Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. We talk a lot about Democratic strategy. Let’s talk Republican strategy.
We’re almost certainly heading into a repeat of the last election as far as the candidates go. It’s looking like it will be Joe Biden and Donald Trump facing off again.
Last time that happened, Biden won the general election by seven million votes and won the Electoral College by seventy-four votes.
What can the Republicans do to prevent a repeat of that defeat? What are they going to do?
Make it more difficult for “the wrong people” to simply vote? I seem to recall in 2020 TX Governor Abbott only allowing a smattering of polling locations in heavily blue Harris County (the Houston area).
IMHO, there are several things that give the Republicans more advantage this time around than last time:
The memory of how awful Trump’s presidency was has faded. In fact, American society now regards Trump’s first term in a somewhat favorable light - at least, better than they view Biden’s first term (42% think Trump’s presidency was good while only 25% think Biden’ presidency is good). We are a short-memory society, and that’s not good news for Biden.
The concerns about Biden’s age are much more intense this time around than last time, especially after the June debate disaster. Sure, Trump is getting old too, but the media puts 10x more focus and attention on Biden’s age than Trump’s. So time has been working against Biden.
There is more dissatisfaction within Democratic ranks about Biden being the (D) nominee than there was last time - not just because of age, but also about Gaza.
The Electoral College has shifted a few electoral votes in the R’s favor, due to population Census re-allotment. Several Trump states gained EVs while several Biden states lost EVs. Granted, it’s not by much, but every bit matters.
The assassination attempt on Trump and badass fist pump photo may have gained him a tiny amount of support while there was no such PR-optics moment in 2020. Again, it’s not much, but every bit matters.
Republicans have probably put some effort into the election/vote-counting/poll process to stymie a 2020 repeat. They probably have done the groundwork to mount a more robust legal challenge to voting outcomes they don’t like.
All that said, though, Trump blew a huge opportunity by not picking someone like Haley as his VP. Instead, he chose Vance, a veep who will only narrow rather than broaden his voting base.
The rightward drift (or is it active pushing by Dark Forces?) of the zeitgeist worldwide. The Ukraine war is scary. Scary always benefits the Right. The Republicans are and will be even harder pushing the shit out of that narrative: The world is scary. The future of the US is scary (and very, very right-unfriendly; your children will be in socialist reeducation camps by 2028). Only your Big Rightwing Daddy can save you.
The reality that although Biden won the meaningless popular by 7M votes, he would have lost the EC by a larger margin than the 74 vote he won by had just IIRC ~25K votes been cast differently in the right / wrong places. Data science has only gotten better since 2020. Knowing exactly where small shifts in popular vote count move the EC vote by big dollops is the name of the presidential game from here on out.
Whether by means fair or foul, the Rs will have their efforts targeted and their thumb on every possible scale. I expect lawsuits against every voting authority nationwide wherever they do not win. Clog the courts. Ref judge Cannon, some of it will stick. And all of it will foment lack of trust in the process which will come in handy if they need to resort to the street to steal the election.
Republicans are ramping up plans to increase challenges to voters at polling sites on election day. Even if the challenges fail, the harassment may be enough to dissuade some voters from making the effort.
They are also pressuring states to more vigorously purge voter rolls, which will result in some eligible voters being purged, which in turn either discourages them or slows down the count with a surge in provisional voting. Delayed counts are raw meat for Republican operatives.
And if the vote is close in Texas, they will simply disqualify the results in Harris County (I don’t think it will be close in Texas this November).
Republicans don’t need to do anything different. The number of people who will come out and vote against an incumbent Trump living in current memory is larger than the number who will vote against a challenger Trump who hasn’t been in charge for 4 years. Biden hasn’t done anything to change the dynamic of the race. Just like in 2020, the tone of the campaign is “vote against Trump”, not “vote for Biden”. That, more than anything else, is the biggest failure of Biden’s campaign, and why Republicans don’t need to do anything different.
Nobody’s mentioned RFK Jr. I’m not really sure who he helps/hurts, but as others have noted it will be a tight race and siphoning even a few votes in an important state will have a big impact.
Also, 2,900 Boomers die every day. That’s a big deal as well.
The question is what can you do to prevent defeat when you’re very clearly winning by a wide margin that seems to get bigger every day. And the answer is, nothing – when you’re way ahead, do as little as possible.
Defeating Trump will take a massive sea change in the current voter sentiment. The only major event that’s occurred recently is the assassination attempt which has only boosted his chances.
The sad reality is that low-information voters are motivated by superficial appearances, lies, and other irrelevant factors, and a very significant proportion of voters are low-information. There’s apparently enough of them to end democracy in America, a process already well under way.
I don’t think voter suppression is a viable strategy for the Republicans any more, and they know it. (Note that they’ve stopped beating the “early / mail-in voting is FRAUD” drum for the most part.) The demographic groups where polling is currently showing a big shift toward the Republicans are historically low-propensity voters: black men, Hispanics in general, young people. And what we’ve been seeing, in the Trump era, is Democrats doing very well in off-year and special elections (low turnout, disproportionately highly educated, high-propensity voters) and noticeably worse in presidential elections. It’s taken a while for the parties to catch up to this shift and discard the conventional wisdom that high turnout always favors Democrats, but I think it’s happening now.
Instead, what I’d expect to see – and what I think we are seeing – is ginning up of resentment toward “elites” (defined vaguely, but mostly college-educated professionals), plus an active culture-war strategy aimed at discouraging young people from attending college (lots of LOUD talk about how you’ll just end up with a useless degree in Woke Studies and a mountain of debt). And it’s working, I think, because there’s actually a grain of truth to it – Ds kind of HAVE abandoned working-class people and their concerns, and are not that great at communicating with them, in large part because the people they’re hiring as consultants and strategists are … people who graduated from highly selective colleges.
You’d think this would be a difficult strategy to pull off, given that the last three Republican presidents were all people from super-privileged backgrounds and the last five Democratic presidents were all from very ordinary ones (well, Obama’s was unusual, but not in an exceptionally-privileged sort of way), but it does seem to be working, and the Vance pick is in line with this strategy.
To reiterate something mentioned abovethread, people keep saying “Biden won by 7 million votes last time”, which is true, but kind of meaningless. The reality is that Biden won by 44,000. He won by less than half of a football stadium’s worth of voters in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Almost any tiny nudge or fluctuation could have pushed Trump over the finish line to victory.
This is not true anymore. Democrats current coalition is very good at voting. Republicans are the party of low propensity voters. It is why democrats do so well in special elections that are low turnout. Higher turnout generally favors republicans.
If I’m the republicans, I’m mainly trying to make this election about Biden as much as possible. He is very unpopular and a much weaker candidate than 4 years ago. Of course laying low isn’t really Trump’s strong suit, so easier said than done.
No, I’ve always felt the Haley movement was right wing self-delusion.
The thought process seemed to be “We always vote for a white man. Therefore the liberals, who are our complete opposite, will always vote against a white man. Just look at the way they voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So we’ll outsmart them. We’ll run a woman who’s sort of not white by right wing standards. And the liberals will be helpless! They will have to vote for her! And after she wins, we’ll reveal she was a Republican all along. We’ll pwn the libs! Bwaa hah hah!”
This plan has several flaws. First, it ignores history; Democrats have voted for Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, John Kerry, Mike Dukakis, and plenty of other white men. We just don’t think being a white man is a requirement.
Second, even if race and gender was the issue the right wingers imagine it is for us, we already have our own VP candidate that’s a woman who’s sort of not white by right wing standards.
Third, race and gender may not be a big issue to us, but it’s a very big issue to right wing voters. The ones who will always vote for a white man. I know right wingers who were shocked when John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate and said they couldn’t vote for McCain now.
So Trump picked Vance. Two white men for the white man party.
I don’t think the idea was that any genuine liberal Democrats would be persuaded to vote Trump because of Haley, but rather, that some of the centrist/independents/neither-D-nor-R folks might get aboard, often spoken of as the suburban soccer mom types.
Also, it wasn’t about gender, but rather, that Haley is perceived as a normal Republican who might be palatable to centrists. While Vance is deep-red MAGA.