It sounds like arcane internal jargon best kept in campaign headquarters: Is this election about persuasion or manipulation? But the term is really just a fancy way of asking whether a campaign should prioritize attracting undecided voters or turning away its base. Regardless of the rhetoric, however, answering that question is fundamental to every campaign and its chances of winning. internal The debate will shape important choices Kamala Harris done in less than four weeks before crazy close presidential election.
For example, consider Harris’ recent appearance in Wisconsin with the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and Cheney’s play the main role in a new Harris TV ad (which regularly runs during Major League Baseball playoffs) aimed at persuadable Republicans. Cheney’s conservative record and policy positions—staunchly anti-abortion, in favor of repealing Obamacare—are anathema to most core Democrats. However, Cheney emerged as a leading and principled critic of the then-president. Donald Trump after January 6, and Harris’s campaign sees her as a powerful weapon in persuading hesitant Republican moderates in swing states to vote against Trump, if not is to vote entirely in favor of Harris. “We are definitely making a play for Republicans and independents and never-Trumpers in a very real way,” one campaign insider told me. . “We’re spending a lot of time in red counties — like a third of our offices in Pennsylvania are in Trump counties, rural counties that he won by a two-digit margin numbers in 2020. And not necessarily because we think we can win those districts, but because, in a close race, cutting margins matters.”
That tactic has long been part of the Democratic formula, even as President Joe Biden is the 2024 Democratic Party candidate. But the mix of persuasion and advocacy has changed since Harris unexpectedly topped the table in late July. Jen O’Malley Dillon, The chairman of Biden’s re-election effort and a master at blocking and complex voter turnout — down to the granular precinct level — has installed a nationwide infrastructure to replicate the work her success on behalf of Biden in 2020. Harris has retained O’Malley Dillon in the same role, and JOD (as she is called by staff) is constantly implementing and refining the mechanisms she has applied in the past year.
But Harris also added David Plouffe, Who manages? Barack Obamahis 2008 election campaign, as a senior adviser. A strategist connected to Harris’s campaign said Plouffe’s impact is clear. “The Biden campaign has decided this is a turnout election. The Harris campaign thinks this is a convincing election and the turnout is typical of David Plouffe,” the strategist said. “Besides the Cheney thing, you look at it in other ways. Team Biden will never talk about immigration. Harris coming to Arizona to speak about immigration and them trying to own the same economic path that Obama did – David Plouffe was in that campaign.
No campaign—at least no successful campaign—is all about one or the other, and campaign insiders argue strongly that aggressively pursuing both base and unaffiliated voters The decision was always part of the plan, regardless of whether Biden or Harris was the candidate. Harris’s ability to wage an energetic war on two fronts at once has been greatly enhanced by the vast amount of money, at least $1 billion, that the vice president has raised in less than three years. month. However, campaign leadership is concerned that large numbers may not be enough. There will certainly be difficult choices regarding how much money and human resources to devote to turnout or persuasion. The calculus is even more complicated because Harris’s campaign believes it needs to convince people not just to vote for Democrats, but to vote at all. “We always group our goals into two buckets,” the Harris campaign insider said. “One is the traditional swing targets—the people are going to vote anyway and it’s a question of us or Trump. The other is what we call ‘participation persuasion’. They are deciding between the couch and us.”
For example, reaching disengaged people is a key reason Harris appears on All smoke podcasts. And this weekend, persuasion efforts will skyrocket. The Democratic National Committee will fly lettering planes in the sky and hoist banners over stadiums hosting games between six NFL teams from swing states, with messages about “firing” Project 2025 is right-wing and vote for Harris. But there is a risk in emphasizing persuasion over mobilization, since turnout is hard to guarantee, especially with issues like Israel and Gaza that anger elements of the Democratic coalition . “There are no warning lights, but there are things we need to tighten up,” said Bakari Seller, a former South Carolina lawmaker who is close to Harris’ campaign and believes that black and Hispanic men should be the focus of the campaign. “It’s an irreversible strategy—because she could lose a close race or she could win all six swing states. That’s roughly there.”
