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Yeah, the Harris 2024 campaign website literally doesn't have a "platform"/"policy" section. The closest you get is the Meet Kamala Harris and Meet Tim Walz pages discuss policies they have implemented in the past, so we get a vague idea of the kinds of things they're in favor of. But the most concrete policy discussion is the Tim Walz page links to a page about Project 2025 explaining what policies they're against.
I understand the strategy: any time you give a concrete policy, some of the people that would otherwise support you are going to be against that specific policy, so the less you say, the fewer people you alienate. Harris/Walz have decided there's no upside for them to be talking much about policy right now and they may very well be right. But it's frustrating that just vibes is the level of political discourse we're at when theoretically elections should be a time to have a national conversation about the future of the country. Although realistically that mostly happens in primaries, not the general election.
Ages ago, @AshLael posted this theory.
In a vacuum, state your beliefs. People like a strong horse, as it were, and they definitely like a “positive vision.”
If you can’t directly compete with a strong statement, try debate. That can’t work because X. Supporters haven’t considered Y. Set yourself up as the reasonable one, tempering the initial naïveté.
And if someone is out-debating you, if you don’t have the institutional backup to argue policy? Call ‘em nerds and shove ‘em in a locker. Policy is boring, so remind them that you’re the one with a real vision. Play up your outsider status. Sneer at the ridiculousness.
The risk, however, is that Americans like one thing more than a strong horse. If your opponent can come across as an underdog, a scrappy idealist standing up to your bullying, they have an advantage. Debate beats state, sneering beats debate, state beats sneer.
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Donald Trump is pretty good at pivoting between state and sneer. The 2016 Democrats had no ability to state a positive vision, so they weren’t able to counter his enthusiastic sneers. Worse, any sneers at deplorables, etc. were ammunition for Trump’s strong, stated narrative.
Once he won, he was faced with four years of institutional opposition. Backing up bold statements is hard without a deep roster and/or a detailed plan. So he looked like a poor debater and lost 2020 to an incredibly boring candidate plus an incredibly sneering media.
Here we are in 2024. Trump still struggles to debate policy, but he had plenty of opportunities to sneer at Biden. The assassination attempt also gave him some serious armor against sneers. That left the Democrats with one strategy: outcompete him on statement. So now we have the Democrats pivoting towards just that sort of substance-free platform. Can Harris actually out-MAGA him? I’m skeptical, but it’s better strategy than trying to debate. Against Trump, that’s just asking for a swirlie.
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