Men Will Determine the President
This may be Donald Trump’s last best shot to rally young men and disarm angry women. He needs to be perfect in the debate tonight, while Kamala Harris merely needs to show up, and has ample room to wildly outperform her low expectations.
Here’s how each candidate can win the night and set up their final sprints to Election Day.
Context
The 2024 election will ultimately boil down to “Vibes” vs. “Results.” Can voters be convinced that Kamala is a suitable new figurehead to the Democratic machine, someone who can offer a reprieve from the drama of a second Trump Presidency? Or will Trump convince enough voters he can get the country back on the right track and govern as a unifying figure?
This debate will be the only one between the two candidates, and it could also end up being one of Kamala Harris’s final, unscripted public appearances before the election.
It’s worth revisiting my AC/DC framework from yesterday to understand how Trump and Harris (and their surrogates) will work tonight to Activate allies, Celebrate converts, Demoralize antagonists, and Crush dissent during their 90 minute performances.
Trump will win if he keeps his cool and reiterates his 20 core promises to America, which contrast sharply with the results of the Biden-Harris administration. Kamala will win if she is able to avoid her record, provoke Trump, and convince the audience her new platform is authentic.
Trump wins if he fires up his men (AC), and disarms skeptical women (DC), and Kamala wins if she fires up her women (AC), and pacifies skeptical men (DC). It’s XX vs. XY:
Kamala Vibes
In the two months since Kamala became the nominee, she has sat for just one interview - her 18 minute pre-recorded, joint interview with running mate Tim Walz.
Until this past weekend (48 hours before the debate), she did not even have an official platform.
Instead, her campaign has been content sticking with canned stump speeches thanks to a lack of pressure from her party and a fawning corporate media. It helps to quickly recap the alliance Kamala enjoys with the press in order to understand her keys to success tonight:
Remember the Vibes: The Economist quipped of Kamala’s vapid “freedom” and “America” focused convention speech (with no sense of irony) that it would be “tactless to interrupt a good party with talk about work,” pundits lauded her message of “Joy.”
Forget the Policies: Political analysts have been forced to guess at how she would govern, attempting to derive her real platform from old votes, short clips, and sound bites comparing her positions to Biden’s. All signs point deeply Left.
Don’t Discuss Popularity: the media has memory-holed past criticism about Kamala’s abilities, conveniently “forgotten” that she had been an afterthought replacement candidate in the wake of Biden’s disastrous June debate, and produced a stream of image rehabilitation services on her behalf with no expectations of reciprocity.
Kamala’s “basement strategy” highlights how low the bar of expectations is for tonight’s debate. The media will cover for her evasiveness, mediocrity, and stumbles, so underestimating her odds would be a major mistake. Here’s where she can thrive:
Activate lazy allies: Young women continue to express fury at Republican-led abortion crackdowns in Red States, and are highly motivated to punish the President whose Supreme Court nominees spawned the Dobbs decision. But Kamala may have a lower ceiling of under-engaged voters here as this group is already activated, particularly in swing states like Arizona and Nevada, where abortion access is on the ballot.
Celebrate converts: The Democrats may not have wanted Dick Cheney’s endorsement to land the weekend before this cycle’s sole debate, but it should be clarifying to voters: the Trump-driven realignment of the major parties is real. Democrats are now the establishment/war party, and Kamala will need to embrace the neocons. Women are more likely to trust establishment converts than Trump’s cowboy coalition.
Demoralize antagonists: In the aftermath of Trump’s assassination attempt, I doubt Kamala will score many points accusing Trump of inciting political violence on January 6 (though she will surely try). Her more likely path to scoring points and demoralizing weakly-aligned Trump voters will be to paint him as a bigot. Young, educated moderate white men are most susceptible to these lines of attack, and could be dissuaded from voting if they believe that a vote for Trump is a vote for bigotry and hate.
Crush dissent. The Democrats’ coalition has historically fallen in line behind their chosen candidates, regardless of internal strife. Kamala’s selection of Tim Walz stifled dissent from her pro-Palestine supporters, but she has another major issue to contend with in this debate: the growing population of working class Black and Hispanic men defecting to Trump due to the issues illegal immigration has caused in their communities.
Trump’s Results
Trump’s record as President has held up well in hindsight. Economic growth, low inflation, no new wars, tight immigration policies, and criminal justice reform create a sharp contrast with the successor administration, where the results have created a policy straightjacket for Kamala.
Still, Trump will remain at a structural disadvantage for the next eight weeks as the press, justice system, and incumbent institutions remain aligned against him.
There’s no need today to review just how many battles Trump has fought (and largely won) in the past eight years, but I will elaborate on this in a later post on my “workhorse candidate” theory (every winning Presidential candidate in my lifetime has been the one who overcame the hardest pre-election battles). For tonight, Trump won’t play a victim, as he knows he’ll inspire more men to show up on November 5 by simply making his success look effortless.
Activate lazy allies: This election will hinge on two swing groups: young white men, and the Black and Hispanic working class defectors highlighted above. More young men play fantasy football than may end up voting in this election, a problem that’s particularly acute among non-college educated white men, and will almost certainly decide the swing states and the election. Tight borders, protectionist tariffs, and deregulation will play well, along with a focus on Kamala’s college debt forgiveness handouts.
Celebrate converts: Trump’s “cowboy converts” are among the most colorful people in American culture. Elon Musk’s tech and business leadership; public battles against DC’s speech censors, European bureaucrats, and the mainstream media; and his commitment to help enact Trump v2’s “Government Efficiency Commission” make him new net promoter #1. RFK Jr.’s personal history, battle against the Democratic machine, and emphasis on Making America Healthy Again put him in close second. (His recent ad is one of the greatest political ads ever.) Great men for Trump will help recruit more men.
Demoralize antagonists: We’ll see Trump fight fire with fire tonight on some of his “losing issues” tonight because there is limited downside, and opportunities are there to depress turnout amongst unfavorable voter cohorts, or win slivers of those cohorts himself. Hitting Harris-Walz for their roles in the 2020 BLM riots, co-opting Tulsi Gabbard’s savage 2019 debate takedown of Kamala’s racist record as California AG, exposing Kamala’s radically permissive late-term abortion policies, and exploiting the wedge in the Democratic party between support for Israel and Palestine could set traps for her.
Crush dissent: Trump keeps his contingent intact when he plays a libertarian. “COVID policies were directed by the states.” “Abortion policy is now decided by the states.” “We didn’t have any new wars when I was President.” “Speech, religion, and guns are strictly protected under the Constitution.” Trump doesn’t need to do much to stifle dissent in the GOP these days, but when he does, his best friend is Federalism and libertarianism.
I’m cautiously optimistic about tonight, but don’t listen to the pundits afterwards. We’ll ultimately know how it went after we see the polling data changes between men and women next week.
(Here’s hoping that Trump does as well as J.D. Vance did yesterday at the All-In Summit.)