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The lack of preparation for Kamala is one of the clearest cases of political malpractice I've ever seen. It's not some black swan event: people have anticipated this for months if not years. Even the Trump campaign itself was suggesting it would happen! And yet Republicans are caught entirely flat-footed.
In retrospect, the Trump campaign should have anticipated the likelihood of Biden having a candidacy-ending disaster at a debate, and made sure every debate happened after the nomination.
The lack of preparedness seems more like a myth than fact. It looks like they already had ads ready to go and are outspending her 25 to 1.
https://apnews.com/article/advertising-presidential-campaign-kamala-harris-trump-aab73a0d9593afebd734c8f708632926
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So do we know that it’s unprepared for? The switcharoo was announced 3 days ago and Trump had been running with a low profile strategy even before that.
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Yep, given Biden's age when he took office plus the fact that Kamala is the VP and so would have a good chance of eventually running for President even if Biden was younger, Republicans should have started devoting massive resources to building effective anti-Kamala messaging as soon as her and Biden took office. As we now see, it is not safe for them to rely on Kamala's terrible primary performance and just write her off. Her being a woman, a prosecutor, and to some extent even her being an occasionally awkward public speaker all play different in the context of her running against Trump than in the context of a primary race against other Democrats. Her being a woman plays different because Trump has a history of sexual assault accusations. Her being a prosecutor plays different because the Republicans like to act like the law-and-order party. Her being an occasionally awkward public speaker plays different because Trump himself has a weird and unorthodox, though obviously very effective, speaking style.
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Alternatively, the ROI on specific contingency plans is even worse than the baseline for political spending, so no one bothered.
Delaying the debates would have been an interesting strategy, but I’m not sure it’s generally advantageous. Trump wants to brawl, to show his teeth, right? He doesn’t maintain his brand by sitting and waiting for the opposition to get lost on the way to the store.
It’s not like influencing your opposition’s candidate pool has a great track record, either. See Democrats funding MAGA challengers to primary the Republican bench. I suspect reports of that tactic were overstated, but it certainly didn’t make for a sweeping success.
So what’s left? If Republicans somehow knew that Kamala would be up against Trump, what weapon should they deploy?
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Short term doesn’t matter. Maybe they don’t want to destroy Harris before the DNC.
Yeah, if they have good anti Kamala messaging they’re going to sit on it until her nomination is a done deal.
Let them revel in Kamala memes for a few weeks and then start the assault.
Otherwise they risk the Dems choosing someone better.
No, if you’re the Republicans, you want to keep applying pressure to cause chaos. The one thing that will kill Democrats in the election is if they start admitting that they have to run a worse candidate because of diversity. You want the special interest groups at each other’s throats for as long as possible. This has the capability to drive long-term resentment of the establishment among sections of the Dem base.
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Nate Silver had the same take. But I'm not sure what the Republicans could have done in practice. Biden had an 85% to be the nominee until 1 month ago.
What am I missing?
Reduce opportunities for Biden's state to be revealed to the public. If you truly believe that Biden is entirely senile and demented only getting by on copious doses of Adderall, then wait until the Democrats are more entrenched on supporting him. They may still have had the ability to do a swap even post-nomination, but it makes that even more damaging and chaotic.
Have a playbook on Kamala. Messaging and messaging discipline. The RNC was effective at making Trump cute and cuddly; don't throw that away with off-key messaging.
Lay the groundwork well in advance for whatever attacks you are going to push. There's a balancing act here: too much attention on Kamala means less on Biden. But Biden's negatives at the end were much higher than Kamala's: the goal should have been getting them around equal negatives, so a swap doesn't help too much. Or, if you're absolutely certain Biden will drop out or die, then focus all fire on Kamala.
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One should always have plans B and C and be ready to switch to them in a nanosecond.
What should those plans be? TV ads? Social media? Multi tens of millions of dollar campaigns can't pivot overnight, and it would be wasteful to dedicate large percentage of your budget to a candidate who, less than a month ago, had a less than 10% chance of being the nominee.
Sometimes you can't prepare.
Just three days ago people like Obama were suggesting a speed run primary. Then Kamala got all the delegates in like 36 hours. It's unprecedented.
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