Anat Shenker-Osorio, the principal and founder of ASO Communications, has been conducting focus groups testing anti-Trump messages and commercials. In an email, she described some of what she and her colleagues have found:
Generally, we find “is” constructions less effective than “will do” ones. When you say, “Trump is …” and then fill in some character details, you’re inviting voters to consider whether you’re “playing politics as usual” and simply being Team Blue impugning Team Red. Focusing on “Trump will do” and filling that in with some concrete, voter-facing, future harm is more effective. And by “effective,” I mean both edging the conflicted voter away from Trump and motivating the folks who are tuned out into viewing this election as something in which they must participate.
Shenker-Osorio said, however, that there are “two absolutely essential caveats.”
The first is that “we now have a brand-new ‘Trump is …’” — felon. She added:
That is a very different moniker than, say, “unhinged,” “only in it for himself,” “racist,” “corrupt” or even “sexual predator.” It’s an appellation born of a decision reached by a jury of everyday Americans, not government officials, and one that packs a potent punch in a culture with a deep interest in all things crime-related. It’s not the opposing party purportedly name-calling Trump but rather an inescapable truth, even for those clueless about or skeptical of the details of the crimes.
The second is that there can even be problems with messages using “Trump will do,” and Shenker-Osorio said it is sometimes more effective to say “MAGA will do” because “‘MAGA will do’ counters skepticism that the agenda will get enacted.”
On the other hand, Shenker-Osorio wrote, “Trump’s most potent ads are those that show actual empathy for voters’ lived experiences. They speak to the economic concerns many people are having right now about cost of living and making ends meet, blaming Biden for these troubles.”
Notably, she continued, “Trump is neither seen nor heard in these ads.”
In “Trump Conviction Shows There’s No 2024 Game Changer Coming,” Ed Kilgore, a former Democratic operative who is now a political columnist for New York magazine, explained from a separate vantage point Trump’s seeming invulnerability:
You can argue all day about why Trump seems to be “Teflon Don” or even conclude that it’s not about him but about his feckless opponents in both parties or about an atmosphere of partisan polarization that nothing can penetrate. But whatever it is, we’re in a presidential contest that appears to be all but impervious to the kinds of things that used to be called game changers.
It’s time to accept at least as a rebuttable presumption that the game isn’t changing. And that has implications for future events like the presidential debates, the two major-party conventions and the cut-and-thrust of the campaign competition as the November election grows nigh.
Trump, Kilgore continued,
is incapable of moderating his savage and vengeful message, and this year’s turnout dynamics could make Biden’s base of support more reliable. And Trump’s polling lead, even though it has induced regular panic in some Democratic ranks, has never been more than a few ticks away from vanishing altogether.
But no one should expect Trump to self-destruct or persuadable voters to wake up some morning and realize what a terrible man he is.
The strategy adopted by Trump and his allies to deal with his apparent liabilities is not to change course but to double down.
On June 6, Trump posted one of his increasingly typical rants on Truth Social, which has to be read in full to be appreciated:
It is a Total and Complete American Tragedy that the Crooked Joe Biden Department of Injustice is so desperate to jail Steve Bannon, and every other Republican, for that matter, for not SUBMITTING to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, made up of all Democrats, and two CRAZED FORMER REPUBLICAN LUNATICS, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, and Liz “Out of Her Mind” Cheney. It has been irrefutably proven that it was the Unselects who committed actual crimes when they deleted and destroyed all material evidence, in a pathetic attempt to protect Crazy Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats from the TRUTH — THAT I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG. The un-American Weaponization of our Law Enforcement has reached levels of Illegality never thought possible before. INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE FOR ILLEGALLY DELETING AND DESTROYING ALL OF THEIR “FINDINGS!” MAGA2024.
Phil McGraw, a television host sympathetic to Trump, pointedly encouraged him to abandon his threats to prosecute adversaries if re-elected. During an hourlong conversation with Trump last week on “Dr. Phil Primetime,” McGraw said, “There are headlines out there that say, when you win your second term, that you are going to make the people that have come after you pay retribution and revenge.”
McGraw then suggested to Trump that he abandon his threats to prosecute his adversaries:
Let me ask you this, before you even respond to that. I want to play “what if” with you for a minute. What if when you win this election, you said, “Enough is enough? Too much is too much. This is a race to the bottom, and it stops here.”
Trump initially took the bait, telling McGraw, “I’m OK with it. I am. I’m OK with that,” but quickly returned to form: “Sometimes revenge can be justified, though. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”
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