It’s the Policy, Stupid

Count me skeptical that the DNC convention really moved the needle in any serious fashion. You know it’s bad when the Democrats feel the need to play the kinds of tricks they did to keep people tuning in to the event. Keep watching, they said, because maybe Beyoncé will come! Or maybe it’s Taylor Swift! It’s going to be a special guest on the last night! I’m not a big fan of Congresswoman Nancy Mace, but the GOP representative from South Carolina represented me when she tweeted: “Watching night 4 of the DNC so you don’t have to. I hope their super secret special guest is policy!”

Mace is exactly right. It might be useful to remember the infamous line used by Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville during the 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I don’t want to suggest that economic matters should alone be talked about, but they are certainly among the most salient. The Trump campaign and those rooting it on might fruitfully consider adopting a slightly broader version: “It’s the policy, stupid.” Presenting concrete policies that will make life better for Americans is where the Trump-Vance campaign is undoubtedly superior.

From a purely practical standpoint, I don’t blame the DNC for going a bit light on the policy angle. After all, Kamala Harris has been the Vice President for four years. If she had had any policy knowledge before now, especially concerning policies that might address the sputtering economy or the porous border, it would have been visible by now. Spoiler alert: it is not visible.

In fact, what keeps being brought before our eyes is the fact that “Bidenomics” has been a big dud that only gets worse when its true effects are known. This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U. S. economy gained 818,000 fewer jobs from March 2023 to March 2024 than previously reported. This was on top of the weak jobs report in July of this year.

Oh, by the way, while we’re talking about weak job growth, Tim Walz, the number two on the Dems’ ticket, is the governor of a state that even ABC News acknowledges “has lagged behind the nation as a whole in the number of jobs created since the outbreak of the pandemic” (0.5% non-farm payroll growth vs. 5.8% nationwide). So, not only is the U.S. economy doing worse than we’ve been told, but we are being sold on the governor of a state that isn’t even as good as the country as a whole.

You can see why Democratic strategists might think it more effective to start rumors about celebrities giving concerts or push media narratives about Kamala as a source of “joy” and Tim as a new masculine role model, referred to alternately as “coach” and “America’s dad” by the media and political handlers.

These narratives were themselves kind of weird since Harris has a reputation as a boss and co-worker who brings more terror than joy, and Democrats have spent so much time downgrading masculinity that they don’t really know how to deal with it. The Babylon Bee captured the weirdness of the joy meme with their headline “Kamala Explains 93% of Staff Quit Because They Couldn’t Handle The Joy.” To show that the Democrats’ own media poodles would not be outdone in absurdity by a mere satirical site, CNN’s Dana Bash explained with a straight face to a panel of talking heads during the convention that Walz (and Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff) appeal to men who “aren’t testosterone laden.”

It’s tempting to jump in on the bandwagon and focus on the weirdness of the Democrats. But this way lies danger. Some GOP pundits such as Ann Coulter mocked Walz’s son, Gus, a young man who has several behavioral disorders, for his emotional standing ovation for his father. We can all agree to leave out the minor children of politicians from our calculations. If there is anything about Tim Walz that is admirable, it is that, like Donald Trump, his children seem to like him.

As Dana Bash’s example shows, the outlandish and bizarre quality of the Democrats is best demonstrated by…Democrats themselves. Simply getting them to talk when they think they’re among friends, as one comedian walking around the DNC convention did, is the best way to deal with the weirdness aspect. Democrats will agree to tax credits for dogs and free gender-affirming care for immigrants if one only asks them.

Which is why the attention of Republicans should be fully on the policy. When Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, or any other figure supporting them is talking, the focus should be on the nuts and bolts of what will make Americans’ lives better. There needs to be more talk precisely about the failed policies of Harris’s and Walz’s home states and why we cannot afford to allow the rest of the country to become like California or Minnesota.

As Joel Kotkin observed in a recent essay on “Californication,” Harris’s own state may be able to survive the “hegira elsewhere” of so many people since it still holds three of five of the world’s largest tech companies, but spreading this model to the rest of the country will make it unlivable. “Most of America is not California, with its beauty, mild climate and enormous legacy of technological and cultural achievement. Michigan, Indiana or even Texas still may have trouble gaining the affections of those who can afford California; it might challenge them to endure either the north’s cold or the Sun Belt’s blazing heat.”

Minnesota’s economic problems and its loss of high-earning residents are no doubt related to its own mimicking of the economic and social policies of the Golden State. People put up with a lot less in the frozen north than they do in Pasadena.

While many say it’s simply about images, the reality is that people do actually care about issues. It is policy decisions that make people leave the cold of Minnesota and even paradisal southern California. Trump and Vance are ready to defend the policies they have presented. In contrast, Harris and Walz have barely formulated positions and do not even have a section detailing any on their campaign website.

Kamala Harris’s bump, if bump there was, may be over at this point. If the “super secret special guest” of policy has not come out yet, there is a reason for that. The policies she’s been a part of or supported in the past are not winners. The GOP needs to be pushing her on the question of policy even as they show that their own policies will really be good for Americans all over. As Lincoln observed, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. But, if Kamala Harris is forced to get more specific, there won’t be enough “joy” in the world to fool enough people to win an election.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.