AWith Vice President Kamala Harris sinking in the polls, the talking points about the Democratic National Committee/Harris Campaign/mainstream media merger are becoming even more absurd.
Claiming that JD Vance and Donald Trump were “weird” didn’t work — especially considering the truly strange behavior of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and future first gentleman Doug Emhoff.
The following Harris meme also failed to convince that the frantic and non-stop Trump was somehow ‘exhausted’, ‘senile’ and ‘confused’. Voters know that the younger Harris’ workdays are usually much shorter — or sometimes no workdays at all.
But Harris also falsely claimed that the physically and mentally challenged Biden was, in her words, “absolutely authoritative” and “very bold and lively.”
Now Harris claims Trump is a “fascist,” a “dictator” and “unfit” for office. But this new talking point won’t stop the bleeding in the Harris campaign either — for several reasons.
First, voters see the election as a conflict between two absolutely opposing views.
On the one hand, there is Trump’s concrete record in the period 2017-2020: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran and China, low inflation, low interest rates, less crime , lower taxes, a strong military deterrent – and opposition to mandatory mandates for electric vehicles, biological males competing in women’s sports and the woke/DEI agenda.
On the other side is the Biden-Harris record for 2021-2024: the uncontrolled entry of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People are still struggling with the previous Biden-Harris hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular DEI/woke agenda.
Harris himself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That’s why she’s abandoned almost all of their hard-left agendas — policies she has embraced for much of her adult life. So suddenly, in the last ninety days, Harris has completely turned around and flopped.
Now she is for more, not discouragement, of the police. It strives for a secure border, not for twenty million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about energy from fossil fuels, about not banning fracking, and about increasing defense instead of cutting it.
Several endangered incumbent Democratic senators in swing states claim to be even more loyal to Trump’s issues than identifying with Harris and her unpopular record as vice president.
Voters will likely conclude that if Trump doubles down on his reputation, with even Harris and many senators temporarily riding on it, it must be more effective and more popular than Harris’s.
Second, Harris now claims Trump is a fascist and insurrectionist.
But saying “January 6” ad nausaem no longer convinces voters that Trump is a danger to anyone. They remember Harris bragging about the far more violent demonstrations of 2020 — 35 dead, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested — that the unrest would not and “shouldn’t” stop, while rallying support for a bailout. violent demonstrators jailed.
The slur that Trump is a fascist also has no resonance. The Obama and Biden-Harris administrations weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by selling the fake Steele dossier and suppressing all embarrassing news about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop.
Trump certainly did not coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state and federal prosecutors to pursue legal charges to destroy his political opponents. He didn’t use the FBI to work with social media to suppress the news.
Neither Trump nor his supporters sought to remove Biden from the state ballots.
The Republican House majority failed to impeach Biden twice, despite the Biden family’s corruption and Joe Biden’s unlawful, decades-long removal of classified papers to various unsafe private homes.
Trump and the Republicans never forcibly removed the party’s leading winning candidate. They have not overridden the will of 14 million primary voters. And in a backroom manner, no candidate was anointed who had never participated in a primary in her life.
Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He is not seeking unconstitutional means to destroy the Electoral College. He is not demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to gain four partisan Senate seats.
Third, Trump’s being “unfit” and lacking “decorum” depends on the standards of Biden and Harris.
Have a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House pride party?
Biden reportedly calls Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a (expletive) idiot” and “son of a bitch?” Brag about jailing Trump while pursuing legal action against him?
Letting Hunter Biden’s son go with impunity to take down foreign governments?
The election will not be decided on these empty talking points or media-generated false narratives.
Instead, only two criteria matter: Which past candidate and current agenda appeal most to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and sincere?
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at [email protected].