Neither Party Seems Interested in Winning the Center
Base maximization strategies take over the 2024 election.
Vice President, and newly minted Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her own vice-presidential running mate. Although it’s too early to tell how exactly critical swing voters will react to Walz, Harris’s choice follows a similar path chosen by Donald Trump—one aimed at pleasing ideological base voters rather than reaching out to the electoral middle in a race with razor-thin margins nationally and in the battleground states.
On the GOP side, former president Trump managed to squander public goodwill after an assassination attempt and stepped on a mostly well-orchestrated party convention to pursue his usual list of petty grievances and self-indulgences rather than showing on-the-fence Americans that he is worthy of a second chance.
His choice of J.D. Vance for vice president was also a head-scratcher in purely electoral terms. Vance is the darling of the post-liberal, “America First” crowd of Republicans but appears to have scant appeal to the rest of the country. Since the RNC, Vance’s past statements about women and his attempted clean-ups have not endeared him to a large chunk of the electorate. Meanwhile, Trump himself is mostly absent from campaigning and is moping about trying to find a hit on Harris that will stick as his poll numbers tighten. Trump seems to believe that swing voters don’t exist and that people who imbibe right-wing media all day constitute a majority in the country.
On the Democratic side, party voters have been in a state of “irrational exuberance” ever since they forced Joe Biden out of the race and coalesced around Harris. Harris has yet to put forth any clear governing agenda for voters and is relying on vague notions like “we’re not going back” while parrying GOP hits on her disastrous left-wing positions from the 2020 primary season. The novelty of a new and younger Democrat with a hazy message may be enough to eke out a narrow Electoral College victory in three months—or not.
Passing over the widely popular and moderate governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, for his much more progressive counterpart in Walz signals that Harris and Democrats have little interest in courting the other side or strategically focusing on those in the middle in the most heavily contested state in America. Walz’s stock rose heavily online with progressive activists over the past few weeks by calling Trump, Vance, and other Republicans “weird”—a curious approach that suggests reaching potential converts is less important to Democrats than ramping up partisan disdain for half the country. Perhaps his “folksy” image and congressional governing record will overcome some of the run-of-the-mill partisanship that preceded his selection, and put to rest doubts people will surely have about his handling of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis.
Yet it remains to be seen if Harris and Walz can provide a genuinely pragmatic and centrist agenda for middle-of-the-road voters on the economy, immigration, and social policy and take necessary steps to reach voters outside of their urban-suburban comfort zone as Barack Obama did in 2008.
Similarly, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance made some interesting moves to appeal to swing voters by altering their national abortion position, laying off the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare, and putting forth some pro-worker economic ideas. But now they are back to the same old culture war politics that obsesses their base and plays into Democratic hands.
Does anyone want to win the center?
With less than 100 days to go in the 2024 election, the middle of the electorate remains wide open—valuable political terrain if only one of the two parties and their candidates cared to seize it.
Thank you for writing this! I am in a group of Nikki Haley voters. Most of us lean right, but a few left. We are the center now. Nobody is happy. And I wonder, is there room for a centrist coalition in America? Center right and center left people are natural allies. We can compromise on the policy we disagree on, it is so small. We agree more than we disagree. The best thing to come out of the Trump years is that Never Trump/Haley voter types and moderate Democrats/left leaners have been mixing it up on social media. And we have found that we genuinely like one another, and get along on political issues. Wouldn't it be great if Trump actually brought about a great political alliance of centrists? How to do this? Where to start? Because sincerely, neither party represents me. I will write in at the top of the ticket and vote for the most moderate of either party down ballot. I suspect most of my group members will do the same. I know that one of the problems is that not enough people are voting in primaries thus letting the most extreme of both parties choose the candidates. So, choose a party at primary time and vote. But the whole progressives chose Walz on Twitter is disheartening. I am weaning off twitter. It doesn't work well with my moderate takes. But if twitter is not real life, how do the progressives have such a wide reach there? Same as the big MAGA accounts? Maybe twitter is more real life than we think? Do we need a bunch of normies to sign up and get twitter accounts? Ideas, people! Thanks for writing though. My group was thrilled to see we are not forgotten.
Agreed. And very frustrating to watch.
Has anyone visited the Harris/Walz campaign site? It contains zero policy positions. Not even high-level Democratic bromides. It's simply a fundraising page. Be you for him or against him, at least Trump has the integrity to tell you who he is and what he'll do as President. Kamala, on the other hand, is counting on a strategy of 'vibes'...she's leveraging a complicit media/press to generate positive buzz while not being forced to answer a single question or even commit to a single policy position. Between Biden being forced out...the Kamala Coronation...Walz selection....and the DNC, Harris will be able to eat up 2 months of news cycles in what is effectively a 4 month election cycle without being challenged once. It's a winning strategy for her and, the scary thing is, it appears to be working.
On a related note, can we please make 'vibes' and 'weird' end. This isn't middle school. Moving on...
It was honestly shocking last night watching all those in the Harris/Walz audience cheering with glee as Harris let them in on the news that she'd been formally nominated in a late night vote. People were overflowing with joy at the fact that the party had assumed for itself its voters constitutionally afforded right to select their leader. WTF was that? It was very Orwellian...almost cultish.
Fair minded Americans should demand that our press actually do their jobs and press Harris as much as they press Trump. Being available to the press, friendly or hostile, should not become a disadvantage in presidential politics. We should demand a series of policy-based debates to occur before ballots go out in September. CBS, ABC, and Fox.
I think we're about to find out that, despite the common cliche, the American people truly are not smarter than we give them credit for.