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It's not a coincidence, obviously. They'll find something.
It's preferable they find "binders full of women" than you saying what Vance said. All you can do is minimize.
There's an argument for some Trump-style disagreeableness on important things. But I'd be making this argument if a Democrat spoke this way. This is not the sort of thing you want a paragraph-long explainer on. Waste of time.
Harris died in 2020 because she couldn't walk back her stupid defund rhetoric, and Biden eclipsed her totally on the campaign trail, with literally zero support for Defund The Police from Biden, not a single sanewashing soundbite. If you fuck up your point by saying something stupid, you power through and cede it so your efforts go somewhere productive.
Trump and Vance can still point to immigrant salvadorans and hondurans fucking up NYC. They don't do so because urbanites suffering hubris is a desired outcome for Trump, Trumps existing supporters and the remaining centrists who dislike far left open border crazies. Trying to tie the migrant threat to soccer mom suburbanites failed, and I'm not sure there is time to reload the chamber even if another bullet existed.
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Genuinely not sure about that. "I will do what I have to do, because this is important," may play quite well even among floating voters. It signifies strength and commitment (dishonesty, but pointed in a good direction). The "binders full of women" thing just came across as kind of sad, even for people who knew it had been misquoted. "I have binders full of people I want to promote to positions they weren't able to obtain under their own power" isn't exactly heartening.
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