How the DNC swung for Republicans — and missed

This article was first published in the On the Trail 2024 newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox on Tuesday and Friday mornings here. To submit a question to next week’s Friday Mailbag, email [email protected].
Hello, friends. I’m still in Chicago, wrapping up my reporting at the Democratic National Convention. Did you listen to Kamala Harris’ speech last night? I’d love to know what you thought of it.
Right target, wrong pitch
Political conventions are notoriously insular. This week’s Democratic National Convention was no different: The crowd was filled with the most committed of each state’s partisans, and the programming was focused on putting the party’s best foot forward — a sanitized, four-day TV infomercial, as the Washington Post called it.
In spurts, though, the DNC made a play for a different audience: Republicans.
Scattered throughout the convention’s rah-rah and star power, a group of disgruntled Republicans made a case against their own party’s nominee, former president Donald Trump. Adam Kinzinger, a former U.S. House member from Illinois, argued that the Republican Party “is no longer conservative” thanks to Trump, who “suffocated the soul” from the party. John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said he “doesn’t recognize my party anymore.” Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former White House deputy communications director, argued Trump was responible for the Jan. 6 riots. And Jeff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, made the case for Republicans to “dump Trump.”
Were Republicans listening? According to one pre-convention YouGov poll, nearly a quarter of Republican voters said they’d watch at least some of the convention, and more said they’d watch clips. The DNC’s hope is that those clips will create a permission structure for Republicans to ditch their party in November. That is nothing new — Democrats have made the same pitch for as long as Trump has been the Republican nominee.
But in this new-look campaign, where Harris is trying to glide off of joy instead of policy, does how they make that pitch need rethinking? Matt Lewis, the conservative pundit, wrote in The Hill this week about pitching Trump as a “threat to democracy” — how it was a central theme to Biden’s reelection effort, but Harris largely ditched it. (This was before Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday, where she returned to the theme heavily.) For weeks, though, the strategy has largely worked. “The problem is that it’s hard to keep your voters perpetually on high alert,” Lewis wrote.
“I’m not sure who figured out that there was a latent, bottled-up hunger for a happy warrior — or that this ‘joy’ strategy, rather than finger-wagging moral outrage, was the best way to fight a would-be authoritarian,” Lewis added. “But it was a profound discovery.”
Why, then, is the Harris campaign so adamant on using that strategy on Republicans? There is a difference, I’ve learned, between voters being unwilling to vote for Trump and being willing to vote for Harris. The Mountain West, it seems, is full of religious conservatives who’ve sworn off Trump but aren’t convinced they can back Harris. They can’t vote for a pro-choice candidate, they say, or they can’t trust her on foreign policy, or she’s just too progressive.
But is she? Perhaps the biggest mistake the Harris campaign has made, to this point, is not yet telling voters exactly who Harris is. She still hasn’t released a full policy platform. Never mind that, the campaign has implied — this “joy” strategy surged Harris out of the Biden polling slump, largely by pulling back unenthused Democrats and fence-sitting independents. But there is still a significant chunk of conservatives who might consider hopping the fence if they knew who, exactly, they were supporting. On abortion, what does she exactly mean by “protecting reproductive rights for all women,” and how would that jive with the Dobbs decision? On the Middle East, does she have a concrete plan to keep Iran at bay and protect Israel? Does she plan to increase taxes on some Americans? Does she plan to rein in federal spending?
Only the disingenuous or the naive would expect her to give conservative answers on those topics. But Trump-averse Republicans gave up on presidential candidates who perfectly reflect their politics long ago. For every Spencer Cox, who’s plugging his nose and backing Trump, there’s a Rusty Bowers, who is choosing not to vote for either candidate. If Bowers had a clear idea of Harris’ policy positions, maybe he would change his mind, and maybe he wouldn’t. But at least he would be able to make a clear-eyed choice.
The case Giles and Kinzinger and others made is that Republicans should know exactly who Trump is by now. That’s true. But they should expect the same of Harris.
See you on the trail.
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