAN. It’s just that the thing that courts them isn’t “we can be really Republican, too!” - it’s actually progressive policy.
It turns out that being stridently pro-worker, pro-healthcare, pro-education, pro-small business, and pro-social safety are all incredibly popular stances with broad support. Time and time again, openly supporting these things draws Republican support. The noise that emerges online and in the outrage merchant pundit class is just that - noise, made up to try and steer the conversation.
Which is the big risk to doing any of this pro-worker stuff - it’s mostly about Fox News or the talk show host nutjobs branding it as evil and starting a propaganda war about it, and the rest of the media world just following along like insipid stenographers.
It’s a branding war, basically, the Overton window doesn’t need to shift further right at all.
There was a video by “More Perfect Union” where they went around a Trump rally asking what they wanted from a president. Surprisingly, they wanted more taxes for the rich and expanded worker’s rights.
So yeah, I bet that appealing to conservative talking points doesn’t work at all. No wonder that Tim Walz is pretty popular in his state on both sides, considering that he is pretty pro union and progressive.
Two months of courting Republicans did basically nothing for Harris’s polling. That they think Mike Pence or Liz Cheney are influential Republicans kind of makes their hypothesis that there are secret defectors that don’t get counted in polls extra suspect.
https://mstdn.social/@maxkennerly/113346172267266673
Harris has lost 1.2% of the vote since Oct 1, so whatever she is doing isnt working.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/?ex_cid=abcpromo
Yeah, it’s a terrible strategy for a number of reasons. The big one isn’t even that they can’t be courted - they CAN. It’s just that the thing that courts them isn’t “we can be really Republican, too!” - it’s actually progressive policy.
It turns out that being stridently pro-worker, pro-healthcare, pro-education, pro-small business, and pro-social safety are all incredibly popular stances with broad support. Time and time again, openly supporting these things draws Republican support. The noise that emerges online and in the outrage merchant pundit class is just that - noise, made up to try and steer the conversation.
Which is the big risk to doing any of this pro-worker stuff - it’s mostly about Fox News or the talk show host nutjobs branding it as evil and starting a propaganda war about it, and the rest of the media world just following along like insipid stenographers.
It’s a branding war, basically, the Overton window doesn’t need to shift further right at all.
There was a video by “More Perfect Union” where they went around a Trump rally asking what they wanted from a president. Surprisingly, they wanted more taxes for the rich and expanded worker’s rights.
So yeah, I bet that appealing to conservative talking points doesn’t work at all. No wonder that Tim Walz is pretty popular in his state on both sides, considering that he is pretty pro union and progressive.