In 1996, Ann Richards picked up the phone and called Bill Clinton. While I was working at CNN, Paul Begala told me the story. Richards had been swept out of the Texas governor’s mansion 2 years earlier by a guy named George W. Bush, and she was still the saint of the Democratic Party. She told the President he was going to lose, because he was campaigning on what he had done instead of on what he was going to do. Clinton listened. The messaging shifted, and Bob Dole never recovered.
Somebody at Secure America PAC needs to hear that story. The first ad out the door was 30 seconds on how tough and resilient President Trump is, with the new Air Force One circling behind him.
The second was better — no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, the price of eggs down 60 percent, and prescription drug prices down.
Every one of those is true, and every one of those is something already done.
The voters who love Trump and are moved by those things are already going to vote in November. Harry Enten has the numbers.
Republicans take 41 percent on the generic ballot while the President sits at 37 percent approval. Among voters who say their vote is a message about President Trump, Democrats lead by 27 points. Among voters who think the election is not about Trump, Republicans lead by 19. The Republicans who are already motivated to vote approve of the President at 81 percent. The Republicans still sitting on the couch approve of him at 58 percent. The people the party has to reach are the people least interested in being told the President is wonderful.
Those voters do not need to be persuaded to love anybody. They need to be shown two futures and asked which one they want to live in.
The Republican future is not complicated. Police are allowed to police, and violent criminals and the dangerously mentally ill are kept off the sidewalk instead of left there to die in the name of compassion. The border stays secured and the cartels get treated like the enemy they are. Inflation, now around 3 percent, keeps falling until wages are clearly ahead of it again. There is real work left. We have not finished cleaning up the economy Joe Biden left, and the tariffs this administration keeps defending are raising prices on the very families the GOP needs. Republicans should say so and then go fix it.
The Democratic future is not a guess either, because they keep announcing it. Zohran Mamdani wants a rent freeze, a government grocery store, and landlords barred from evicting tenants who do not pay. Ro Khanna dropped his wealth tax threshold from $1 billion to $50 million. James Talarico told a forum that capitalism and white supremacy are the same oppressive system and that oil and gas is the cassette tape business. Abdul El-Sayed denied his own defund the police record until CNN produced the audio. They want ICE abolished, the jails emptied, bail eliminated, and boys in girls’ locker rooms, and they only stop saying it out loud when a camera shows up. Give them the House and none of it is theoretical anymore.
Ann Richards understood something the President’s PAC does not. Voters do not cast ballots as a thank you note. They cast them out of fear of what comes next. President Trump deserves credit for a secured border and for breaking Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. He will not get a single vote he does not already have for either one. Tell people what the other side will do to them, and many will crawl over glass to stop it. The GOP must remember that President Trump is overwhelmingly disliked by the country as a whole and by the independent voters who will decide this election. But, my friends, Democrats are still absolutely despised. In a race between what people dislike and what people despise, dislike can win.
