Play it safe or go for broke?
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in pursuit of “double hater” voters who dislike them, Axios reports. Whether this bloc stays home or turns out to vote this fall is a serious wildcard. Double haters “represent an extraordinarily broad range of views,” including Old-guard Republicans, Pro-Palestinians, and Techno-optimists (Elon Mush and fellow travelers).
Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “independent campaign has collected enough signatures to appear on at least three swing-state ballots, could win as much as 38% of the double hater vote, according to a Monmouth poll out this week.”
Between the lines: Biden’s campaign believes the president has an advantage with the double haters, even as his unpopularity has soared amid questions about his age, illegal immigration and persistent inflation.
- The campaign is running ads explicitly targeting Haley voters, who continue to turn out as a sizable protest vote against Trump in GOP primaries nearly two months after Haley exited the race.
- Trump has done little to mend bridges with his former UN ambassador or other jilted allies, and has even mocked conservative critics like former Attorney General Bill Barr who decided to endorse him.
- Trump is instead counting on expanding his appeal elsewhere — including with an address to the Libertarian National Convention later this month and ads targeting disaffected Black voters.
What they’re saying: “If Trump’s extreme agenda of banning abortion nationwide and gutting Security Security wasn’t repellent enough to these voters, he is also doing nothing to reach them — a surefire losing strategy,” Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said in a statement.
Axios fails to mention independent voters (unaffiliateds, no party preference, etc.). My estimates here show a sizable group from hundreds of precincts where indys lean heavily blue but turn out far less than their country cousins out in red counties. Those are votes Democrats leave on the table. Many of them, too, are “a plague on both your houses” voters Democratic campaigns ignore at their peril. I give reasons why they do here:
Volunteers’ pitch to these untapped, young independents is not to evangelize for Democrats. Independents don’t like them. They don’t pay close attention to party politics. Independents “view themselves as proudly unmoored from any candidate or party.” Voting in 2024 has to be about them, about local/state issues to be decided in the election that may impact them or people they love. The ask is: Vote this fall for them.
Are there issues about which they care strongly? Do they know they’ll need a photo ID in 2024 because THOSE GUYS don’t want them voting? Offer nonpartisan information on the where, when, and how of casting their fall ballot. Will you exercise your freedom this fall? Save democracy? Make history?
In these precincts, we don’t care what indys’ support scores are. If they vote, Democrats score. Those are the odds.
Or Democrats can just play it safe.
Women’s reproductive freedom is on the ballot this fall, as is the environment and gun violence. What are the odds that Israel’s noxious conduct in Gaza will be the hot issue in two-to-four years, even as entire coastal communities disappear under swiftly rising seas and tornadoes grow in frequency and intensity, even as women die from complications from untreated, failed pregnancies in states where abortion is banned?
Whether or not double haters vote (young indys among them), the next president may appoint two to three new Supreme Court justices whose views may define the rest of their lives and the rest of this century. They may decide whether mass shootings continue and if women get to control their bodies. The next president, may decide whether the courts, the law, and personal freedoms even matter anymore.
Even if both your choices are distasteful, they are still your choices to make. Even abstaining is a choice for which any of us bear repsonsibility. Best make them good ones. And Democrats? Best not to play it safe.
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