Some on the left are portraying Kamala Harris's acceptance speech as "the best acceptance speech ever." Actually, it was a beautiful example of speaking a lot and saying nothing.
This election is not about issues. In fact, it's about nothing at all if you listen carefully to what the Democrats are saying. Harris and the Democrats don't dare run on issues. So Harris's handlers (with an assist, no doubt from Barack Obama) have gone "hope and change" one better with "optimism and joy."
It's a snow job, of course. But it's a damned effective snow job. Donald Trump and the Republicans ignore this new dynamic at their peril.
It's a truism of American politics that the most optimistic candidate wins the race. It's not always true. But it's true often enough that most candidates try to effect an optimistic outlook no matter what the reality is.
Jimmy Carter's first race in 1976 was all about optimism and "moving on" from Watergate and the Nixon resignation. Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign was all about regaining Americans' optimistic spirit. Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign was about moving on from Reagan-Bush and climbing out of the mild recession of that year. Barack Obama's 2008 campaign of "hope and change" was the definition of optimism.
Trump's campaign with dark themes of what would happen under four more years of Biden has to undergo a radical change. My guess is that Trump will come out swinging hard against Harris's fake media makeover while reminding voters of what the nation was like before COVID.
As long as this was a race about replacing Joe Biden and his ruinous policies, Trump had a distinct advantage. But Biden is gone and a brand new candidate who looks a lot like our sitting vice president has replaced him.
This is not the Harris whose mangled syntax and stuttering attempts to explain herself made her the laughingstock of the political world. This is calm, cool, collected Kamala. Gone is the laugh track. Now, she's a very serious person. She still doesn't have any ideas worth discussing, and the ideas she's presented have been so rancid she's already dropped them down the memory hole (Prince controls? Really?).
Her acceptance speech was classic deflection along with a healthy dose of lies and exaggerations about Trump.
A politician who can effectively meld offensive and defensive politics in one speech is a formidable threat. This gift was the essence of Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s success. It was something that eluded Hillary Rodham Clinton at key moments in 2016. And it was something that Democrats concluded was impossible to imagine an aging Biden doing in 2024, despite his success in 2020.
There is little doubt after Harris’ speech that Trump and his campaign realize she has changed the trajectory of the campaign, nor that they are busy thinking of ways they can try to change it again.
What do voters want? Both Harris and Trump and their campaigns are sifting through reams of data, trying to decipher the riddle of the voters' minds. When it was a Trump-Biden race, the majority of voters wanted a different matchup.
Now they've got one. Will it make a difference? Trump's numbers are close to being set in stone. No matter how much the media tries to boost Harris, Trump will never get below 45% of the vote. Harris is probably close to that floor as well.
But Harris is in a better position to exploit the "optimism" theme. Will that make a difference? History says it very well might.
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