Democrats' Nazi strategy isn't working, Harris super PAC points out

Kamala Harris suggested at her embarrassing CNN town hall last week that President Donald Trump is a fascist — her rhetorical capstone to a years-long campaign to characterize the Republican as both a threat to democracy and a suitable target for lawfare or worse. Her running mate soon joined liberal media propagandists likening Trump and his supporters, including a Holocaust survivor, to the Nazis of yesteryear. The Democratic National Committee lent a helping hand, projecting Nazi accusations outside Trump's Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden.

Democrats and their allies in the media have long employed Nazi and fascist analogies to defame, discredit, and isolate political opponents such as Barry Goldwater, President Ronald Reagan, President George W. Bush, and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. These historically illiterate smears have not only served to spike rigorous debate, increase political polarization, and minimize the evils perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his forces but have also proven largely ineffective.

A super PAC supporting Harris recently acknowledged as much.

Future Forward USA Action, touted earlier this month by the New York Times as "an ad-making laboratory" with a $700 million war chest, suggested in an email to Democrats regarding effective campaign messaging that playing up the Trump-as-fascist fiction in the final stretch before Election Day is a strategic blunder.

The New York Times indicated that the email noted in bold type, "Attacking Trump's Fascism Is Not That Persuasive."

Another line said, "'Trump Is Exhausted' Isn't Working."

'No wonder they're in hysterics.'

"Purely negative attacks on Trump's character are less effective than contrast messages that include positive details about Kamala Harris's plans to address the needs of everyday Americans," said the email.

According to Future Forward, Harris' suggestion that Trump is a fascist at her CNN town hall was only in "the 40th percentile on average for moving vote choice." She apparently would have been better off discussing Medicare expansion to include in-home care for geriatrics as she did previously on Howard Stern's show, which tested in the 95th percentile.

The trouble for Harris — besides the late notice about the inefficacy of her go-to smear — is that attacking Trump is easier than defending her record or her vision for America.

Even in those instances in which she has a policy to promote that she did not copy and paste from the defunct Biden campaign, such as the taxation policy she instead copied and pasted from the Trump campaign, Harris trips over her own tongue and into what Democratic strategist David Axelrod recently called "word salad city."

Facing such difficulties, ad hominem attacks might be the easier alternative, even if ineffective.

While the core sales pitch — Trump is bad — has remained the same throughout, the Times noted that Harris' team has tried some variations since the Democratic National Convention:

Ms. Harris's team had made it clear immediately after the Democratic National Convention that they planned to switch from the message that President Biden had used most, that Mr. Trump is a unique threat to the country. They argued that making Mr. Trump smaller in the minds of voters was crucial. In her convention speech, she called him an "unserious man" but warned that restoring him to power would have "extremely serious" consequences.

Judging from recent polls, the "unserious man" line of attack didn't work. This might account for why Harris went back to smearing Trump as "unhinged, unstable," and ultimately a fascist, blowing $10 million on a recent ad claiming the Republican is "too big a risk for America" — an ad that Future Forward indicated fared poorly.

Future Forward's email warned, "Focusing on Trump’s disturbing, ludicrous and outlandish behavior can be an effective lead-in to talking about substantive policy, but is not effective at moving vote choice on its own."

The weakness of Democrats' Nazi strategy is not exactly a well-kept secret.

In 2018, privacy lawyer and journalist Allan Richarz penned an op-ed for The Hill, stressing that "overwrought comparisons to the Nazis are both historically illiterate and an extreme strategic misstep."

Richarz warned that by branding Trump a Nazi, Democrats had committed to continuous escalation and a weakening of language.

"Now that Trump is 'actually Hitler,' any compromise by Democrats will be viewed as kowtowing to fascism. Conversely, sticking with the Nazism line of attack cheapens its effect and, frankly, makes its proponents come off as a little more than unhinged, something perhaps already at play given that a Gallup poll has put Trump at his highest approval rating to date," wrote Richarz.

Jay Cost, a Gerald R. Ford nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted, "Always a sign of struggle when the Super PAC has to yell at the campaign, but can only do it legally via the media."

David Reaboi, fellow at the Claremont Institute, responded to the Times report, tweeting, "This is insanity. Kamala spent over $10M on ads focused on 'Trump is Hitler/Fascist,' and her largest Super PAC said they barely moved the needle, if at all. No wonder they're in hysterics."

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