In 2024, the Democratic Party has decided to abandon the strategy of “when they go low, we go high.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama coined that moniker, which was eventually embraced by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in her unsuccessful campaign against Donald Trump. According to a Saturday report in Rolling Stone, one unnamed Democratic operative said Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is now aiming to “shak[e] off the stink” of that failed strategy.
A Democratic lawmaker speaking anonymously to the outlet said that the Harris campaign is leaning in on a more offense-focused strategy, and encouraged the campaign to characterize Trump, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and the MAGA movement as a collection of “weird, sick freaks who everyone hates, and who want to take basic rights away.”
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“Put it on a bumper sticker,” the unnamed lawmaker said.
Rolling Stone reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez noted that in a group chat including several senior Democratic operatives, one participant who was a high-ranking official in former President Barack Obama’s administration approvingly shared a video of Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota) attacking Republicans and wrote, “this is how you do it.”
“These are weird people on the other side,” said Walz — the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association thought to be a top contender to be Harris’ running mate — in a CNN interview from earlier this week. “[Republicans] want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room, that’s what it comes down to … These are weird ideas.”
Harris herself called Vance a “creep” in a press release on Friday, and her campaign’s X/Twitter account shared an audio clip of the Ohio senator calling for a “federal response” to crack down on women traveling out of state to get abortions. In that clip, Vance suggested to Australian podcaster Aimee Terese that liberal megadonor George Soros would pay for 747 jets to transport predominantly Black women from Ohio to travel to California to get abortions.
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“JD Vance’s obsession with controlling women’s most personal health care decisions, from voting against protecting access to IVF, to advocating for tracking women’s menstrual cycles, to calling for a national abortion ban to bar women from traveling to access the care they need, isn’t just bad policy – it’s creepy, it’s unacceptable, and voters won’t stand for it,” Harris stated.
Vance’s long history of controversial and divisive remarks in interviews hasn’t done the Trump campaign any favors in distancing itself from being labeled in such a way. The 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee recently had to explain remarks he made to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he denigrated “childless cat ladies.” Vance notably apologized to cats, but not to women, when clarifying his remarks to SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly.
