Hillary Clinton wrote a lovely op-ed in the New York Times praising Kamala Harris and wishing her the best. And I like Hillary. She advised the Vice President to focus on her role as prosecutor and the successes of the Biden Administration.
Yet she also took the time to call Republican voters Deplorables by another name: “MAGA Republicans.”
This is a moniker Harris should avoid in the coming months when addressing Republican voters because . . .
The majority of Republicans do not like being called Maga Republicans
To win and leverage the momentum the Vice President has, she will need to convince those Republicans in the middle that she has a better vision.
Clearly, don’t call them names. When I advise candidates for office, I suggest that they never let the word “MAGA” leave their lips.
The majority of Republicans don’t like it and it is being used in a derogatory and demeaning way. It is simply a surrogate for “Deplorable.” Sure, there is a minority that probably revels in the term, but for any candidate it is a minefield that is simply too difficult to navigate.
I cringe each time Hakeem Jeffries uses the term. Leave the term “MAGA” to the chattering class. Erase it from the candidate class and their allies. One of the benefits of living in a rural farming community of 256 households that was settled by my ancestors is that you know everyone and you interface with every possible kind of person who exists in a community.
From the most liberal to the most conservative. And no one refers to themself as a MAGA Republican. It would be seriously offensive to call anyone by that label.
So when I read what Clinton wrote about “MAGA mouthpieces” chattering about Harris, I winced.
Would any of us even consider using a label for black voters that black voters have specifically said they do not want to be called?
First Takeaway – erase the term MAGA from your vocabulary. Persuade instead of alienate.
Voters, especially rural, love strong women. Just of a certain type.
Voters want strength in the sense of resilience and grit. That is why the Germans elected Angela Merkel for 16 years. It is why the Chair of our county Republican Party commented in passing that Republicans were lucky Michelle Obama wasn’t running because she would win. They both have backgrounds of hardship that make them the relatable yet strong women they are today. If these two women were on the ticket this year, one who had been commander-in-chief of the German armed forces for 16 years, they would win.
Hillary still blames her loss on sexism and the double standard in politics. Don’t go there.
Politics has all sorts of bad things: homophobia, anti-semitism, anti-muslim bias, and on and on. We all have to overcome them. At the end of the day, sexism also helped Hillary to run in the first place.
Remember, Joe Biden was Vice President at the time and fully expected to be at the top of the 2016 ticket. One of the arguments in July was that the current Vice President “deserved” the spot at the top. Didn’t Vice President Biden? Had he run, he would have won. I suspect twice. We never would have had the Trump era.
What voters object to is the kind of “strong” that stems from growing up in a privileged, elite, highly educated world where hardship was never on the menu. It can result in a smug, condescending Professor’s Lounge unrelatable demeanor that just doesn’t gel with the rural voter.
The Vice President is somewhere in the middle. She would be well served to poke some holes in the echo chamber in which she finds herself to get some diverse voices whispering in her ear. By diverse I mean rural, farm, military, hard scrabble – people with grit. Yes, hiring someone like David Plouffe is a move in the right direction.
She can’t afford to make another mistake of messaging to the rural Wisconsin Dairy Farmer that she thinks he is too dumb and incapable of figuring out how to make a copy of his drivers’ license.
Second Takeaway – Don’t fall into the unrelatable strong woman trap. Get diverse voices in the room and support yourself where you are weak.
Focusing on Abortion, her background as a prosecutor, Trump’s character, and past achievements under Biden will not move the needle
The items Hillary highlighted in her opinion piece are not an agenda. They are nice things that can be used to fill out a vision.
Harris needs to pivot just 10 degrees and come out with her own vision. She needs to think of the swing states and needs to play to win – she already has the nomination. Act like it and pivot.
Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all have abortion. You can’t sell that property twice. The Vice President’s comments in Michigan last month that Trump was going to take away Michigan’s constitutional right to abortion fell flat – with Democrats.
Instead the Vice President needs to address the “hard” issues and put housekeeping issues secondary. When she thinks rural she should put in her mind that Wisconsin Dairy farmer, not someone in Mississippi who will never vote for her. She needs to address her lack of a military background. She needs to address the border – and there is a plan for that I’ll write about later. She needs to take away the electric vehicle debate from the Trump team – and there is a way forward on that that is a win for the U.S. She needs to understand that tariffs are neither good nor bad. They are a tool. And voters are willing to pay tariffs for the right reasons. There is a long list of issues too lengthy for today.
Third Takeaway – Have a vision and an agenda for the future.
Can Kamala Harris Win?
Vice President Harris’ path forward requires some pivots and putting herself in a space that probably won’t be completely comfortable for her. Certainly it requires a pivot to the middle. An easy first step is to stop offending persuadable Republicans and rural voters. Persuade them instead. And have an agenda that all of us can get behind to sell her presidency. I’ll have more on each of the issues she needs to address in the coming days.