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When former President Trump ran in 2016 and 2020, the campaign tactic was fear– make you afraid of what the guy who got famous partly for saying “You’re Fired” could do to you. They attempted to scare you about Russian collusion before and all during his Presidency, and even though things were better off financially than ever before, you were told to fear the guy whose over-the-top rhetoric was easy to spin.
The only problem for this playbook in 2024 is, it’s not working.
The youngest voters, on whom Democrats are relying for a big 2024 advantage, know little about Trump at all… ‘Santiago Mayer, the 22-year-old founder of the Gen Z group Voters of Tomorrow, which has endorsed Biden, told me that his 18-year-old brother and his friends see Trump as more funny than threatening. “They don’t know much about Donald Trump’s agenda, and Donald Trump is an entertaining character,” Mayer said. “They are gravitating toward him not because of their political beliefs but out of sheer curiosity.”‘ It is urgently important that Democrats find ways to depict this cartoon villain as more villainous than comic… Perhaps the way for Democrats to thread the needle is to make Trump appear not just scary but also predictably wedded to the worst aspects of his party….”
Althouse: “It is urgently important that Democrats find ways to depict this cartoon villain as more villainous than comic.”
When wars are ablaze everywhere, invasion is coming from the south, inflation makes some groceries unaffordable, and interest rates are high, all of a sudden people hear Trump and find him funny, rather than scary. His conviction didn’t change that perception– just made him more of a tragic character, the come-from-behind-kid that you all want to root for.
If the Democrats cannot change that perception, they’ll need a new playbook.
