Republicans Speaking at DNC Helps Donald Trump

Talking down to Trump supporters will surely work out this time

The Democratic Party and the corporate media have consistently failed to learn the simple lesson that having Republican politicians or party hacks come out against Donald Trump only makes him more popular and energizes his supporters. Several Republican politicians are set to speak at the Democratic National Convention in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. From CNN:

While some of the biggest names among Republicans opposed to Donald Trump have remained on the sidelines, others will be taking to the United Center stage throughout the the week to lay out the case for why they’re there – and why they think other conservatives should join them in voting for Kamala Harris.

Two prominent speakers are from key battleground states: John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.

Both have already endorsed Harris. They’ll be joined by Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House national security official who joined Harris for an event in Michigan just a few days before Joe Biden dropped out of the race. CNN previously reported that former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger will speak on Thursday evening ahead of Harris. (Both Duncan and Kinzinger are CNN contributors.)

“I’ve been a Republican all my life. But since Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 election, the Republican Party has spiraled further and further into political extremism,” Giles said.

These people are so used to dealing with Democratic voters who will largely regurgitate whatever talking point is put in front of them—on Tuesday it’s racist to say that President Biden has suffered serious cognitive decline, but by Wednesday he must step aside to save democracy due to his cognitive decline that they never knew about—and vote how they’re told to vote, that they can’t conceive that Republican voters have the exact opposite reaction. To paraphrase Michael Scott, if you tell these people that Trump is a “threat to democracy” while supporting a candidate who never received a single vote in the Democratic primaries, his supporters will just vote for him even harder.

This is an election where Donald Trump’s voters are already more energized to support their candidate than Kamala Harris voters for several reasons. For starters, even if there was no outright cheating involved (which many of his supporters do believe), the belief that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump in various ways is widespread among his supporters. That type of grievance is a strong inducement to go out and vote to spite the people you believe wronged you before. Furthermore, even Democrats do not like Kamala Harris. There is a reason why the Harris campaign did not even make it to the Iowa Caucuses in the 2020 Democratic primary, there is a reason why they waited until after the primaries in 2024 were over to force Biden out for Harris, and there is a reason why they are not having her do any non-scripted interviews. The more voters see and hear from Kamala Harris, the less they like her.

As Tulsi Gabbard pointed out in a 2020 debate, which effectively ended Harris’s campaign at the time, Harris is a former prosecutor who went after non-violent offenders very harshly and then laughed about her own drug use when asked about it. In a post-George Floyd world this is not popular among a large segment of Democratic and independent voters. And, as I keep pointing out, Vice President Harris is part of the Biden regime that is currently perceived by many Democratic and independent voters as not only backing but arming the Israeli government as they commit genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This is why the Democratic Party ironically had to build and even later fortify a wall outside of their convention to keep pro-Palestinian protestors out. This issue alone could hurt her badly in a state like Michigan with a high percentage of Arab and Muslim voters that she otherwise, as a Democrat, should be able to count on to vote for her. Given the circumstances, however, these voters may choose not to vote at all or for a third-party candidate instead. Her recently lashing out at protestors at one of her speeches will not help her case with pro-Palestinian voters.

Given all of that, it seems like an unforced error to turn around and have some wacky Republican politicians that nobody cares about come to the DNC to lecture Republicans about how they must support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. That helps you not at all with Democratic or independent voters, and it just gives more incentive to Republicans to vote for Trump. It is less interesting how much it will help Trump, however, than it is to analyze the mindset of the people who think this is a good idea. If they just say that Trump is a threat to democracy enough times or hard enough then his supporters will for some reason start doing what they’re told by their betters. That mindset helped elect Donald Trump in 2016, and it very well might help elect him again in 2024.