Let’s Get Weird
1st August 2024
Some say Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because, during the run-up to the election, she put Donald Trump’s supporters in a basket of deplorables. In response, MAGA masses started self-identifying as deplorables. Clinton electrified her opponent’s base, boosting turnout. Either something changed about the electorate, or maybe Kamala Harris is not learning from her predecessor, because this year, too, the Democrats are running not just on smearing their opponent and his family, but his supporters, too.
Democrats are gearing up to what might just become the most negative campaign in American history. That this election season is going to get ugly was obvious from the first official video released by Kamala Harris after she was anointed head of the Democrat ticket. Flashing images of opposition—Trump, January 6, Vance—Harris narrated the mean girl message to American dissidents: “There are some people who think that we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us, we chose something different.”
Maybe attacking Trump feels stale to the Democrat electorate circa 2024, or perhaps his running mate J.D. Vance gave too memorable of a convention speech, because the latter is now finding himself the prime target of lefty vitriol. Among the first salvos directed at him was the social media gossip that his autobiography contains a passage about making out with a couch—which some Democrat voters apparently believed.