Cast your mind back to the last American election cycle in 2020 and you’ll recall that “Decency was on the ballot” – or so the Biden/Harris PR team told the world. Snap back to 2024 and it appears that Harris/Walz have ditched “decency”. This time, their campaign is akin to a high-school offensive, branding their opponents nothing more substantial than “weird” and seemingly embracing manufactured sexual rumour.
And yet it’s proving a highly effective strategy – although it’s easy to paint your opponents however you like when you’ve got much of the media in your corner. Even if they didn’t, it is a line of attack that taps into something base, something primal, in the electorate and is all the more effective for it. I referred to it as a “high-school” offensive above because that’s exactly what it is – an attempt to ostracise ‘outsiders’ in a juvenile manner. In this case, Trump and Vance, on the basis that they don’t fit in.
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