"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah. The rest is just commentary."
Rabbi Hillel the Elder, 110 BCE
"When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right."
Bill Clinton, 2002 CE
Trump is on track to win back the presidency. Trump is strong and wrong. Biden is weak and right.
Radical simplification of the kind Rabbi Hillel offered gets us to the essence of the choice voters will make in November. The great majority of voters will follow the inertia of their party brand. Democrats vote for Democrats, Republicans vote for Republicans. The past decade demonstrates the power of party inertia. Everything that Republicans supposedly believed in for 50 years — from Nixon through Reagan to Bush One, Dole, Bush Two, McCain, Cheney, Romney, and McConnell up to January 2016 — got removed and replaced. A Republican voter of January 1 of 2016 should be a Democrat, except for the issue of abortion. My party right or wrong.
Democratic pundits are frustrated. The USA worked its way out of the Covid crisis very well by the standards of the rest of the developed world. Employment is strong, inflation is defanged, and the stock market is high. But the public isn't feeling it.
Voters aren't giving Biden credit. Why? Bill Clinton said it. Biden does not look or sound like a strong leader. Biden is badly miscast for the role to be the 2024 Democratic candidate. He has a weak voice and he looks feeble. It is image and optics, but it is real. He doesn't look the part of a leader confidently leading America into the future. He isn't hope and change. He isn't Jack Kennedy.
Since Congress is so palpably ineffective, voter are attracted to an executive who appears willing and able to steamroll over opposition and get things done. Right and wrong can be hard to discern. Some people think it is high time for some cruel action on the border. Unengaged voters find reasons to question whether January 6 was really all that bad. What is not in question is Trump's arrogant, belligerent, damn-the-torpedoes strength of will. Trump says he will be a dictator on day one. He was boasting.
Democrats will stick with Biden, of course. He is what Democrats have, and you play your hand.
Their job will not be to show that he is right. They will try to show that he is strong. It is casting against type, and sometimes it works.
And with LaCivita working for Trump, messaging will be even harder.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/chris-lacivita-ran-one-of-american-politics-most-notorious-smear-campaigns-now-hes-working-for-trump/