One of the biggest dilemmas in politics is how much to avail yourself of the dark arts. You might think a tactic is morally wrong or underhanded. But what happens when you see your opponent getting some traction with such things? Do you emulate them (even halfway), in the name of leveling the playing field and defeating someone you believe is dangerous? If they tell blatant lies, for example, do you feel justified in stretching the truth? Do you conclude that failing to do so amounts to unilaterally disarming?<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party has struggled with this throughout the Donald Trump era, as the former president and current presidential candidate has spouted tens of thousands of lies and falsehoods, myriad conspiracy theories about his opponents, and epithets aplenty. Michelle Obama\u2019s recipe in 2016 was, \u201cWhen they go low, we go high,\u201d and she doubled down in 2020, even after that 2016 loss. But other high-profile Democrats \u2014 including 2016 runner-up Hillary Clinton herself \u2014 have differed somewhat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,\u201d Clinton said in 2018, adding: \u201cYou can be civil, but you can\u2019t overcome what they intend to do unless you win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they go low, we kick \u2019em,\u201d former attorney general Eric Holder said, more bluntly, the same week. \u201cThat\u2019s what this new Democratic Party is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s 2024 campaign sent its strongest signal to date Tuesday night \u2014 but hardly its first \u2014 that it\u2019s not interested in unilateral disarmament. It\u2019s increasingly willing to go low, or at least lower.<\/p>\n
In no less than his debut as Harris\u2019s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who emerged from a vetting process overseen by Holder, made a pointed reference to a false social media story about GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance. If you haven\u2019t heard about it, the fake story deals with Vance supposedly having admitted to sexual relations with a couch. Three weeks ago, an X user posted a fake citation from Vance\u2019s book, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d and it\u2019s been the subject of liberal jokes ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t wait to debate the guy,\u201d Walz said at a rally in Philadelphia. \u201cThat is, if he\u2019s willing to get off the couch and show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd erupted at the apparent reference. And Walz quickly made clear it was intentional.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see what I did there?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s expression conveyed shock (whether real or feigned) at what her running mate had just said. But it\u2019s not the first time the campaign has invoked a couch; it did so in a July 27 tweet that stated, \u201cJD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.\u201d And her campaign quickly promoted video of Walz\u2019s comment, layering it on TikTok with the words, \u201comg Tim Walz WENT THERE\u201d and \u201cwait for it.\u201d It\u2019s evident this is something they\u2019d like to promote.<\/p>\n
JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women pic.twitter.com\/sGfZBpT5YF<\/p>\n
\u2014 Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 28, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A senior Harris adviser said that Walz\u2019s \u201ccouch\u201d comment was in his script, but not the \u201cYou see what I did there?\u201d follow-up that drove home the intent.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The backdrop of all of it, of course, is the increasing Democratic and Harris campaign efforts to label Vance and Trump as \u201cweird.\u201d That middle-school-cafeteria-esque dig quickly sprouted as the top Democratic talking point in recent weeks after Walz seeded and fertilized it.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s campaign has also taken to clipping video of Trump and Vance and posting to social media, while appending text that can mislead and sometimes obviously does.<\/p>\n
Last week, the campaign posted a clip with the text, \u201cTrump: Americans who don\u2019t support me are animals. They are horrible people\u201d \u2014 a comment that would be reminiscent of Clinton\u2019s 2016 \u201cbasket of deplorables\u201d comment. But Trump\u2019s comments were actually about people who have tried to put him in prison, not all Americans who didn\u2019t support him.<\/p>\n
Trump: Americans who don\u2019t support me are animals. They are horrible people pic.twitter.com\/Ml58Rza1sN<\/p>\n
\u2014 Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) July 30, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Another example: On Monday, Harris\u2019s campaign posted a clip of Trump talking about Venezuela and its recent election. Its text read: \u201cTrump: It\u2019s being run by a dictator. And it\u2019s very safe. It\u2019s safer than many of our cities.\u201d<\/p>\n
The text gives the impression that Trump was again praising a dictator, in this case Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. In fact, Trump didn\u2019t so directly tie the \u201cdictator\u201d comment to the \u201cvery safe\u201d comment. He spoke in between about the idea that criminals had left Venezuela and come to the United States and left the cities behind them safer.<\/p>\n
Q: What do you think about what\u2019s going on in Venezuela?<\/p>\n
Trump: It\u2019s being run by a dictator. And it\u2019s very safe. It\u2019s safer than many of our cities pic.twitter.com\/hJq9649pfB<\/p>\n
\u2014 Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 5, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This is a case-in-point for Democrats\u2019 dilemma. The idea that criminal Venezuelans are coming to the United States in droves is itself baseless; it has been fact-checked accordingly. Yet Trump has used that idea regularly to attack Democrats\u2019 border policies.<\/p>\n
By that standard \u2014 and next to Trump\u2019s historic falsehoods \u2014 misleadingly juxtaposing some words would seem a small offense. But it\u2019s clearly a decision Democrats have made to play the game and to take more liberties in doing so.<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to the couch.<\/p>\n
Amid some criticism of the comment, Walz\u2019s defenders have argued that the story is self-evidently a joke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not so self-important and humorless that we can\u2019t acknowledge something that cuts through popular culture the way this meme did \u2014 in a joking way,\u201d the senior Harris adviser said. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve also noted that the campaign has gone after Trump and Vance on plenty of substance and policy, too, and that mining this territory pales in comparison with Trump\u2019s bare-knuckle brand of politics.<\/p>\n
The latter is certainly true. There is no comparison between the liberties Trump has taken in his political career and what Harris and Democrats are doing. Trump has called Barack Obama the \u201cfounder of ISIS,\u201d promoted conspiracy theories including most notably about Obama\u2019s birthplace, made racist comments about diverse political opponents, and accused his opponents of criminality based on nonsensical evidence. Twice in recent months, he has baselessly tied those who have run afoul of him to plots to assassinate him. He takes stuff like the couch story and does more than joke about it; he pitches it as fact.<\/p>\n
There is a cost to the political process in going down this road. History suggests that plenty of people who don\u2019t care to check the story out will come to believe it\u2019s real. And you could be forgiven for thinking, cynically, that Democrats would be okay with that. After all, it epitomizes the idea that Vance is \u201cweird.\u201d<\/p>\n
And even shy of that, it\u2019s just a bizarre, very online thing to elevate.<\/p>\n
Michelle Obama, in her 2020 Democratic National Convention speech, reflected on disagreements in the party over her \u201cwe go high\u201d mantra and how that had panned out for her party.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy answer: Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that\u2019s drowning out everything else,\u201d she said. \u201cWe degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four years later, Democrats may be making a different calculation about what\u2019s required to win.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One of the biggest dilemmas in politics is how much to avail yourself of the dark arts. You might think a tactic is morally wrong or underhanded. But what happens when you see your opponent getting some traction with such things? Do you emulate them (even halfway), in the name of leveling the playing field […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}