Commentary by Richard Porter via RealClearPolitics,
With stunning swiftness, Donald J. Trump knocked President Biden out of the presidential campaign with the one, two, three of a dominating debate, a near-death experience, and a compelling convention.
Then, also with stunning swiftness, the entire Democrat media/cultural complex coalesced around Joe Biden’s famously vacuous veep, best known for her meaningless word salads, inappropriate giggles, and utter ineffectiveness at dealing with the chaos at the border.
Yet in August, Democrats are coronating June’s misfit as their new queen bee, forcing Trump to win the election by beating Kamala Harris, who’s trying a different strategy and who offers different challenges and opportunities.
Harris’ strategy is to win by being cool, not by being competent. Democrats aren’t even trying to prove that she has the brains, judgment, and gravitas to be the leader of the free world. Instead, they’re embracing her skin-deep nature, highlighting her energy and appearance, and building her campaign on a foundation of social memes, social standing – and social ridicule, too.
For example, when British pop star Charlie XCX said that “Kamala is brat” – cool-girl slang for someone who’s disorganized and says dumb things, but powers through it and gets what she wants anyway – Kamala’s campaign immediately embraced the meme.
Call it Kamala’s “Mean Girls” strategy: Turn the 2024 presidential campaign into an election for prom queen. (“Mean Girls” is Tina Fey’s brilliant political allegory about a high school girl named Regina George who leverages her looks, gossip, and adolescent insecurities and cravings to rule over the student body – until the uncool kids topple her to restore their freedom.)
The Harris campaign isn’t even subtle about its strategy. Campaigns choose rally music to reinforce campaign themes. So, who did the campaign ask to headline its Atlanta rally? Megan Thee Stallion, who calls herself the “Black Regina George” and mimics the movie in her “Not My Fault” video.
It’s crazy to think that the leader of the free world could be elected with tactics high school bullies use to dominate a student body, but her skin-deep strategy closed the Biden chasm by co-opting other cool people and controlling the gossip, turning this back into a close contest.
Kamala wasn’t cool in June before the Hollywood/media/cultural clique unified around their newly anointed leader. But her social standing soared when glamorous Hollywood stars showered her with money and love, and beautiful anchors and hip commentators on all mainstream media outlets gushed over her in unison while burying any talk of previous policies and statements.
Her first anti-Trump riposte is right out of the movie, too, as she and her parroting cool clique seek to make Trump and J.D. Vance as socially toxic as high school Mathletes. “They’re weird!” the Queen and her acolytes say in unison (and everyone knows it’s social suicide to like people who are weird)!
So, how should the Trump team bring Kamala George down? The 2004 movie and the 2016 campaign (when Clinton’s “deplorables” social cut backfired) offer suggestions.
First, undermine the Democrats’ standing by ridiculing their nominee’s skin-deep strategy. Team Trump has always been adept at labeling and defining opponents, and they are already hard at work. Social media memes are flying on the right, almost all of which highlight the many vapid things Harris has said or done; keep updating these to mock her strategy now.
Second, remind voters why they didn’t take Kamala seriously as recently as June: She has no common sense, and her policies help her rich friends at our expense. J.D. Vance is already laser-focused on highlighting all the ways in which Harris’ policies make us worse off today than we were four years ago.
Third, force the vice president onto a stage where she can be questioned about how the current administration’s policies have affected real lives; people will want to know what she’s got going on up there, to paraphrase Kamala’s spirit animal Charli XCX. This will work as well for Kamala as it did for Regina George.
Finally, remember that Democrats live in a make-believe world. Donald Trump can climb into that world and ridicule it, but the real world always intervenes, and when it does, Republicans should contrast Trump’s toughness with Kamala’s fluff.
As the movie ends, the “Mean Girls” queen is hit by a bus because she literally lacks street sense. Trump needs to reassure America that he has the common sense to manage our very real problems and the courage to fight for us – and that no bus will take America down when he’s president again.
Richard Porter is a lawyer in Chicago and National Committeeman to the RNC from Illinois.
