As this miserable campaign season comes to its miserable end, one cannot help but be struck by the lost opportunities, especially for Trump, as well as by the sheer stupidity of some of those who claim to want a Harris victory.
For Trump, it should have been obvious that a campaign based on criticisms of the Biden-Harris economic record was the most obvious and effective route back to the White House. After all, an incumbent president running for re-election, or the presidential nominee of the party of the incumbent president, always loses the election if the voters don’t approve of the incumbent president’s perceived handling of the economy. Whether the incumbent president is truly guilty of economic mismanagement is irrelevant. If the voters think he’s done poorly, no matter what the state of the economy may be or how blameless he actually is, they will vote him out of office or refuse to elect whomever his party has nominated to succeed him. Whatever the merits (or lack thereof) of the Biden-Harris administration’s economic program, the plain blunt truth of the matter is that public polls have consistently shown the voters trust Trump more than the Democrats on economic issues.
And the voters, fairly or unfairly (politics is not fair) likewise trust Trump more than Biden or Harris on immigration and border security. Had Trump chosen to wage a campaign exclusively on economic and immigration issues, he would in all probability be coasting to victory while Melania would be measuring the White House windows for new drapes.
But Trump chose to spend tremendous quantities of time and energy with name calling and insults directed not only against Kamala Harris, but against Haitians, Democrat-leaning Jews, and anyone else who caught his fancy. Some have defended his campaign of insults, vilification, and threats. Perhaps there’s method to his madness. He may well think that his hardcore MAGA supporters like that sort of trash talk and the more he offers them, the more likely they’ll be to vote for him. Maybe they will. But if he comes up short on Election Day, it may well be because he diverted too much attention away from the issues which have always proved winners for more conventional presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican alike.
Kamala Harris has waged a far more sophisticated campaign to date. She has been criticized for being vague, ambiguous, obscure, and vapid on the issues, but her avoidance of substance on most matters is actually quite wise. After all, when she tried to wage an issue-oriented campaign for president in 2019, she crashed and burned. In presenting her views she proved herself too ignorant, incompetent, and radical to advocate for anything that voters might favor. Little wonder that she attracted so little support that she had to withdraw from the 2020 race without winning a single vote in a single primary.
But this year, while voters support Trump on most major issues, Harris has skillfully exploited the one major issue which for the GOP is a surefire loser: Abortion. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of the voters oppose any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester. Besides, the most outspoken supporters of the pro-life position are considered too radical, given their unwillingness to make any exceptions to anti-abortion rules other than a narrowly defined exception for pregnant women whose lives are seriously threatened. By focusing on abortion while punting on everything else, Harris is handling the issues in the best possible way for victory.
But Harris has been unwise to call Trump a “fascist,” even if scholarly students of fascism think she has a point. Condemning Trump this way will only harden the loyalty of Trump’s supporters while, his opponents believe they already have sufficient reason to vote against him.
But while Harris herself has been, with this exception, reasonably temperate, some of her supporters have not. They’ve forgotten a lesson learned the hard way by both Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016: Nobody other than Trump can really get away with insulting the general electorate. Romney complained at a private dinner secretly recorded of “the 47%” of the electorate leaching off the government. Clinton denounced the “basket of deplorables.” Neither made it to the White House.
But surrogate campaigner Mark Cuban has said that Trump is unable to work with strong and intelligent women. The implication is that the women who support Trump and work with him are weak and stupid. Harris is hoping to win the support of suburban Republican women who are pro-choice rather than pro-life. Implying, or allowing others to imply on her behalf, that Republican women are weak and stupid may not be the best way to win their support.
And then there’s President Biden’s condemnation of Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” He and his spokespeople have said that he was actually saying that the remarks of a comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally were garbage, but recordings of his remarks don’t bare that out. The office charged with creating official transcripts of a president’s remarks has condemned the White House for trying to alter its transcripts and thereby put Biden’s intended (if not actual) remarks in a better light. As it is, however, Biden’s comments are no better than those of Trump, who admittedly has referred to the United States as a garbage dump for illegals.
And then there’s the new campaign ad voiced by Julia Roberts and featuring an attractive married woman telling her dufus-looking husband that she had voted “the right way.” The point, as expressed by Julia Roberts, is that it’s okay to for a woman to secretly and in the privacy of the voting booth to vote for Harris while letting her oafish spouse believe she voted for Trump. I personally found the ad amusing and no more offensive than most campaign ads. But Trump’s supporters have ginned up attacks on the ad as an attack on marriage itself.
Arguably the best thing about this campaign is that it will someday end. Exactly who will win the election is currently unknown. The polls show a race too close to call, and given the closeness of the race it might be weeks before we learn who actually won. But the winner, whoever he or she may be, will not be the one who ran the most uplifting campaign, but the one whose campaign, however wretched and miserable, was at least less miserable than that of the other.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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