How Trump Plans To Trick Low-Info Voters Into Choosing Him And The Weirdo Instead Of Kamala And Tim

"Fighting For You vs Out For Ourselves" by Nancy Ohanian

Trump’s election strategy— other than election fraud— come wrestle with a pig in the mud and shit. “Oink.” Every voter— except maybe some young ones— know exactly who and what he is. About 43% are just fine with that. Where’s he going to find the other 5-6%? Persuading undecideds that she’s even worse than he is. That’s the rest of his 9 week campaign. 46% of oters see Kamala favorable (43% unfavorably). Trump’s in a much worse situation— 33% favorable and 58% unfavorable. Getting around that is going to take a lot of money from his billionaire backers and a lot of mud flung with that money. “With little chance of improving Trump’s standing,” wrote Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Marianne LeVine, “Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.” Ah… Trump’s specialty.

“What matters is their ability to prosecute a case to the point where she feels like she needs to answer questions and that she’s on defense,” said Josh Holmes, a prominent GOP consultant. “I think it’s a serious paper tiger we’re dealing with here. I don’t think for 60 days they can keep the train on the tracks.”

Republicans have already started pummeling Harris with attack ads. The bulk of television spending by the campaigns and their allied super PACs between Aug. 23 and Aug. 29— 57 percent— were attacks on Harris, according to data from the media-tracking company AdImpact. Twenty-one percent were pro-Harris ads that drew a contrast with Trump, and another 14 percent were purely positive about Harris, the data showed. Only 8 percent were anti-Trump attack ads.

“This is a moment in the message arc of us seeking to define her, she’s seeking to define herself,” a Trump adviser said. “We have a defined candidate— everyone knows everything about the person. There’s lots of new information about Kamala Harris that people just don’t know.”

As another adviser told reporters last month: “If you think this race is going to be decided on likability, you’re making a grave error because neither one of them is going to be liked at the end of this race.”

Progressives among the Democrats are fighting to not allow the race to turn into a lesser-of-two-evils contest, which would mean many voters sitting on their hands. Trump’s camp will be pushing that hard in places where they have no chance, especially in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha, Appleton, Philly, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Phoenix, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Las Vegas, Reno, Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro… maybe Omaha and Lewiston.

Bernie, Pramila, Elizabeth Warren and other trusted progressives have been pushing Kamala and Tim as a positive good, not a lesser evil. The message: Kamala and Tim are running on their records; Trump and his weirdo running mate are obfuscating their records. Bernie, AOC and Pramila have been happy with Biden’s work and seem to assume Kamala is going to continue including them in the process and standing up to the pressure from Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

A couple of weeks ago, Hunter Walker reported that “It remains to be seen whether Harris will adopt a similarly progressive agenda and whether Walz or another figure might emerge as a key liaison to the left, in the way that Klain did post-2020. For his part, Sanders is willing to be patient. Harris, after all, had to start her campaign against former President Donald Trump in an unprecedented sprint following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last month.”

While Harris may not yet have made any formal unity efforts with the left flank, Sanders and other progressives can take heart in the early details about her policy platform. Harris is set to deliver a speech in North Carolina Frida focused on her economic plan Friday. She will reportedly focus on confronting price gouging along with other measures to lower the cost of living. Harris also plans to discuss bolstering the child tax credit, another progressive policy priority. Sanders was enthusiastic when asked about Harris’ focus on price gouging.

“One of the realities of why we have had inflation is that large corporations who monopolize sector after sector who are making record breaking profits are making those record breaking profits because they are gouging consumers,” Sanders said. “We’re seeing that in the food industry. We’re seeing that in the fossil fuel industry. We’re seeing that in many industries across the country. So, I think the fact that she is talking about that is absolutely right. We’ve got to stop price gouging.”

Not all of Harris’ initial policy signals line up with Sanders’ own priorities. As she rolled out her economic agenda, Harris’ campaign quietly signaled that she would not support Medicare For All, the senators’ signature health care policy. And, while progressives have expressed confidence that Harris will do more to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza than Biden, she has yet to outline a detailed position on the conflict, which has been a major source of friction between the White House and the left. Nevertheless, Sanders expressed optimism about Harris emerging agenda and flatly stated he sees her as a fellow “progressive.”

“She’s balancing a dozen different factors,” he said, during what is “literally a unique political moment in American history. Nobody’s had to do what she has to do, put together a campaign, and a team, and an agenda, and a schedule, all that in a short period of time.”

“I’ve known Kamala for a number of years. We served together in the Senate, we ran against each other in the presidential primary. I think she is a progressive,” Sanders continued, adding, “She’s going to have to formulate what her views are, and I think she will do that. And I think she stands on a record. She’s been part of the Biden administration and that’s been a progressive agenda. And I hope very much that in the coming weeks and months she will be bringing forth an agenda that speaks to the needs of working families.”

Sanders is also working to have input on Harris’ agenda. Earlier this month, Sanders unveiled polling from the progressive firm Data For Progress. The survey, which Sanders used to make the case that Democrats should adopt a progressive policy agenda, showed strong public support for a suite of policies including raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage, expanding Social Security and Medicare, the child tax credit, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs. 

Biden has supported measures in line with some of Sanders’ priorities, but they have proved difficult to pass through Congress due to opposition from more [corrupt conservative] Democrats and Republicans, an impasse that caused Sanders to express some frustration. “I think it has a lot to do with money and politics, but I think at the end of the day, you have a whole lot of people who are working class people who are hurting,” he said. “In fact, we have 60 percent of people living paycheck to paycheck. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. We’ve got half of our senior citizens trying to get by on $30,000 or less. That is the reality. People can’t afford housing, they can’t afford health care, and it is a reality.”

As a result of those challenges, Sanders wants to see more Democrats vocally get behind measures like expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision costs, and removing the cap on Social Security taxation so the wealthy pay a full share of their income into the program. 

“All of these are sensible ideas, been talked about for years, so my own thought is that if we want to win over working class people who’ve become disillusioned with the status quo politics, I think reaching out and talking about these issues is the right thing to do,” said Sanders.

As he outlined the challenges facing many Americans and areas where he’d like to see Democrats shift their priorities, Sanders stressed that he believes both Biden and Harris have made real progressive achievements. 

“President Biden and Vice President Harris have a right to be proud of what they have accomplished over the last three and a half years. When Biden ran for office … he said he wanted to be the most progressive president since FDR and I think, in many ways, he has. He kept his word,” Sanders said. “They should be proud of their accomplishments in a number of areas, but at the same time, you cannot close your eyes to the reality of what tens and tens of millions of people, working class people are experiencing.”

Over the weekend, AOC let her Instagram followers know what a fake Green Party candidate Jill Stein is, calling her “predatory” and a failure at leadership. Remember, in 2016 Stein’s votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were greater than Trump’s margin over Hillary in those states. In other words, a case can be made that Trump managed to win the electoral college vote because of Stein, who, like Trump, is something of a Putin ally. Stein, meanwhile, has done exactly nothing to help grow the Green Party, while running for president. Presumably, AOC, who’s been playing more of an inside game lately, has been tasked with warning young voters and progressives about the dangers of casting a protest vote for Stein.

Go ahead, click on this to hear his song